First … my condolences to the family of Scott Quiner. No matter the circumstances, someone’s death, especially an entirely preventable death, is a sad occasion. That said, the telling and reporting on Mr. Quiner’s last days leaves several questions unanswered and a lot to be desired.
Quiner is the now nationally famous man from exurban Minneapolis who, unvaccinated by choice, contracted COVID in late October. He was hospitalized and intubated since early November before his wife sued to prevent Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids from disconnecting him. Then just last week, we’re told she flew him to “a hospital in Texas”. At that point her lawyer … told the press (which promptly reported) that though badly malnourished Quiner was once again responsive … before then relaying on that he died two days ago.
My issue with this story from the get-go was how we knew much of anything about what was really happening here?
Like every other hospital, Mercy in Coon Rapids, has laws and rules about disclosing patient information. So it has said little to nothing about Quiner’s condition or it’s reasons for planning to disconnect him … after two and a half months on a ventilator amid a new crush of COVID patients and a dire lack of ICU capacity for “normal” emergencies. (The average ICU stay is three days.)
Everything after that is the word of Mrs. Quiner or her attorney, including where exactly he was being treated in Texas … if anywhere.
This from a Jan. 17 Strib story, “Scott is now in a hospital in Texas getting critical care’, said Marjorie Holsten, a local attorney hired by Quiner’s wife, Anne. ‘The doctor said Scott was the most undernourished patient he has ever seen. The last update I got was yesterday afternoon after some tests had been run; all organs are working except his lungs’. Holsten did not name the Texas hospital.”
How do we know any of that is true and accurate?
What is known, but has only been hinted at, is that Mrs. Quiner — to her credit, some might say — played every card in her hand to get her husband treated as she saw proper. A January 14 Star Tribune story says, “Anne Quiner repeatedly had asked the hospital to try various treatments, including some that are not widely used. But the hospital refused, she said. ‘They basically said they have the authority to do this no matter what I say’, Anne Quiner said Thursday on the Stew Peters Show, a podcast that broadcasts from the Twin Cities and has been critical of COVID vaccines.”
” … has been critical of COVID vaccines.” Hmmm. That’s applying a very light hand to (yet another) MAGA-fueled podcaster regularly pumping out COVID misinformation and inflaming the ill-informed. Nor does it even hint at the barrage of outraged anti-Vaxxers, ivermectin enthusiasts and the conspiracy-deluded who, I’m told by a first-hand source, bombarded newsrooms across the Twin Cities demanding, you know, truth and justice for Scott Quiner. (As is so often the case, the callers, outraged at the lame stream media cover-up sounded as though they were reading from the same script.)
A New York Times story at least said this, “On Jan. 12, Ms. Quiner pleaded for a lawyer’s help on the ‘Stew Peters Show’, a podcast whose host has falsely called Covid vaccines ‘poisonous shots’ and given a platform to pandemic conspiracy theories.”
Want to know a bit more about Minnesota’s own Mr. Peters? Try reading this, and drop me a line if you can find where any Minnesota news outlet wrote a similar piece, or hell, has “reported” on Mr. Peters at all.
What this looks and sounds like, but has not been acknowledged by any news organization — that I have yet found — is that local newsrooms were badgered by political partisans into covering a story where by every plausible assumption the victim(s) — all adults — made conscious choices that resulted in severe illness, hospitalization (at staggering cost) and death. Moreover, the news organizations then relented, likely justifying coverage on the grounds that a judge issued a rare restraining order against a hospital.
But, I’m sorry, that is a long ways from telling the whole story of what went on with Scott Quiner. Nor does it explain why any news room would accept the word of the family’s lawyer in lieu of any verification that what she was saying was true.
Perhaps, the Strib and other local news rooms can explain how they verified Quiner had been flown anywhere? (The family raised roughly $40,000 via GoFundMe-style appeals.) Or that he was actually in a hospital or “care facility” in Texas and that his condition was improving … until, he died. Or, now that we’re told he died, will any of them follow up and seek a copy of the death certificate?
The Washington Post says, “Quiner died at the Houston hospital where he was flown for care during the legal battle, according to Marjorie Holsten, an attorney for the family. He remained on a ventilator at the time, Holsten said, but she declined to identify the facility or provide additional details on the circumstances of his death.“
Fear of pitchfork mobs, even in the form of a tidal wave of spittle-flecked raging via telephone, is a sad reality in modern newsrooms … so assert I. Would any of the same newsrooms care to dispute that they weren’t goaded/badgered/threatened into giving the Quiner story the coverage it got? And whether — or why they didn’t ask — the basic journalistic question of, “Where exactly is he now? So, you know, we can confirm what you’re telling us.”
An attorney refusing to supply “news basics” like that would, to my mind, mean putting the story on hold until she did, or it could be confirmed in some other way.
After that, let me suggest that there may be a “feature profile” on Stew Peters, who is clearly a local character with enough potency and influence to whip up sufficient anger that he manufactured soft, fundamentally sympathetic coverage in major media for a family that made a series of extremely bad choices, against all science and logic, and lost.