Some restaurants in Michigan are refusing to adhere to state-sponsored measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, claiming the virus is politicized and science is unreliable, the Washington Post reports.
“I do not think it is as bad as they say,” David Koloski, owner of the Sunrise Family Diner, told the Post. “The whole thing with the coronavirus is political. I think the Democrats are buried and are not prepared to continue with this.”
The state is currently closing, but last week government Gretchen Whitmer announced that restaurants could reopen on February 1 with 25% capacity.
Stand Up Michigan, a group of business owners who have staged protests against COVID-19 restrictions, maintains a list of restaurants that are defying the order to close indoor eateries. At present, there are more than 60 restaurants in 33 provinces opposing the order.
For weeks, restaurants like the Sunrise Family Diner remain open to indoor eateries with limited use of masks or social distances, in part because law enforcement officials support them and some residents are willing to drive long hours just to announce their reprimand over Whitmer. , reports the Post.
Koloski told the Post that he simply could not afford to place exclusive orders.
“If we had not opened, we would have locked. Doors locked. From a house, without a job, from a car. Me and the rest of my staff,” Koloski said.
He added: “I do not hold a gun to anyone’s head and do not let them come here.”
While the state has a decrease in cases, 17 of the hospitals in the state are 90%.
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Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital has had several ICU expansions, the Post reports. The facility normally has five to ten free ICU beds, but 30 to 40 people need it.
“You see it and you know that there is a percentage of these people, once they are DIVIDED, some of them will die. And it does not have to be that way,” Sparrow President Alan Vierling told the Post said. “It’s not like getting leukemia, where you can do everything right and get leukemia and die. With that, you have a choice.”
The overcrowding of patients has meant that Vierling still has 90 travel nurses who work 12-hour shifts five days a week.
Last week, the state recorded 12,535 new cases and 487 deaths, compared to 16,452 new cases and 430 deaths the previous week, Detroit News reported. On Saturday, the state had 1,358 new cases.
Two months after the closure was issued in November, Health Department spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin told the Post that the cases had dropped by 70% per million people.