Over at the American experiment, John Phelan writes:
When Gov. Walz responded to Covid-19 – with emergency powers, closures, shutdowns and all the rest – the purpose was to build and maintain the capacity in Minnesota’s healthcare system to cope with a forecast surge in hospital admissions.
And now the Department of Health is going to stop reporting the numbers that Minnesotans need to see how well we are meeting that primary objective.
Why would they do this? As I wrote at the weekend, when Gov. Walz announced his initial measures in March:
He was being guided by the University of Minnesota and Minnesota Department of Health’s SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) model [1]. On April 10, Version 2 of this model forecast a peak of 3,700 Minnesotans needing ICU treatment for COVID-19 on July 13.
So, it was good news on April 29 when Gov. Walz announced: “I today can comfortably tell you that, when we hit our peak — and it’s still projected to be about a month away — if you need an ICU bed and you need a ventilator, you will get it in Minnesota.” When Version 3 was unveiled on May 13 and forecast a peak ICU usage of 3,397 on June 29, the state was equipped to handle it.
In the event, the peak — so far — was nowhere near as bad as the forecast, coming on May 30, with 263 Minnesotans needing ICU treatment. Following a string of such failed predictions, the model has now been quietly abandoned.
And why? Because the numbers that were projected…the justification for shutting down our economy and putting so many restrictions on Joe and Jane average, turned out to be absolutely false. As Phalen himself says:
Time and again during the Covid-19 pandemic, Minnesota’s state government has acted on forecasts and warnings which have turned out to be wildly pessimistic [1]. When the data fails to support your model it is generally a good idea to revise the model. The Department of Health is just going to dump the data into the memory hole.
So why this move to remove the data from public view?
There’s a couple reasons involved. First, the public anger that would certainly ensue at the restrictions which turned out to be absolutely needless, foolish, and detrimental to American society as a whole not to mention our economy…
And, because those numbers if revealed would show precisely what I’ve been saying for quite a while now… When government runs healthcare, healthcare decisions are not health Care decisions, anymore. They are political decisions.
The decision to shut down our economy and put all these restrictions on American citizens was a political one aimed at damaging our economy and our society. Why?
They needed a weapon to help in the fight against orange man bad. And it was so used and so implemented.
Trouble was, the numbers simply aren’t scary enough anymore to help in that fight. And so out the window they go.