Name: ‘It’s devastating’: Harassment of COVID health workers is widespread, ‘unprecedented,’ officials say.
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‘It’s devastating’: Harassment of COVID health workers is widespread, ‘unprecedented,’ officials say.

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By | | Pioneer PressToward the end of their daily coronavirus briefing Friday, Minnesota health officials paused for a moment of silent reflection.They were marking two milestones:The state was on track to exceed 2,000 total deaths from COVID-19 this weekend, underscoring their work is far from finished.A portion of the public they strive to protect had turned on them.News broke Friday morning that the federal after some had been subjected to repeated harassment, including racist remarks and, in one case, intimidation by an armed man.That the polarization of opinion, often borne of ignorance and false information, had come to this was crushing for the ranks of a profession heretofore embodied not by conflict or political acrimony, but thankless and tedious work with test tubes in laboratories, or with clipboarded checklists on the street, several officials said.While the incidents involving the CDC workers in rural parts of central and southern Minnesota are dramatic in their details, they’re not new. They’re the progression of a pattern of harassment and threats against public health workers that has been growing across the nation for months as some, including President Donald Trump, have sown distrust in public health institutions and their ranks, several in the sector said.From insults to credible threats of violence, the targets have ranged from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, to cubicled researchers at the University of Minnesota.“Which ones should I bring up? Unfortunately, the list is long,” said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs at the National Association of County and City Health Officials. The organization began tracking the phenomenon in late spring.Here are a few examples:“Yes, I do receive threatening messages and phone calls,” Kris Ehresmann, director of epidemiology for the Minnesota Department of Health, said Friday when asked during a conference call with reporters.Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy with a high media profile, has said . Craig Hedberg, a senior official at the U’s School of Public Health, said harassment has reached into the normally invisible ranks of some of the school’s researchers who have worked on computer models attempting to forecast the virus’ trajectory — work done at the behest of Gov. Tim Walz and state health officials.Inside the Department of Health, the river of vitriol flowing into social media and the state’s voice mail systems is so swollen and troubling that the department has begun to “cycle out” the employees who monitor those channels “because of the emotional toll it takes,” assistant commissioner Dan Huff said.MORE:“We in public roles are sometimes subject to angry emails (and) angry phone calls,” Huff said, noting that refusing to cooperate in contact tracing or vaccination programs has typically been the only level of resistance to a discipline that can claim the eradication of smallpox as among its victories. “But this has definitely increased, and it has increased to a level that is unprecedented. Public health people are … now being threatened in their communities.”The toll the steady onslaught is taking is hard to measure, but Casalotti’s national organization has tallied the resignations and early retirements of more than 50 state or county public health directors nationwide. She said there are untold numbers of lower level staff who have either quit or are buckling under the stress. The trend is extraordinary, she said, since when the pandemic first struck, many emerged from retirement to work.“There’s always turnover in government jobs, but more often than not, you see people in public health staying longer when their community is in crisis,” she said.There are cruel contradictions in all this, officials say. Those most unhappy with public health measures are stymieing the very efforts to combat the virus so restrictions can be lifted.And then there’s the matter of public trust.Hedberg, who worked for the Department of Health in infectious disease surveillance for years before working for the U, said public health only works with the public’s trust.“Minnesota has a long culture of the public being invested in working together to promote health, and one of the reasons the Minnesota Department of Health has the fabulous reputation it does is the public has always been there to support our efforts. To see the public turning on the public health community is very disturbing and troubling.”Hedberg was among several experts who said politics — and notably Trump — share a level of blame. “It certainly seems to fall into that general flow,” he said. “The president undermining our public health institutions has to have an effect on the public’s trust in a polarized environment.&nbsp;We need our leaders to stand up and fight against that. Our leaders in Minnesota need to stand together on this.”To many inside Minnesota’s public health community, the revelation that it was fellow Minnesotans who drove out the CDC teams was especially dispiriting.“I know there are good people in Minnesota, and I know we are at our best come together to tackle problems collectively, to problem solve constructively,” Huff said, referring at one point to the classic neighborly act of shoveling each other out during a snowstorm. “We are not at our best right now.”Ehresmann said public health workers here were aware of the national trend, but …“What is particularly disturbing to all of us is that somehow you always think your home state is best, and that somehow we were better than all of that. It might have been happening elsewhere. but we’re Minnesota, and we expected that our fellow citizens would behave differently. That is particularly devastating to staff.”We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.Sign up for Newsletters and AlertsFollow UsMost PopularClose

By | | Pioneer PressToward the end of their daily coronavirus briefing Friday, Minnesota health officials paused for a moment of silent reflection.They were marking two milestones:The state was on track to exceed 2,000 total deaths from COVID-19 this weekend, underscoring their work is far from finished.A portion of the public they strive to protect had turned on them.News broke Friday morning that the federal after some had been subjected to repeated harassment, including racist remarks and, in one case, intimidation by an armed man.That the polarization of opinion, often borne of...

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Journalist. Minneapolis City Hall reporter for the Star-Tribune. Formerly of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

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Twin Cities news, sports, politics, entertainment and business from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minnesota's first newspaper.

‘It’s devastating’: Harassment of COVID health workers is widespread, ‘unprecedented,’ officials say.

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