Name: Extended family for Thanksgiving? ‘Please don’t,’ MN medical workers beg.
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Extended family for Thanksgiving? ‘Please don’t,’ MN medical workers beg.

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By | | Pioneer PressThe CEO of Allina Health offered to get on her knees and beg.An ER doc said she was carrying a message for one of her patients, a Korean War veteran who died of COVID-19.The leader of a rural Minnesota health network said to “please don’t, just this year, please don’t” celebrate Thanksgiving with people outside your household.And, they all said, if you must go somewhere where there are people, mask up.A day after Gov. in the face of an uncontrolled wildfire of coronavirus cases, leaders of Minnesota’s medical community sent a unified message to Minnesotans Thursday to heed the restrictions to avoid hospitals being overwhelmed, resulting in substandard care and potential deaths, not just for COVID patients, but for many needing medical care.Their goal, and Walz’s goal, was to have trusted apolitical experts — doctors, nurses and health care CEOs — clarify that, regardless of the inconvenience, hardship, pain, or loneliness the restrictions carry, they’re a necessity right now.“They’re not here to support my position,” Walz said at the news conference on the grounds of the state Capitol. “I’m doing this to support theirs.”Indeed, the calls for the new wave of restrictions always emanated from the health sector, from career civil servants in the Minnesota Department of Health to leaders of the because of the current spread of the virus. More than 1,000 physicians signed a letter released Wednesday saying they were being “pushed to the brink.”It’s not about supplies or beds, but staff, doctors say. Too many doctors and nurses right now are sidelined because of COVID. They’re either sick, caring for a sick loved one, forced to quarantine from an exposure to a sick person, or forced to be at home to care for a child whose school is closed.In the vast majority of cases, they’re not getting exposed at work, but outside of work, either in the community or at home from a family member who has contracted it. For example, of those 900 Mayo workers who have contracted the virus in the past two weeks, 93 percent contracted it outside of work, according to Mayo, which early on pioneered a sophisticated contact tracing system to try to suppress outbreaks.While unprecedented in America in the modern age, such a strain on hospitals from sick and out-of-work staff is a well-known risk. For decades, pandemic preparedness plans have envisioned this precise scenario. It’s just that America had been able to mostly avoid it — until now.Quick refresher: Just a few weeks ago, things weren’t so dire in Minnesota, although the virus was spreading at fastest-in-the-world growth in the Dakotas. Cases soon started to skyrocket here. Last week, Walz ordered bars and restaurants to close early and limited social gatherings, but within a few days, health officials concluded that wouldn’t be enough. Cases grew at, literally, exponential rates, soon leading to record hospitalizations and deaths.On Wednesday, Walz laid out , which will close restaurants and bars to all but carry-out and delivery, cease all non-college and professional sports, and close gyms, museums, movie theaters and other entertainment venues. Additionally, no social gathering will be allowed for anyone outside your household — effectively quashing extended-family Thanksgiving plans.The restrictions begin at 11:59 p.m. Friday and will last four weeks.The medical professionals Thursday said they understood the restrictions are “awful” and “damaging” to the economy, livelihoods, families and individuals. They also expressed frustration at the pushback they’ve seen to mask wearing and staying away from large crowds, as well as those who minimize the risk by noting that death rates are relatively low. One doctor likened it to being a firefighter who’s watching people around them light fires under the justification that fires don’t kill too many people.“Don’t call health workers heroes if you can’t put a piece of cloth over your face,” said Dr. Cindy Firkins Smith, co-CEO of Carris Health in rural Minnesota.And they carried pleas for people follow the restrictions.“We implore — implore — Minnesotans to help us,” said Penny Wheeler, a physician by training and CEO of Allina Health, which serves about 1 in 4 of every patient in a Minnesota hospital or clinic. About 800 Allina workers are sidelined because of COVID, she said. “There is nothing worse as a care provider than to think that you can’t adequately care for somebody in front of you who needs your services, and we’re getting to that point.”At one point, Wheeler, standing at a podium in the socially distanced news conference, said this: “If I could get down on my knees and beg and you could still see me above the podium, I would do so. We need your help terribly.”The social gatherings prohibition feels so personal. When the panel was asked about someone whose husband badly wants to have some friends over for Thanksgiving, all of them said some form of “no” before Firkins Smith, of Carris Health, stepped to the mic.“Please don’t,” Firkins Smith said. Carris is part of CentraCare, which has 1,200 workers sidelined across its network of western Minnesota hospitals and has found itself on at least 10 occasions having to divert patients from some facilities across the state because it’s so strained. She said the virus is so widespread in greater Minnesota that, based on recent testing, it’s conceivable that in Willmar, up to 30 percent of the population has it right now.“I’m going to talk directly to him,” she said. “Please don’t. Because you may think that whoever you’re going to eat Thanksgiving dinner with is not infected with COVID. But whether they have symptoms or not, the chances right now are very high that they carry that virus. Someone in that room may infect someone else in that room, and they go out in public and infect someone else, and that person infects another three or four people, and on and on it goes. A lot of those people are going to end up sick. Some of them are going to end up in the hospital, and some of them are going to end up dying. And that’s what’s overrunning our hospital system right now.“We understand that it’s hard not to celebrate Thanksgiving with the people you love. We all know that. We don’t get too, either. The people working in the hospital not only don’t get to celebrate Thanksgiving with the people they love, they’re going to be watching people die that day. They don’t want to watch you die at Christmas.“So please don’t, just this year, please don’t.”Dr. Carolyn McClain, an emergency room physician and and an officer of the Minnesota Medical Association, told a story of having to deliver the news to a patient, who was critically ill with shortness of breath, that his COVID-19 test had come back positive. He was in his 90s.“When you do that to someone in their 90s, they know what means,” she said. “He said to me, ‘Dr. McClain, I don’t think I’ve been this scared since I fought in Korea.’“I thought this guy has done so much for Minnesota and for this country. What can I do for him?“That’s why I’m here today. He is now a statistic. I’m here today to ask everyone to do everything they can to try to slow the spread of this virus so we can take care of your family members like they’re our own.”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. 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By | | Pioneer PressThe CEO of Allina Health offered to get on her knees and beg.An ER doc said she was carrying a message for one of her patients, a Korean War veteran who died of COVID-19.The leader of a rural Minnesota health network said to “please don’t, just this year, please don’t” celebrate Thanksgiving with people outside your household.And, they all said, if you must go somewhere where there are people, mask up.A day after Gov. in the face of an uncontrolled wildfire of coronavirus cases, leaders of Minnesota’s medical community sent a unified message to Minnesotans Thursday to...

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

Dave Orrick

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

Extended family for Thanksgiving? ‘Please don’t,’ MN medical workers beg.

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