As voters lined up across Wisconsin on Tuesday, waiting hours in some places, researchers who have been monitoring the spread of the coronavirus nationwide watched in stunned horror and confusion.

It's too soon to say how the decision to allow thousands of Wisconsinites to converge on polling places in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years will reshape the state's disease curve. Modelers say to expect better data on that in a couple of weeks, when people infected Tuesday begin to get sick.

But as research teams wait to see the data trickle in — and despite the fact that they all calculate predictions slightly differently — experts who spoke with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel all agreed: This will not help Wisconsin's curve.

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"I don't get it; I honestly do not get it," researcher Ali Mokdad said from his home in Seattle, where he's been for a month under Washington's ongoing stay-at-home order.

Mokdad is the chief strategy officer of population health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a prominent research center at the University of Washington, that created one of the most influential national models predicting the coronavirus' spread.

"The message is exactly the same," said Mokdad of the various models by national and international research teams. Coronavirus is deadly. It's highly contagious. And the best way to combat it is to stay home for everything other than essential work and trips to buy food, medicine and other survival needs.

On Monday, Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm said in-person voting would "without question" increase case totals, "and an increase in the number of cases in Wisconsin would result in more deaths."

In many suburban and rural areas, lines were not too long. But in Milwaukee, Waukesha and Dane counties, lines stretched out onto sidewalks and around blocks, ending any chance of social distancing. In the city of Milwaukee, voters stood in line for hours at one of five consolidated "voting centers" instead of the 180 smaller neighborhood sites that voters normally use.

"What a disaster," said Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a co-founder of COVID Act Now, a national model run by volunteer scientists that aims to predict when hospitals will become overwhelmed across the country.

Kreiss-Tomkins said there isn't a specific modeling scenario to show how an election could spread the coronavirus. But he compared the situation to other mass gatherings, including Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and also to states that delayed implementing stay-at-home orders.

"New Orleans is now one of the highest per capita COVID counts in the United States a couple weeks later," he said. "So, cause and effect? There's certainly a case for it."

Voting likely pushed back peak

Wisconsin's election day came just as some states were seeing a glimmer of hope. The Seattle Times reported the state of Washington may have already seen its peak.

In Wisconsin, data from the state Department of Health Services gives a mixed message. On the last two days of March, March 30 and 31, the number of cases jumped 14.7%. A week later, the number of cases jumped 5.7% from April 6 to April 7. In other words, Wisconsin is still seeing more cases, but the growth rate is slowing.

However — and it's a big however — the number of overall cases that result in hospitalization is rising. And there is concern that testing is not keeping pace with the spread, and that if more people were tested, the numbers would be higher.

In other words, it's hard to say whether Wisconsin is "flattening the curve" or not.

Regardless, Mokdad said, the decision to hold the election sets any progress back. It not only sends mixed messages to the public but could push the state closer to overwhelming its health care system.

Mokdad's institute updates projections daily with new data and is used by many state and federal leaders, though some critics say it's on the optimistic side.

The institute's projections on election day, which don't account for the election, showed Wisconsin peaking on April 17, as measured by hospital resources needed. As of Tuesday, it predicted 644 Wisconsities would die of COVID-19 by Aug. 4. The number of daily deaths would peak April 15 at 32.

But there's a tremendous range in that estimate depending on what happens in real life: As few at two and as many at 199 people could die that day, according to the model. The further out the projections go, the wider the range.

Mokdad said the election could push Wisconsin's peak later, with a higher number of deaths and larger shortage of hospital resources.

Precautions may not be enough

State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos — who fought to keep in-person voting Tuesday — touted the precautions taken at the Burlington polling site where he volunteered.

"Actually, there’s less exposure here than you would get if you went to the grocery store or you went to Walmart or you did any of the many things we have to do to live in the state of Wisconsin," Vos told the Racine Journal Times.

Mokdad suggested Vos was ill-informed. He noted even doctors and nurses with special training are getting infected across the country.

"These are people who have gear, who know what to do and who have been doing this all their life," Mokdad said with frustration. "How could we afford to let our citizens come out to vote on an election when we can delay it?"

Researchers said the ease with which the coronavirus spreads is a big concern in polling places.

People could arrive with mild to moderate symptoms or still could be in the phase before symptoms start to show. There's evidence that transmission could be as simple as touching a ballot or a pen that someone else had held and then your face. New research shows it could even spread during conversation between two people standing just a bit too close.

'The spark in the process'

Columbia University's Sen Pei helped create a coronavirus prediction model that simulates different levels of daily travel activity. Pei, an associate research scientist, said the election gathering was risky in ways other activities wouldn't approach.

"When you go about your daily life, you only go to some regular places. You go to get groceries. You go to work. You only contact people from certain locations," Pei said. "Here, you're gathering people from different locations and they can bring back the virus to their own location. That is like the spark in the process."

One infected person can spread the virus to between one and three others, he added.

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In another example of lifting restrictions too soon, Pei modeled what would have happened if national restrictions had been lifted by Easter, an idea President Donald Trump floated in late March but later backed away from.

"It's really quick. The outbreak will resurge or rebound a few days after the lifting of the control measures," Pei said of the Easter analysis. "And it's exponential growth."

Republican state legislators asked Gov. Tony Evers to allow in-person Easter services this week.

Vos hinted Tuesday that Wisconsin might replicate the voting process with upcoming elections if the outbreak continues. "We could be dealing with this in August or November, so we need to have a dry run as we’re going through it right now to make sure we get this right," he said.

But if Tuesday's situation repeats itself — if voters again have to make a grueling decision between a constitutional right and personal health — Mokdad said the decision for him was clear.

"I have voted in every election and I feel that it's my civic duty," Mokdad said. "If I were a citizen of Wisconsin, I would not go out and vote."

Sophie Carson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Matthew Piper of USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin contributed to this story.

Contact Devi Shastri at 414-224-2193 or DAShastri@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DeviShastri.