To the editor:
In the last two months, 700,000 Minnesotans have lost their jobs, who knows how many businesses have gone or will go belly up, hospitals are going broke while untold numbers of necessary medical conditions haven’t been attended to, students have missed out on valuable educational experiences – one could go on and on.
Meanwhile, at a given point this past Memorial Day weekend, Minnesota had registered 19,845 cases of the coronavirus, with 852 deaths attributed to it. Among people age 80 and over there were 1,633 cases and 522 deaths – that’s 8.2% of all diagnosed cases, but 61% of all COVID deaths in the state.
On the other end of the age spectrum, those age 29 and under accounted for 5,158 cases, 26% of the total. There have been no deaths in that age group – zero.
Around 80,000 Minnesotans live in what are called long term care (LTC) facilities and assisted living settings. 697, or 82% of the fatalities attributable to the virus have been residents in these facilities. That’s the highest percentage of any state in the nation, and only one or two states come close; most are far lower.
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There have been 155 deaths in the non-LTC care population of approximately 5,530,000 Minnesotans. That’s a fatality rate for the general population of less than three one-thousandths of a percent.
And get this: Between 98 and 99 percent of all adjudicated virus deaths have been LTC residents or people with significant (often multiple) “underlying conditions.”
Does that make you want to ask questions? If you have any kind of inquiring mind, it should.
Tim Philbrick
Farwell, MN
