ST. CLOUD, Minn.—In late 2019, Darin and Michelle Agnew were ready to open their dream business in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
The four-story building in historic St. Cloud was built in 1886. The Agnews had renovated the structure, installing a modern kitchen, plenty of dining space, and a bar featuring 76 beer taps.
“The second largest in the state,” Ms. Agnew said.
They had had some setbacks—equipment and construction issues during the renovation, and Ms. Agnew had been injured in an automobile crash—but those were behind them and the future looked bright.
Sure, they had accumulated some debt, which goes with opening a new business. But now, they were ready to get to work serving their customers. And they did, for one month.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Gov. Tim Walz began issuing executive orders, bars and restaurants were closed, and the Agnews’ dream died.
“We hung on as long as we could,” Ms. Agnew said.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Mr. Walz, and the Minnesota Department of Health didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ calls and emails seeking comment.
On March 16, 2020, three days after declaring a peacetime emergency, Mr. Walz issued an executive order closing most bars and restaurants in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. The order didn’t apply to “restaurants and food courts inside the secured zones of airports.” The order didn’t explain why they were exempt.
The order was presented as a temporary measure to “flatten the curve.” It was followed by increasingly strict policies for the next three years.
Like the Agnews, fellow business owners Lisa Monet Zarza and Lisa Hanson said the order was the beginning of the end for their businesses. While the order did allow some takeout and delivery, they said such service wasn’t practical for most bars and dine-in restaurants. An attorney who fought such pandemic policies in court agrees.
Misha Tseytlin, a partner with national law firm Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP, represented businesses and individuals fighting such policies during the pandemic.
Just a Neighborhood Bar
After losing her Minnesota licenses for defying the lockdown orders in December 2020, Ms. Zarza opened the Outpost Bar and Grill in Bay City, Wisconsin.The Outpost is like thousands of other local bars, including the Alibi Drinkery, Ms. Zarza’s old bar in Lakeland, Minnesota.
The television over the bar is often tuned to a sports channel on mute as classic rock plays over the bar’s sound system. It’s the kind of place where people might spend an early summer day enjoying beer, the Cajun blackened shrimp on the menu (which Ms. Zarza recommends), and conversation.
Many of the regulars are small-business owners like Ms. Zarza, who started at the bottom of their vocational ladders and worked their way up.
“They’re blue-collar business owners,” Ms. Zarza told The Epoch Times.
She said that initially, she and her business partner wanted to do their part to fight the virus in Minnesota. But it quickly became clear that their business couldn’t survive under the lockdown policies.
She said state leaders turned a deaf ear to restaurant and bar owners’ pleas.
Ms. Hanson was one of those owners. She’s a friendly, outspoken businesswoman and grandmother with a strong sense of right and wrong.
In 2015, she and her husband bought a coffee shop in a 100-year-old building in downtown Albert Lea, Minnesota. When they opened The Interchange Wine and Coffee Bistro, they envisioned a cozy place for a glass of wine or cup of joe.
She said they got that and more.
They opened a kitchen that featured a breakfast and lunch menu. For $12, you could get a plate of “Vern’s Sensational Shrimp Scampi” or a gourmet flatbread that the menu touted as “better than pizza.”
They started hosting private parties and public events and featuring live music on Friday nights.
“It was kind of a happening place in downtown Albert Lea,” Ms. Hanson said. “It wasn’t a big business, but it kept me busy.”
Ms. Hanson decided she wasn’t going to take the forced closures lying down. She and Ms. Zarza were part of an online group called “Reopen Minnesota Coalition.” Members of the group took a public stance in opposition to the lockdown orders and vowed to open their businesses in protest.
Ms. Zarza said she thought that standing up for her rights and those of others was the right thing to do.
Things Were Looking Good
Despite the initial setbacks, things were falling into place for the Agnews to finally open their restaurant, Searles on Fifth Avenue, in February 2020.On Feb. 17, 2020, a neighboring business burned down. The fire taxed the capabilities of the St. Cloud fire and police departments, which were on the scene for hours. Even though Searles wasn’t open yet, Mr. Agnew went into the kitchen and cooked steaks for all the emergency personnel.
Searles’ social media accounts were flooded with praise from St. Cloud residents. When they opened the business a week later, Ms. Agnew felt they had turned a corner.
“We had both floors full and a line out the door,” she said.
Aftermath of Lockdown
The Agnews lost their inventory and the ability to pay their bills. They also learned that they didn’t qualify for financial aid.To determine how much aid they could receive, they had to subtract what they made to that point in 2020 from what they made in 2019. But, they had only been open for one month in 2020 and closed all of 2019. They received some assistance from the Paycheck Protection Program to pay employees, but there was no help with other expenses.
“We basically lost about $1.4 million from the shutdown,” Mr. Agnew said.
They joined the Reopen Minnesota Coalition and defied the executive orders by reopening their business in December 2020, hoping to recoup some losses. But for them, it was too little, too late.
Ms. Hanson and Ms. Zarza also reopened their businesses in December 2020, and the state came down hard. They had expected more than 100 other businesses to open. but in the end, only about 15 did.
