{"id":5952,"date":"2023-10-01T05:03:29","date_gmt":"2023-10-01T05:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5952"},"modified":"2023-10-01T18:56:59","modified_gmt":"2023-10-01T18:56:59","slug":"wisconsin-health-boss-we-made-mistakes-with-covid-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5952","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin Health Boss: We Made Mistakes with COVID Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wisconsindailystar.com\/news\/wisconsin-health-boss-we-made-mistakes-with-covid-response\/tcsquare\/2023\/10\/01\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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by Benjamin Yount<\/h5>\n

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The woman in charge of Wisconsin\u2019s Department of Health Services said public health managers in the state made mistakes in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n

DHS Secretary Nominee Kirsten Johnson on Thursday defended the decisions she and other public health department leaders made during the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly made mistakes. Part of this is it was a novel virus, we didn\u2019t know what we didn\u2019t know, and we were making the best decision we could out of a host of bad decisions,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Johnson has been tapped by Gov. Tony Evers to lead the state\u2019s public health department. Her hearing on Thursday is part of her confirmation process.<\/p>\n

Johnson began her public health career in Ozaukee County, before moving to Milwaukee\u2019s health department, where she left after an apparent disagreement with members of the city council. While in Milwaukee, Johnson was responsible for and drove the city\u2019s COVID response. That included lockdown orders, mask mandates, decisions to close businesses and forced social distancing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould I make some of those same decisions today? Absolutely not. That said, we have a lot of tools that we didn\u2019t have previously,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Sen. Rachel Cabral-Guevara, R-Appleton, pressed Johnson for answers as to where she stands now on those COVID era restrictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you support mandates of COVID vaccine for nurses, any health care professional, or teachers? Cabral-Guevara asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I think it\u2019s recommended,\u201d Johnson answered. \u201cI think, again, that\u2019s part of people needing to evaluate their own risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said she would \u201chighly recommend everyone get vaccinated,\u201d but she said, \u201cit\u2019s a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you feel about masks? Do you still feel that they are essential, and needed to be required in places in the state of Wisconsin where you can\u2019t utilize stores, or medical offices? Would you still require that [masks] that was recommended today?\u201d Cabral-Guevara asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I recommend people wear masks if they are vulnerable, if they\u2019ve been exposed. But not mandated,\u201d Johnson answered.<\/p>\n

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Benjamin Yount is a contributor to The Center Square.\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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The post Wisconsin Health Boss: We Made Mistakes with COVID Response<\/a> appeared first on The Wisconsin Daily Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wisconsindailystar.com\/news\/wisconsin-health-boss-we-made-mistakes-with-covid-response\/tcsquare\/2023\/10\/01\/ by Benjamin Yount \u00a0 The woman in charge of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":3495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-daily-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5953,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5952\/revisions\/5953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}