Minnesota has the highest share of long-term-care residents as fatalities of any state in the union. So we’re finally champs at something.
And looking at the numbers in that spreadsheet, it’s beyond shocking – nearly ten percent of all ilong term care residents in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut – the Blue Triangle of Death – have died in this pandemic.
Minnesota, thus far, has lost 2.8% of its nursing home population – the 14th-worst result in the US, thus far. That’s far, far above the death toll in the two states that are every Minnesota “progressive’s” favorite punch lines, Mississippi (1.9%) and Florida (1.5%).
The Dakotas – the two neighbor states that Minnesota Progressives just can’t stop bashing? Both tied in the bottom five – at 0.1% of the long term care population.
And while politicizing the results isn’t entirely fair or appropriate, it’s worth noting that the top 25 states in terms of deaths in long-term care are all “blue” states (with the exception of Louisiana, whose main population center and Covid hot spot is utterly dominated by the Democrats.
Great job, Walz-y.
Smart people leave Minnesota when they reach retirement, and take their stuff and wealth with them.
The smartest people do it now.
Nursing homes are horrible places and there are very few I would feel comfortable sending even an enemy to around here. I have worked in a few and have stories that have scarred me for life. Most of them, from the top down have do little regard for the lives they are in charge of. As with everything, I am cautiously optimistic that this news will actually reform nursing home care in this state.
mjb003;
I guess that we were lucky. The memory care facility in Farmington that we had our mother in, was top notch. Their affiliated hospice care company was also first rate.
That said, beginning early in April, there have been some viral stories coming out from nurses and doctors on YouTube that, if true, are very disturbing. They describe neglect and abuse of patients in hospital covid-19 wards, specifically in New York. They reported that nurses were scared to go into the rooms, so there was minimal attention to patients were put on closed loop ventilators and literally left to die.
Regarding Minnesota’s numbers, remember that you’ve got little things like New York counting the numbers based on where people died, not where they lived–artificially dropping the fatality numbers a LOT. Plus, you’ve got incredibly idiotic things like the CDC–aided and abetted by state health boards–actively encouraging nursing homes to house COVID patients who don’t need active hospitalization.
Not that we’re not pathetic, but we’ve got a lot of company. Ironically, it is perhaps our “better” bureaucrats who made this what it is by being more effective at getting COVID-19 positive residents and staff back in nursing homes. We can certainly control it, except when we cannot. Oopsie.
At one point in time, a few days ago, as reported on Powerline, there were more people over 100 years old who had died in MN than under 50. Sheesh.
Put another way, Phil Kerpen reports, “Minnesota has has a grand total of 155 COVID deaths outside of long-term care homes. Walz’s insane policy of forcing infectious patients into care homes is the state’s entire problem. […]”.
And the Red Star spent yesterday telling the cynics and unbelievers that 2/3 of MN approves of Wally-World. I went shopping yesterday (central MN) and pretty much the only persons with masks were very old people and the people with them (which is what I would expect). Nobody paid attention to the direction arrows in the aisles.
jdm;
Kim Jong Walz was following his idiot fellow dictator Andy Mussolini Cuomo’s lead. He was doing the same thing, possibly worse. And once again I have to pose this to the left wingers; What party was it that you continually say wants grandma to die? We know that Bill Gates does.
It’s the MINNESOTA WAY!!
Both Cuomo and Walz knew all along where the deaths were happening and to whom they were happening.
Traditionally the way that you deal with a pandemic is to quarantine the sick, take safety precautions and protect vulnerable populations.
The modern technocrat way to deal with a pandemic is to destroy healthy economies and kill people.
When the technocrat’s policies fail, and the bodies start piling up, and the people start asking questions, they make apocalyptic predictions, silence dissent, and blame their mistakes on the bad people who aren’t doing as they are told.
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I’m waiting for Walz to keep with tradition and announce a new 5-Year Plan for dealing with the virus.
Regarding nursing homes: my SIL was in a near-fatal traffic accident about this time last year, and needed surgery on her spine. When she was well enough, she was moved to a Transitional Care Unit, which happened to be the same nursing home my MIL was in. The doctor’s orders were for her dressing to be changed and the wound cleaned 3x a day. The “care” attendants did it once a day. Infection broke out and ravaged her already weak lungs. An attendant not assigned to her, but who my BIL and SIL had become friendly with, stopped in to chat and saw her blueing lips and and skin, and said “You need to get her in an ambulance right now, I don’t care what anyone else here says.” They did, and her doc at the hospital said that she wouldn’t have lasted another day if she hadn’t been brought in. Once she was stabilized, we moved her to a different TCU. I haven’t heard if the attendant who basically saved her life was disciplined by the home for insisting on an ambulance.
Report from Central MN:
Just came home from a trip the local grocery store. Not a single mask on anyone, customers or staff. Nor floor direction arrows. Have TP. Have meat and lots of it.
jdm;
That’s how true Minnesotans do it! I was at Fort Snelling yesterday visiting the graves of my parents, an uncle and a couple of friends. No one was wearing masks. At one of my friend’s graves, I ran into his sister, who I haven’t seen in 10 years. Again, neither of us were wearing masks, but we hugged and sat on the grass and shared laughs and memories for over an hour.
Regarding nursing homes in particular, my third daughter just started working food service at one, and her response that evening was “I’d never send anyone there.” That comes from, I’m told, meatloaf recipes that use Cheezits as an ingredient, among other things.
The older two (CNAs) also work there, and while they’re not quite there–they take some pride in what they do–they have some severe reservations about how things are done there, and they also know that it’s basically funded by Medicaid at a certain level, and hence the incentive is to maximize the ratio of payment to services. Until you get to the private nursing homes like Mayo’s Charter House that don’t accept Medicaid, it’s all the same game.
Staff who are there for life–the ones who aren’t going to be able to get their LPN or RNs and such–pick up on this and act accordingly, often doing the minimum possible.
Long and short of it is that anyone who understands how nursing homes actually work would ever send COVID patients there like the CDC and numerous governors/state health boards did.
https://www.startribune.com/a-large-percentage-of-minnesota-covid-19-patients-don-A large percentage of Minnesota COVID-19 patients don’t speak Englisht-speak-english/570772542/?refresh=true
Yep, that’s the Star-Trib.
Finally a quantum of Truth.
There is nothing about working in a meat-packing plant that makes one more likely to contract covid-19 than working at the 7/11. The difference is the social activities off-hours of the employees.
Article the other day stated Cuomo snuck a provision in the Covid Assistance bill that gives nursing home staff and administrators immunity from liability for any patient death during the Covid crisis. That’s why they didn’t complain when he sent them infected patients to mix with the others and kill them all. No skin in the game.
Did Walz do the same in Minnesota? Is that why our nursing home death rate is Number One but nobody seems to care?
MP, another reality regarding the meatpacking plants is that many workers don’t live near there–they bed down in boarding houses, more or less, and go home on the weekends. It’s basically tenements there, which are of course a great way to spread disease–lots of stagnant air, close quarters, etc..
And yes, the immigrants angle means something, as they’re more likely to have multigenerational homes. If Grandma and Grandpa live with their grandkids, yes, they get everything that’s in the school, the workplace, the senior center, their place of worship, etc..
What the country needs is digital billboards that, in real time, tally the number of Memaw’s, Poppy’s, mentally and physically ill people that leftist reprobates have killed in their death camps.