Even though he faced fierce criticism for placing COVID-19 patients into nursing homes during the pandemic, mirroring actions taken by other Democrat governors, Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Walz refused to acknowledge he erred because “this was what everyone was doing.”
“This was not a mistake,” Walz said in May 2020, about the time Minnesota had the nation’s highest percentage of COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities, the New York Post reported Friday.
“This was what everyone was doing,” Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, said of the nursing home policy, similar to ones used by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, both Democrats. “It wasn’t like no one thought about this. There was complexity in how you deal with this.”
In May 2020, KSMP-TV of Minneapolis reported that 472 of the state’s 591 COVID-19 deaths, or 79.8%, came from residents of long-term care facilities.
Even though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was among those warning that nursing-home populations were at increased risk of being infected by and dying from the coronavirus, Walz’s administration wanted to rush sick patients back to such facilities, despite warnings they did not allow safe distancing or the level of prevention needed, the Post reported.
The policy has since been scrubbed from the Minnesota government website, the Post reported, adding that Fox News found it on the Wayback Machine internet archive.
“Patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 who still require transmission-based precautions for COVID-19 can be transferred to congregate living facilities,” the policy stated, according to the Post.
Walz also was known for having one of the most draconian COVID-19 restrictions, jailing those who refused to follow his guidelines and even allowing riot police to fire paintballs at residents standing outside their homes, the Post reported.
He also reportedly instituted a hotline for people to report those violating social distancing guidelines, carrying penalties of up to a $1,000 fine or 90 days in jail. Walz’s administration told police to warn people rather than issue citations.
“Tim Walz is a left-wing radical who has turned Minnesota into a liberal wasteland,” Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., the House majority whip, told Newsmax on Aug. 6, the day Harris named Walz as her running mate.