The whining

As I mentioned earlier this week, I was expelled from the daily Minnesota Department of Health Covid briefings conduced by Commissioner Jan Malcolm after I emailed a critical question to her staff. I repeatedly emailed to ask why I had been expelled. I left one or two voicemails with the head MDH communications asking why I had been expelled. I received no response or explanation.

I then filed a Minnesota Data Practices Act request to try to figure it out. Internal emails made it clear that I was expelled because of the critical question after MDH staff consulted with the Walz’s staff.

I had tuned in to the briefings following Walz’s March 25, 2020 emergency order that arbitrarily shut down the state. Following the data, I saw that 80 percent of the deaths attributed to Covid by MDH occurred in long-term care facilities. I sought an answer to the question why the state was being shut down because of a crisis in long-term care about which the authorities themselves remained silent.

At all times along the way Governor Walz and Commissioner Malcolm were protected inside a circle of media love led by the Star Tribune. As they inflicted incalculable damage to lives and careers and public health, they liked it that way.

Today the Star Tribune editors publicize a JAMA study of undefined “harassment” endured by public health workers and a follow-up survey including “harassment” of public officials such as Malcolm. Someone on the editorial board interviewed Malcolm on the study and Malcolm unburdened herself inside that circle of media love once again:

In an interview this week, Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) Commissioner Jan Malcolm said the study is tough to read. “I’ll just be really honest with you, I’m having a little PTSD,” she said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s just bringing back so many difficult things we’ve been through in the last couple of years personally, for my staff at MDH, for our local public health colleagues. When I think about the damage that’s been done, it just makes my blood boil.”

Enduring the vagaries of one-man rule tends to set free people on edge. The survey posed the question: “Is it justifiable to harass or threaten public health officials after business closures done to slow COVID’s spread?” The planted assumption is that the correct answer is “no.” That’s the way they roll over at the Star Tribune.

In the boiling blood department, it doesn’t do much for me to reflect that, despite her manifest incompetence and deceit, Malcolm not only still has the job she came in with, she is complaining about it. The Star Tribune editorial itself observes limitations of the study that render it a joke.

At Healthy Skeptic, Kevin Roche makes out a bill of particulars in the indictment of Malcolm. Kevin writes:

• You forced thousands of nursing home residents to be isolated from what little social contact they had. These residents then gave up, developed what is euphemistically referred to as “failure to thrive” syndrome and died. You compiled one of the worst records in the country in regard to nursing home deaths and serious illness.

• Your constant harping on danger and safety led hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans to miss needed health care, including child immunizations, leading to sharp rises in serious disease and to increases in death from causes such as dementia, heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. We will pay the price for this terror campaign for years to come.

• Your policies caused a sharp increase in deaths from drug and alcohol abuse. You supported open-border policies which allowed enormous quantities of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs to flood into our communities, you supported destroying effective police forces to stop this flow of drugs and you have done nothing, absolutely nothing to limit the use of these drugs. Adolescents, young adults and minorities are most at risk due to your policies and inaction.

• You supported and enforced school closures which destroyed the educational and social lives of Minnesota’s children, and led to thousands of minority children simply dropping out of school.

• You supported lockdowns which disrupted all Minnesotans lives, leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the closure of thousands of businesses, resulting in financial and mental health distress.

• You constantly provided misleading and incomplete information to the public and continue to do so to this day. You have been more interested in releasing data that support your messages as opposed to the truth. You suppressed a study on the ineffectiveness of masks. You refused to release communications with teachers’ unions showing that your school closure policies were just payback for campaign contributions to Walz and Democrats. You hid data showing that most hospitalizations attributed to Covid were not primarily for treatment of that condition. You supported crazy approaches to attributing deaths to Covid. You continue to refuse to provide full data on breakthrough infections and reinfections that would allow an honest assessment of vaccine effectiveness and immunity from prior infection.

• You lied about vaccine effectiveness and supported vaccine mandates which worsened health care staffing problems and led to worse health care. Your policies caused many workers to lose jobs even though they were no more likely to get infected or to transmit than were persons who were vaccinated.

Kevin concludes: “In short, you are guilty of ignoring the overall public health and spreading coronamonomania. Far from improving outcomes in Minnesota, whether from Covid-or other diseases, you worsened them. So spare us your self-pity, Commissioner Malcolm, and think about how you might atone for all the harm you have done to Minnesotans.”