By November 2021, Ms. Hanson’s legal problems over the COVID-19 lockdown, combined with the mounting expenses, were becoming a burden. Then, the city, which owned the building in which The Interchange was located, refused to renew the lease.
The business closed in 2022, and eight people, besides Ms. Hanson, lost their jobs.
“It was too much,” Ms. Hanson said. “We had business, it was just too much.”
Both women now face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Ms. Hanson was sentenced to 90 days in jail but was released after 60 days, having earned time off for good behavior.
They say that not a single case of COVID-19 was traced to their restaurants.
“The state has been nasty, nasty through all of this. We have not been quiet about it,” Ms. Hanson said.
On May 23, District Judge David Knutson ordered Ms. Zarza’s company, Lionheart, to pay more than $400,000 in fines, fees, and court costs.
The state also asked the court to find Ms. Zarza personally liable based on evidence that Ms. Zarza and her business partner used their company debit card to pay for travel, medical procedures, and other personal expenses.
Judge Knutson ruled that that would have to be done in a separate action.
Ms. Zarza’s attorney, Richard Dahl of Brainerd, Minnesota, expressed disbelief.
‘No Help’ for Business Owners
On June 7, 2022, after two years of struggling to keep the doors open, the Agnews threw in the towel.They sold the building for less than its market value. Mr. Agnew has returned to work, and Ms. Agnew works as much as possible while recovering from her brain injury.
“There was just no help anywhere,” Ms. Agnew said. “Right now, we’re just trying to dig out.”
Money was only one of the stress factors the business owners faced.
Ms. Zarza’s business was vandalized, and her social media was filled with angry comments, including death threats.
Ms. Agnew said many of the St. Cloud residents who had praised Searles on Fifth Avenue just weeks prior switched to accusing the business owners of endangering their neighbors out of greed.
Ms. Hanson said the health inspector, who had always been friendly, had a distinctly different attitude as he attached a temporary restraining order to the front door of her business.
At the same time, big box retailers, casinos, airport restaurants, and other businesses continued operating. Ms. Zarza said the situation made no sense.
Studies Show Lockdowns Hurt
The authors of at least two studies say that the lockdowns failed to live up to their billing as life-saving measures.Paragon Health Institute published the study, titled “Freedom Wins.”
Paragon describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute that evaluates government programs, develops policies, and works within the government to implement reforms. The report says the lockdown policies did impact communities.
“The severity of the government response was strongly correlated with worse economic (increased unemployment and decreased GDP) and educational (days of in-person schooling) outcomes,” the report reads.
Paragon was one of many entities to find fault with the lockdowns.
Fewer Lives Saved Than Projected
According to the IEA report, lockdowns saved 1,700 lives from COVID-19 in England and Wales, 6,000 across Europe, and 4,000 in the United States. At the same time, between 18,500 and 24,800 people die from the flu in England and Wales each year. Across Europe and the United States, the flu kills 38,000 and 72,000 people annually, respectively.“These results pale in comparison to the Imperial College of London’s modeling exercises (March 2020), which predicted that lockdowns would save over 400,000 lives in the United Kingdom and over 2 million lives in the United States,” the IEA says.
Both reports claim that the data from countries that enforced strict lockdowns aren’t much different from those in more permissive areas. This is borne out in data from Minnesota and its neighbor, Wisconsin.
According to TrackTheRecovery.org, Minnesota and Wisconsin’s pandemic journey mirrored the rest of the nation, though they took different tacks.
Recent studies indicate that the past three years of pandemic lockdowns and mandates might have all been for nothing.
“COVID-19 lockdowns were a ‘global policy failure of gigantic proportions,’” reads the study published by the IEA.
Buried in the data on the website TrackTheRecovery.org is evidence that state officials may have realized that their policies were inadequate and perhaps even harmful.
Opportunity Insights, a nonpartisan nonprofit at Harvard University, hosts TrackTheRecovery.org, using data from The New York Times, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Mr. Walz issued Executive Order 20-99 on Nov. 19, 2020, because Minnesota showed a spike of 120 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000.
The 23-page order declared that previous efforts to control the spread of the virus needed to be increased to deal with the increased rate of infection.
Most Damaging Policy
The small-business owners who spoke to The Epoch Times cited Executive Order 20-99 as the most damaging to their businesses. Less than two years later, it appeared that Mr. Walz had grown less concerned about increasing COVID-19 cases.On Jan. 25, 2022, Minnesota reported a precipitous increase of 294 new cases per 100,000 persons.
The Epoch Times could find no evidence that the state of Minnesota issued any directives in direct response to these numbers.
Mr. Tseytlin opined on why Minnesota officials adopted what he called “draconian measures.” He said few people were willing to stop them.
The attorney represented small businesses and the state Legislature in Wisconsin against Gov. Tony Evers’s attempt to impose lockdowns similar to those in Minnesota.
Mr. Tseytlin told The Epoch Times that lockdowns exposed a weakness in society that allows government officials to run roughshod over individual liberties and constitutional rights.
He said he was “dismayed” that more lawyers didn’t take up the fight against the lockdown policies.
“All [lockdowns] did was kill businesses, and steal education from kids,“ he said. ”It was very frustrating to me how many lawyers did not step up at a time when they should have.”
