[Two Bills]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

We heard much the same up in Minnesota during the first go-round. According to our cartoon governor Walz and his bevy of "experts", there were predictions of 75,000 or more Minnesotans dead from COVID, hospitals were going to be overflowing with COVID patients pounding on the doors pleading to be let in, and people were going to be dying in their homes in numbers and situations reminiscent of the Bubonic Plague in Europe. Many hospitals totally stopped doing elective surgeries (though just how "elective" a hip replacement might be when your pain is front-and-center 24 hours a day is debatable), hiring extra staff and bracing for the flood. Governor Walz, with admirable foresight, went so far as to spend 6.9 million of Minnesota taxpayers' dollars to purchase an old warehouse to be converted to an emergency morgue, assumedly the place where the street workers could dump the bodies of those dead of COVID that they were going to be sweeping up.

So...what happened? In the face of the dire predictions, just about nothing. Well, some thing did happen. Walz' $6.9 million dollar charnel house admitted nary a body. Hospitals sat with more empty rooms than full ones waiting for the surge that never came. a full 21 clinics and hospitals in the Twin Cities area alone, including Bethesda and St. Joseph's hospitals, closed their doors permanently. Instead of working overtime, many health care workers sat home drawing unemployment.

Oh...and the actual totals? 7,694 Minnesotans as of August 8. Including both those dying OF COVID and those dying WITH COVID. And even with this current "surge", daily deaths in Minnesota have dropped to almost nothing.

And people wonder why the doom-and-gloomers are met with such scorn.

And if the prophecies had come true and no arrangements had been made, the Govenor would have been hung on a lamp post.
20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing.