| Olivier Douliery | AFP via Getty Images file
July 30, 2020
Fate of the upcoming school year will be decided today | |
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Good morning and welcome to another big news day, after a forecast.
Another good weather day? Twin Cities will be sunny with highs in the lower 80s and 5 to 10 mph winds, getting down to temps near 60 at night. Statewide, also sunny with highs from the upper 70s to mid-80s. More on Updraft | Forecast
Today is the day: Gov. Tim Walz is unveiling his plan for the upcoming school year. No, we don’t know what to expect. But schools have been told to brace for anything and the governor has indicated there won’t be a uniform order for all schools and that there will be some local control. Minneapolis school officials have already said they’re planning on remote learning for fall. Follow along with us for the latest coverage.
The wide racial disparities when it comes to COVID-19 are affecting Minnesota kids already. Children’s Minnesota hospital system has treated some 300 pediatric COVID-19 patients as of mid-July. Of those cases, 31 percent were Black or African American; 24 percent were Hispanic; 16 percent were white; 11 percent were Asian. Those numbers are similar statewide. "I think in a lot of our families of color, they are front-line workers ,” she said. “They are helping serve the public. And so they are exposing themselves to crowds, to people and then potentially bringing that home themselves, getting sick and then passing it on to their children."
For all age groups, hospitalizations and intensive care cases jumped once again. Now, both metrics are at their highest levels in a month. Health officials are closely watching hospitalizations and ICU cases in managing the coronavirus so it doesn’t overwhelm the health care system.
Here are the latest coronavirus statistics:
52,947 cases confirmed (681 new) via 993,091 tests1,589 deaths (9 new)5,077 cases requiring hospitalization310 people remain hospitalized; 143 in intensive care 46,636 patients no longer requiring isolationDo you feel like you’re becoming numb to these statistics? More than 148,000 people in the U.S. have been killed by COVID-19, including more than 1,500 Minnesotans. If this ongoing tragedy isn’t hitting you like it once did, you’re not alone. NPR’s Alisa Chang writes that “the deluge of grim statistics can dull our collective sense of outrage. And part of that has to do with how humans are built to perceive the world.”
There are some ways to make sense of these huge numbers, though. Elke Weber, a Princeton University psychology professor, says we should put the numbers into context: “One in 2,000 Americans has died already [from COVID-19]. Now, most of us know 2,000 people, or we live in towns that are multiples of 2,000. We can imagine how many people would have died in our town, in our acquaintances.”
To grasp COVID-19’s death toll, make it local. Weber used the example of Paterson, N.J, which has a population of about 145,000. So, consider that whole city gone. In Minnesota, the national death toll would roughly equate to Rochester, Worthington and Brainerd being wiped out entirely. Or the entire city of Mankato, more than three times over. Or more than St. Paul.
— Cody Nelson, MPR News | @codyleenelson |
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