If current trends hold and Covid-19 ICU usage is in the region of 250-300 on July 13th when the model forecasts 3,700, we will have every reason to junk it and many of the measures it has justified. This ought to include Gov. Walz’ emergency powers....
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At the end of May, my friend Todd Myers, of the Washington Policy Center, wrote an excellent piece for The Wall Street Journal detailing how Washington Governor Jay Inslee's response to the COVID-19 pandemic was anything but scientific. In Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz has claimed he is "following the science," but nearly all of the decisions he's made have been arbitrary value judgments based on his own political worldview. In his piece, Mr. Myers explains how politicians abandon the scientific method and data-driven policymaking when the numbers don't support the actions they want to take. You'll see there are many parallels between...
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Schools around the world are already back to school, even in European nations that had higher fatality rates from COVID-19 than the U.S....
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The Minnesota Department of Education is weighing three different scenarios for what back to school could look like for students this fall. ...
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According to Covid-19 data for Minnesota, the numbers seem to be plateauing. This is especially good news since the state is reopening. According to NPR State health officials say 13 more Minnesotans have died from COVID-19, putting the total to 1,249 since the pandemic began. However, the daily counts of people hospitalized or needing intensive care continues to show a recent trend of plateauing. The Health Department on Thursday reported 411 people were currently hospitalized, down 16 from Wednesday and at their lowest level since early May. There were 196 people in intensive care, roughly the same as in the past week and...
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Gov. Walz tells us that he needs to keep his emergency powers to protect us from Covid-19. How, then, is he managing to produce outcomes so much worse than in Wisconsin, where Gov. Evers' “Safer at Home” order was junked a month ago? We are incurring all the costs of Gov. Walz' aimless knob twiddling without any positive results to show for it....
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A lot of states have opened and they have not made it worse for themselves. Even some of the surge that was seen two weeks after reopening in some states has been temporary. So Minnesotans should be more hopeful about the next weeks as things at least go back to normal. Especially considering the fact that the health sector has built up enough capacity to handle an expected surge in positive cases....
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Minnesota needs qualified ICU nurses to help fight Covid-19. Membership of the national Nurse Licensure Compact would make that easier. ...
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With the extension of the lockdown, there has been a general worry that persisting unemployment could lead to a surge in deaths of despair. This would largely be due to unemployment and loss of income contributing to alcohol and substance abuse as well as deteriorating mental health, which may lead to increased rates of suicide. Health providers across the country have indeed seen a surge in calls for suicide attempts as well as mental health patients. This is all highly expected in terms of financial turmoil. There are of course programs set up in place to cushion financial loss from loss of...
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On May 13th, the state's Covid-19 model forecast 1,441 deaths by the end of May. We had 1,040. ...
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