Wis.Cur

Let's use math to test a theory in real time.

The last two weeks appears to have witnessed an explosion of Measles cases in Southwestern Wisconsin. Except they did not explode, they just went unreported and unmeasured for a period of time before someone took notice. Once the alarm was sound, public health officials went into the field, and quickly found more cases.

This outbreak is unusual in another sense: it is earlier than expected. Historically, before we began to reap the benefit of the MMR vaccine, measles would stay dormant in the summer and then slowly build over the fall and winter as the school year and weather brought children (who lacked immunity from never having had the disease) together.

First a Theory

What does this pattern suggest? This looks like a close knit religious community with low vaccination rates had an outbreak and were dealing with it themselves, until such time as they could not.

Iowa county Wisconsin has a growing Amish population, and vaccination rates in Amish communities vary widely based upon local beliefs, leadership, and customs. This outbreak would fit a pattern.

Measles Outbreaks in Anabaptist Communities, 2013–Present

2013: Southern Alberta, Canada:Hutterite and Mennonite communities with 42 confirmed cases.

2014: Ohio, USA: Amish community with 383 confirmed cases across nine counties.

2024–2025: Southwestern Ontario, Canada: Mennonite community, traced to a New Brunswick gathering with over 177 confirmed cases.

2025: Gaines County, Texas, USA:Old Colony Mennonite community with over 762 confirmed cases and 3 deaths.

2025: Taber, Alberta, Canada: Low German Mennonite community and other low vaccination communities with over 2,000 cases.

My purpose is not to single out a particular community, I was a member of an Anabaptist community and I am very sympathetic to their goals and reading of Christian Scripture. My purpose is to show how we can apply math to what we know about a phenomenon to extrapolate evidence for what is not yet known. I won't lie; I would consider it a bonus if it highlighted the dangers of vaccine skepticism.

From Theory to Forecast (aka “Mathing the Math)

Measles has a reproduction number of 15. Vaccination rates do not change how effectively measles spreads, it reduces the population susceptible to infection. So, assuming the general population of 6 year olds in Wisconsin has a vaccination rate of .79 our adjusted R value is 15(1-.79)=3.15.

Estimates of vaccine rates among Amish communities vary widely, but let’s take the largest estimate I could find with a vaccination rate of .41 (but trending downwards). 15(1-.41)=8.85.

Measles can incubate for 7-21 days but the generally accepted average is 12 days for each new generation of infections. So it find k for each community we take ln(R)/days. Our general population comes out at k=.09562. The Amish community would have a value of k=.1817.

So our exponential growth functions look like this:

General Population: (n)e^.09562t
Amish Community: (n)e^.1817t

Two Forecasts

If the measles outbreak is focused in the Amish Community and social distancing measures were not undertaken the moment the infection went public, we would expect to see cases rise to ~125 in the next seven days. This number could be larger if we over-estimated the vaccine rate in the Amish community or the current number of cases continues to be understated.

If the cases are centered in the General Community, that number should be significantly lower, ~68 or less, given that school has yet to begin in the general population and we live less social lives and have smaller families with fewer children than our Amish neighbors.

If the cases are somewhere in-between, we would be led to believe that the infection is spreading in both communities.

Measles outbreaks strain medical resources in the area impacted, created unnecessary suffering for the individuals infected, and result in needless deaths. These facts are not in dispute. This is real life, it is not a math game. But we can use math to test theories. We can use it to discern details of a narrative that are not reported in the news media. It can help confirm or deny a hypothesis.

With another week’s of reporting, we should be able to discern if this outbreak is concentrated in one community or the other. Let’s find out.

Addendum:

The math also works backwards. With the 35 known cases we can estimate ln(35)/.1817 that if the infection is in the Amish community, the first person would have been infectious around July 22, 2026. If it was in the general community, (ln(35)/.09562) the first person would have been infectious around July 5, 2026. I would posit it is more likely that the measles infection worked its way through an Amish Community for 11 days without be noticed than existing in the general community for 28 days without being reported.

I have long found the large internet content providers distasteful, ugly, and damaging to the culture. But I find a lot of things about our 21st century experience distasteful, ugly, and damaging to those of us living in the present despite our unprecedented wealth and privilege, so I chose not to lose much sleep about it.

Then, however, came the second Trump administration and the sycophant behavior of these corporate giants. With age I have learned you can (and should) ignore most benign changes in physical appearance. One should not, however, ignore a growth which is cancerous. When these giants of social influence threw in their lot with the self-enriching, breaker of norms, the die was cast. I am against them and will do my part to not contribute to their influence or wealth.

