Over 20,000 more Minnesotans will die before the coronavirus pandemic is over with or without a longer stay-home order, the new state model shows. However, as David Montgomery reports, "This isn’t to say the model suggests humans can’t affect the course of the pandemic. Even though it predicts that social distancing’s impacts on the outbreak’s total death toll would be relatively minor, those impacts represent hundreds or thousands of lives saved — no small factor. The more significant impact of stay-at-home measures, according to its simulations, is not fewer deaths, but delaying those deaths."
The state's strategy on stay-home was to push back the peak, not prevent it altogether. The most effect from our mitigation strategy is to push the curve to the right, with some impact on full epidemic mortality, as well,” said Stefan Gildemeister, the state’s health economist.
In Wisconsin, they're starting to reopen. Mark Zdechlik crossed the river to check in: "As Minnesota readies to re-open some businesses next week, some merchants in Hudson and shoppers began enjoying the return of what's been categorized as non-essential commerce. Yet some still worry about keeping staff and customers safe."
Some Wisconsinites were less cautious, however. People flocked to bars as soon as the state Supreme Court struck down the governor's stay-home order.
COVID-19 has pushed MNsure to offer a special enrollment period. Via Tom Crann: "Nearly 670,000 Minnesotans have applied for unemployment insurance since March 16, according to the Department of Employment and Economic Development. And many of those people have lost their employer-sponsored health coverage or are no longer able to afford their private insurance. Nate Clark, chief executive officer of MNsure, the state’s health insurance exchange, said job or income loss qualify as life events that allow people to sign up for coverage outside of the regular enrollment period."
