Another Depressing Minnesota Coronavirus Briefing

Today, our Governor gave a tour de force performance of misleading information, false reasoning and re-writing of history, while extending our stay-at-home order with only minor modifications that make no difference to the economy.    That will take a lengthy post to de-compose, which I will do tomorrow.  Suffice it to say that my respect for the Governor diminishes with each briefing.

But yesterday’s briefing was interesting in its own way.  The Governor wasn’t there, so not quite as slick at avoiding tough questions.  We learned that unemployment is now at 564,000 since the shutdown.  Continues to grow, but they tried to spin that the growth is slowing.  But the real action was in the question and answer session.  It was again revealed that we are doing a terrible job in long-term care facilities.  16 out of the new 18 deaths were in such facilities.  249 out of the 319 cumulative deaths are in this setting.  They also revealed that 99.24% (which doesn’t quite compute) of the deaths have involved people with pre-existing conditions.  Apparently only one or two persons died who weren’t in that bucket.  So the question was why isn’t the mitigation of spread more tailored to long-term care and individuals with pre-existing conditions.   The answer was completely weak, just some rambling about health care resource adequacy and then an implication that some people don’t know they have a pre-existing condition.  That is complete BS.  The only way the state knew that they had that condition when they died was from diagnosis codes from prior treatment.  So just another pathetic performance.