Brickbat: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

An employee of Michigan's Walter Reuther Psychiatric Hospital, which is run by the state Department of Health and Human Services, alerted a local TV station that children being treated there had not been allowed outside in three months and that the windows to their classrooms had been covered up. The employee said that officials did not want adult patients at the hospital to see the children. When contacted about the claims, state officials told the station that "supply chain issues for fencing" had delayed the completion of a courtyard where the children could go outside. They also said they'd covered up the windows because supply chain issues had kept them from obtaining a reflective glaze to keep adult patients from seeing in the windows. But just hours after the station contacted state officials, the hospital began allowing the child patients to go outside.