Of course, it is not just me but I am confounded by those who claim to be infuriated by the social influence companies' courting of Trumpian favor while continuing to use the products which bring them wealth and power. Some judgment, yes, must be made. I still use Apple services and Microsoft products. Yet many who oppose the tech giants seem to feel disempowered to free themselves from the corporations they hold in disdain.

I’ve conducted three experiments, and came away with an impression of the challenges of each.

Quitting Amazon.com was easy. I only took a small hit in convenience and price. I think first world material consumption is a problem anyway, so I was glad to have motivation to change. Under the hood, however, I recognize that many of my projects may inadvertently make use of Amazon Web Services. That is a task for another day, but I am aware of it.

Quitting Meta was more difficult; it required the self-help skills of CBT and I often find myself using the language of twelve step programs to maintain my distance. While on vacation I made use of Snapchat for 24 hours to use the map feature with some family members. Even though it is not a part of Meta, I found myself staring at the app for minutes at a time resisting the temptation to add all these people I knew. It was challenging to delete the app after the need for its map function had passed. Quitting social media is analogous to quitting a drug, and relapse is real.

All of this was small change, however, to quitting Google. Alphabet products have so infiltrated our culture and our work that it is more akin to learning to live without an automobile than addiction or a consumer choice. It is wrapped in everything.
I still open Google products when work or my volunteer endeavors use it; I am not ready to cut myself off from joining with my community to do good work or earn a living. Just refusing to initiate projects with the services or feed the Google database of everything, however, has been challenging to say the least. It is right up there with my experiments in veganism and living without a car.

I am 90 days into the experiment and I have no intention of returning to these services. Quite the opposite, I am looking to make sure that I am really as free from their data-gathering vacuums as possible.

I still don’t know how to think about the experience of disempowerment I hear expressed by others. Yet I was surprised about how differently I experienced each of the three experiments. It was easy to give up Amazon, just switching from one store to many smaller venders with a trade off on price and delivery time. Giving up Meta’s social media platforms was like quitting a deeply ingrained bad habit like biting my nails or picking my nose in public. Google was the most difficulty and challenging. Not impossible, but it required rethinking my whole approach to my internet infrastructure. We should no feel disempowered, however, we just have to make a decision and then undertake the work to bring it to fruition.

We went out to Madeline Island, Wisconsin for a quick trip this past weekend to meet up with some friends, walk some beaches, hike some forest, and dip our toes in the water.

When we arrived, there was a good wind and rain was threatening. The physics of the natural world were making themselves evident, as vacationers left the beach for the shelter of their tents and campers. Waves crested and trees swayed as atmospheric pressure dropped and goosebumps formed on my skin from the cool humidity. I saw vectors and forces I can only pretend to begin to quantify.

I know just enough to see all the things I do not know. Knowledge, awareness of imy own ignorance, joy: this is how I would try to use prose to explain my experience of awe. In poetry we might say only that the landscaped crawled with “small gods."

Its not much different than visiting an art gallery, anyone can fall under the sway of the Dutch Masters or a Monet, but it hits at a different level when you begin to grasp the depth of the skill and detail involved. Knowledge provides the foundation of self-awareness and smallness. We all know the joy of burying ourselves in the sand of a beach in summer, but it is another thing altogether to experience awe that every atom heavier than hydrogen, including the silica between your toes, was born in a star that died eons before our sun was a swirling ball of gas.

Huron, my favorite Aussie/Collie mix, definitely understands joy; I see it on his face a dozen times a day. Awe, however, seems to be more uniquely human: I think of it as the place where joy, knowledge, and an acceptance of ignorance merge into one singular experience.

Like other human traits, it is one we can and should foster in ourselves and others.

There was never a doubt which two candidates would come out of the St. Louis County Commissioner District One primary with tickets to compete in the November General Election.

What was in question, is how they would be ranked by an engaged primary electorate. In full disclosure, while I mostly watched from the sideline, I had a solid choice in this race, the DFL endorsed challenger Kris Eilers.

I was privileged to join the primary night results watch party and organize the results as they were reported from the polls. With some GIS prep work the math-rich spreadsheet:

was transformed into fun visual for the hard-working volunteers who gathered for the party.

Add a projector hooked up to a laptop and bingo: a data DJ has arrived.

Applied math is just plain fun, at least for a small subset of us. Focus on a topic you care about, however, add a little computer science, and you can help make it fun for everyone in your community who nerds like you.