The guardian
‘Alarm grows’: Michigan governor faces closure dilemma as Covid cases increase
Gretchen Whitmer has so far resisted calls to impose strict restrictions, but experts are urging her to change her mind earlier this month. The governor has so far resisted more restrictions. Photo: Matthew Hatcher / Getty Images The coronavirus closures and restrictions imposed by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in March last year were one of the most difficult countries, and the governor’s leader is thought to be saving lives. It also scored many points in many people in the state. The same approach was effective last fall when the second wave hit. While Michigan is still experiencing a boom in cases and hospitalizations, the worst yet, Whitmer has changed. Despite the success of the past and increasing calls for another closure of public health experts and doctors who run hospitals with Covid patients, the governor resists further restrictions, and instead relies heavily on a vaccination and a voluntary suspension of personal eating services. Several factors are the driving force behind the new approach, experts say. Among them is a growing sense of pandemic fatigue, and sustained pressure from conservatives. Supporting independents and Whitmer’s looming re-election race in 2022 also played a role. Many of those bearing the economic bottleneck of her exclusions are donors and influential business leaders, said Bill Ballenger, a political analyst in Michigan, and the governor appears to be ‘outright scared’. “I really think the constant pressure has been catching up over the past year, not just from the right and conservatives, but there are a growing number of people in the population, including independents and businessmen who are Democrats, who are really angry with Whitmer,” he said. Ballenger said. The pressure to stay open continues, even as cases and hospitalizations increase, putting Whitmer in an extremely difficult position. The boom came shortly after it lifted restrictions in early March, and Michigan’s two-week per capita case is now the country’s leader. The state reached a dark point on Tuesday when more than 4,000 people were hospitalized – the highest daily total of the pandemic. A large number of cases of Covid variants are also fueling the boom. Among supporters strongly urging the governor to reinstate restrictions is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the former director of the Detroit Department of Health. He noted that an increase in deaths was due to the increase in case charges and hospitalizations, and said a new exclusion would have a major impact in the next few weeks. He said: ‘Governor Whitmer showed a tremendous level of leadership last spring and autumn, and it had a lot of political setbacks from Conservatives, but she did the right thing – evidence shows that she saved lives, and we have that leadership needed now. A vaccination site at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Critics say the spread of vaccine in Michigan has been too slow. Photo: Bridget Barrett / Zuma / Rex / Shutterstock Whitmer has largely pinned her hopes on the vaccine, but only 23% of the state is vaccinated, and this is particularly sluggish in areas like Detroit, where a large number of people are. living with underlying conditions. Whitmer has called on the federal government to send more vaccines. But the absence of a closure order divided her supporters and administration. Last month, her former state health director, Robert Gordon, abruptly resigned over what many suspect was a disagreement with Whitmer over the reopening of the state when the new variant first spread. They also say it is clear that the state’s vaccination plan is losing the race against the spread, and that the increase in effort will not be fast enough. It could take up to 57 days before the state reaches herd immunity, El-Sayed said. “It’s not a sensible approach and it’s not an evidence-based strategy if you use the numbers,” he said. “It’s an easy approach to ask for something, but it does not eliminate the need for exclusion now.” The view was reiterated by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky. The Biden government has so far refused to send Michigan additional vaccines because it sticks to its proportional distribution plan – another problem for Whitmer – but vaccinations alone may not be the answer to Michigan’s problems, Walensky said. “If you have an acute situation, an extraordinary number of cases like in Michigan, the answer is not necessarily to give vaccines,” Walensky said. ‘The answer to that is to really close things, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer and to shut things down, to flatten the curve, to make contact with to reduce each other, to test … to detect contact. However, the urgency and pressure of Whitmer’s allies did not convince the governor, who said at a recent press conference that new connections would be less effective because people are tired of the pandemic and the rules. “It’s less of a policy issue we have, and more of a compliance and variant issue we face,” she said. “State policy alone will not change the tide.” The frustration partly explains why Whitmer’s latest poll numbers slipped, Ballenger said, although a majority in mid-March still approves of the treatment of her pandemic. He also attributed in part the erosion of support to the fact that the governor no longer had Donald Trump as a ‘foil’. Trump was very unpopular among Michigan Democrats and independents, and Ballenger said he believes Trump’s misogynistic attacks on Whitmer have increased her support. “She was able to maintain a lot of popularity simply because she was not Donald Trump and Trump was not popular in Michigan,” Ballenger said. “She said, ‘I’m the anti-Trump and Trump is doing a bad job of dealing with pandemics,” and it worked. “Meanwhile, recent polls show her in a fierce heat with former Secretary of State Candace Miller a potential challenger in 2022. The governor’s fears of angering business donors” are part of it, “Ballenger said. said, although he added “the tremendous anger out there” with the economic situation was probably driving her decisions. Abdul-Sayed conceded that “there is no doubt that people are tired and weary”, but said a majority of the state supports exclusions as the situation has worsened in the past. “People are seeing things get worse every day and the alarm goes off, so the justification for the restrictions is getting clearer every day,” he said.