Two years ago this week, Minnesota and a large portion of the United States began shutting down due to the spread of the COVID-19. Schools, non-essential workers, restaurants and more began to close their doors as Minnesotans were told, basically, “stay home.”
Standing next to Governor Tim Walz two years ago was the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health, Jan Malcolm. It’s a role that for many people across the state, is not thought about much. Certainly there are major duties and responsibilities that come with any state commissioner position. However, being the face of a pandemic which affects the lives of millions of people across the state isn’t normal.
Malcolm was thrust into the spotlight while, for two years now, we’ve battled back from a crippling pandemic.
“It’s been a very long and tough road for all of us,” Malcolm told WCCO’s Susie Jones last week. “Just the length of this has really been so taxing in so many way.”
Looking back on that very busy week two years ago, Malcolm says while time has seemed to standstill, there has been incredible scientific progress made.
“Remembering back to those early day, in some ways feels like it’s been more than two years ago,” Malcolm remembers. “In other respects, all that has happened scientifically, all that’s been learned about this virus, is pretty remarkable when you put it in context. Back then we really didn’t know what we were dealing with. How transmissible this was, how it was transmitted, some of the early theories were not correct about what were the most significant routes of transmission. We’ve learned so much over that time.”
Minnesota and much of the Midwest was far beyond some of the bigger COVID outbreaks in early 2020. Parts of Europe, then New York City, Seattle, New Orleans and a few other spots in the U.S. had not only major outbreaks, but almost totally overran their hospital systems which was the biggest concern for medical experts like Malcolm.
In some ways, what Minnesota did was a preemptive shutdown in order to buy time.
“We were all seeing those pictures of hospitals overrun in Italy, and other places in Europe, and then New York City, and just not knowing how bad this was going to get,” Malcom explained. “I think we all sort of hoped that somehow we wouldn’t see quite the breadth of the spread that we ultimately did see. In retrospect, I don’t know why we didn’t think it wasn’t going to affect all of us in that same way. Happily we didn’t see quite the hospital overrun situation here in Minnesota that some other places did. Certainly we were all really, really nervous about what was happening.”
Ultimately, Minnesota did see significant spread of COVID later in 2020. Malcolm says there are things they did not understand about COVID and how easily it was transmitted. Despite shutdowns, masks, social distancing, there was a lack of knowledge that she says could have prevented more illness.
“You always wish in hindsight that you knew then what you know now,” Malcolm told WCCO. “We did not understand about asymptomatic transmission for quite some time. We missed some cases, and we missed understanding how to control spread by just not knowing right off the bat how many of the cases were being spread by people who had no symptoms at all. Certainly, if we had known some things a little sooner, we could have had more focused guidance, I think.”
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Despite those challenges, Malcolm says Minnesota fared pretty well thanks to the sacrifices and willingness to protect each other.
“I’m really proud of how everyone in Minnesota has really worked together,” says the commissioner. “We have to thank the people of Minnesota taking this seriously and doing what they could do. We’ve got a lot of people vaccinated, how interconnected we all are, and what it takes to kind of protect ourselves and each other. The health care providers, the public health workers, the businesses that sacrificed. There’s just a lot of people who have done some really amazing things over the last two years and we do have some things to be proud of as tough, tough as this has been.”
Over the course of the last two years, Malcolm has seen a lot of criticism come her way. There are still those that don’t believe COVID is a dangerous virus. Malcolm and especially Governor Tim Walz have been accused of overreacting to the seriousness of COVID, and that significant shutdowns weren’t necessary, despite the thousands across the state that have died of COVID or been seriously ill.
Malcolm explained that it has been tough to deal with those critiques, but her job was simply to do what she could to keep as many people healthy as possible.
“Certainly it’s been difficult for a lot of us in public health,” Malcolm said. “It’s not just me. This has been a nationwide phenomenon as you know. People in public health have been kind of the bearer of bad news, and are looked to as the source of the policies that have disrupted people’s lives. I get that. I get the negative impact that these things have had. But the purpose of that has never been trivial. It’s always been to try and protect the community, and to keep things functioning as much as possible. I try not to take it personally, but I won’t say it doesn’t sting. I haven’t been on social media for the last couple of years because that wasn’t good for my psyche.”
Malcolm did also say there has been plenty of support which has far outweighed the negative.
“I will say I’ve gotten a lot of nice emails and letters, cards, from people all over the state, thanking not only me but thanking my colleagues in the Department of Health and all of our public health and healthcare colleagues all over the state. So there’s definitely been that too. Or walking around the lake, people will say ‘hey good job’. Not always, but I just want to be clear it’s been far more positive than negative.”