‘Help us’: Doctors implore Minnesotans to follow virus rules

Doctors urged Minnesotans on Thursday to take COVID-19 seriously and to comply with new restrictions that take effect Friday night as they provided dramatic accounts of how the state’s health care system — especially its health care workers — is at a breaking point.

Dr. Carolyn McClain, an emergency physician at Twin Cities hospitals, said the pandemic has been one of the hardest times of her life. She worked in Haiti after the catastrophic earthquake of 2010 but said that she could at least go home after that.

“This is my home, and I am watching people die,” McClain told reporters at a briefing with Gov. Tim Walz and other doctors. “And that is hard. and it’s been going on for a long time.” Continue reading.

‘The time is now, Minnesota.’ Leaders plead with public to curb COVID.

This is it.

The moment experts feared and predicted. We avoided it for months, but it eventually came.

Minnesota is about to enter, as Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota put it a few days ago, “COVID hell.”

State and hospital officials say we’re as prepared as we have ever been — but that it very well might not be enough. Continue reading.