MINNEAPOLIS – The state Health Department shut down a COVID survey in Minnesota after hostile locals threatened survey teams. The state assistant health commissioner, Dan Huff, confirmed the shutdown. One encounter was September 15 near Eitzen, a Houston County town straddling the Iowa border. A three-person team reported walking up to a house to do the survey. Then two cars pulled up and boxed in the team’s car, the team later reported. Three men got out, one with a hand on a holstered gun. The men shouted racial slurs at the surveyors, none of whom were local and two of them persons of color. The workers showed identification but to no avail. The survey team, which included a nurse, backed off. There have been similar incidents, indicating a rural communication network of anti-survey hostility. Elsewhere in southern Minnesota, a Latina survey worker was subjected to racial slurs more in the last week than in her entire life. Field teams that comprised people of color were threatened more than white teams. The state Health Department alerted sheriffs in southern Minnesota to the incidents, but nothing came of it. Project coordinator Stephanie Yendell said it seemed best to discontinue the survey.
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Yendell. Withdrawal seemed prudent