The administration of Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz conspired to inflate the number of Covid-19 cases in the state in order to justify the leftist governor's strict lockdown orders, according to emails leaked by a whistleblower.
An October 2020 email exchange, reported by John Hinderaker of the PowerLine blog, shows Walz's chief of staff telling the state’s Department of Health that the department’s numbers on how Covid was spreading were “less useful than what I expected” because “these numbers are small.”
The commissioner of health said in response that “people look at the primary case numbers and think those are small impacts that don’t justify the dial backs we propose.” The commissioner then urges her staff to engage in “creative thinking.”
At the time, Walz was planning to issue new lockdown orders targeting “social gatherings, weddings, and funerals,” but the Department of Health’s data on origin of Covid infections showed a small number of cases coming from those events. So, the emails show, the Department of Health was encouraged to calculate second- and third-generation infections into the future – “generations of transmission” – to make the numbers of cases coming from those types of events look bigger.
On Nov. 10, 2020, Walz issued Emergency Executive Order 20-96, titled “Restricting Social Gatherings, Celebrations, and the Hours and Operations of Bars, Restaurants, and Venues to Prevent Further Spread of COVID-19.”
The order states: "Due to careful contact tracing and continuous research, we now have a far greater understanding of the ways that the pandemic spreads. Greater knowledge allows us to be more surgical in our approach to mitigation, especially when faced with the current surges. The present data points to social gatherings (including friends and family gatherings at private homes), celebrations, and bars and restaurants as the most significant source of COVID-19 spread in the state."
The order was issued even though the Walz administration knew that such gatherings were not the leftist-coined phrase "superspreader events." There never was any strong data to support the claim.
Hinderaker noted: "These leaked emails provide a small window into a phenomenon that we have seen over the last year and a half at the federal level and in many states: politicians who want to exert ever-greater control over our lives have consistently misrepresented and exaggerated data relating to Covid in order to instill fear and to justify harsh measures that have damaged the quality of life of many millions of Americans. There is little or no evidence that extreme Covid shutdowns did any material good, but we know they did a great deal of harm. Someday, perhaps there will be an accounting for the endemic dishonesty that lay behind them."
LEAKED! Email from last fall shows Walz chief of staff scheming with Malcolm to find ways to better sell COVID fear because numbers are too small.
Jan tells staff to get “creative”—two weeks later Walz paused sports & shutdown schools.#FireJan@SenatorBenson @drscottjensen pic.twitter.com/LTr7Z2i2zd — MN Up North Lake Guy (@MNUpNorthLakeG1) November 11, 2021
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