Yesterday’s Minnesota Department of Health press briefing set off an epic Twitter rant by KSTP TV’s Tom Hauser. I will take that up in a separate post. I have posted the 47-minute video (it’s all audio) of the briefing at the bottom of this post. KSTP’s summary of the briefing is here.
The briefings have become a ritual farce. Pioneer Press reporter Dave Orrick asked a critical question about Minnesota Model 3.0 homing in on the point I have been making about it since it was rolled out on May 13. Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm’s response to Orrick’s question (at about 18:00) is nothing we haven’t heard before, but it is classic and it seems to be good enough for Dave.
The authorities attributed 18 new deaths to COVID-19 in the data released yesterday. This brings the total of all such deaths to 899. Fifteen of the 18 deaths occurred among residents of long-term care and assisted living facilities, bringing this total to 732. LTC deaths account for nearly 81.5 percent of the total. Unbelievable, and yet the Minnesota media snooze on.
The age breakdown of the new decedents continues to skew toward the elderly. One of the 18 new decedents was in his 100’s, 7 were in their 90’s, five were in their 80’s, one was in his 70’s, three were in their 60’s, and one was in his 40’s.
Commissioner Malcolm wants it to be known that we are all at risk of the disease. Implicit in her message is her defense of Governor Walz’s continuing exercise of control over our daily lives. She also wants it to be known that the Minnesota Model they rolled out to great fanfare only two weeks ago is not to be taken too seriously. Implicit in her message is the acknowledgment that the model is a joke. And yet Governor Walz presented a vision of the apocalypse in his March 25 speech announcing his big shutdown order based on super duper Minnesota Model 1.0. Now we know the joke was on us.
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