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A kindergarten classroom in Carlton, Minnesota.
Minnesotans often pride themselves on being exceptional, but the latest distinction is not one anybody wants. In the most recent seven-day tally, the state led the nation in its per capita share of new COVID-19 cases. Our hospitals are full, thanks in large part to unvaccinated people in need of coronavirus-related care, making it very difficult for those with other emergencies, like heart attacks or strokes, to get treated promptly.
Worse still, this could be a warning sign of what’s to come this winter, perhaps for the entire country.
In Minnesota, children are paying a huge price for the turmoil, division, and disruption caused by the pandemic and adults’ reactions to it.
Minnesota’s overall vaccination rate is relatively high, making it harder to understand why the number of COVID-19 cases is increasing so quickly. Current data indicates that 62 percent of all Minnesotans eighteen years of age and older are fully vaccinated; that number climbs above 90 percent for residents age sixty-five and older.
Many states can’t compete with these numbers. Less than half of all residents in North Dakota are fully vaccinated, and the rest of the Midwest—including Iowa, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Michigan—has lower vaccination rates than Minnesota, according to data from the Mayo Clinic.
In response to this latest surge, Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz announced on November 17 that he has arranged for the Pentagon to send emergency medical support teams to two of the state’s hospitals to provide some relief to overworked staffers.
As an indication of how politically driven the COVID-19 crisis appears to be, Walz also said recently that he will not consider declaring another peacetime emergency for Minnesota, which he used earlier in the pandemic to restrict people’s movements and institute mask mandates.
Walz has announced that he will run for governor again in 2022, making any action on his part fodder for the upcoming election season. State Republicans, who control the senate, have dogged Walz since the pandemic began, particularly by threatening to fire Minnesota’s Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm. (She was appointed by Walz in 2018 but has yet to be confirmed by the state senate.)
It feels impossible to separate Minnesota’s growing COVID-19 resurgence from the kind of divisive, retaliatory politics that state Republicans are engaging in. Most have pushed back against Walz’s attempts to control the virus’s spread since 2020 by engaging in political theater and even holding a Thanksgiving dinner party before vaccines were available, leading to the death of Republican Senator Jerry Relph, who attended the event.
In Minnesota, children are paying a huge price for the turmoil, division, and disruption caused by the pandemic and adults’ reactions to it. Minnesota Public Radio reporter Elizabeth Shockman recently interviewed young people and local mental health professionals about what they are seeing and experiencing.
Children are in crisis, University of Minnesota professor and child psychologist Dr. Raghu Ghandi told Shockman. They are increasingly turning up in hospital emergency rooms due to suicide attempts, substance abuse, and other harmful behaviors.
The students interviewed by Shockman expressed difficulty with the expectation that life should roll on despite the ongoing pandemic. It’s been tough for many of them to readjust to school after the shutdowns and upheavals caused by COVID-19.
In October, Shockman noted, the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry gave this troubling situation a name by declaring a national emergency in children’s mental health. A rural Minnesota principal, Andrea Rusk, told Shockman how this has spilled into behavior problems at school, with an uptick in fights and arguments among students.
Rusk sent a note home warning families that children easily pick up on the “divisive context of our society.” Other school-based professionals have also said that being out of school for more than a year, which most children experienced, has led to a breakdown in self-regulation and mental health care, making it tough to try and carry on now.
This makes Minnesota’s increase in COVID-19 cases all the more troubling. It is indeed possible that schools will need to shut down again, as they did recently in a suburban Minneapolis district, leaving students even more vulnerable than they already are.
This possibility, along with the continued politicization of the pandemic, should be as concerning as the current surge in COVID-19 numbers.