‘I have people dying in my city. I don’t have time to waste…’
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) After thousands gathered in Lansing yesterday to protest Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer‘s tyrannical coronavirus decrees, bipartisan anger at the alleged Democrat “rising-star” continued to build.
State Rep. Karen Whitsett, D-Detroit, accused Whitmer of providing “false reports” to federal officials about the coronavirus situation in Detroit.
Whitsett, who credited President Donald Trump’s advocacy of hydroxychloroquine with saving her life after she contracted the virus said Trump has handled the crisis better than Whitmer.
Whitmer initially threatened to ban the drug from being used on coronavirus patients in her state, later relented.
“If you are not going to do anything, I don’t have time to have a conversation with you,” Whitsett said in an open statement directed at the governor.
“I have people dying in my city,” she continued. “I don’t have time to waste.”
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, also a Democrat, criticized the state’s handling of the crisis.
He said the COVID-19 reporting system “is just not reliable,” Michigan Rising Action reported.
John Fox, CEO of Beaumont Health, which operates some of Detroit’s largest hospitals, said Michigan’s poor reporting is leading to longer than necessary emergency room wait times, The Detroit Free Press reported.
Fox, who has donated to several Democratic campaigns in the past, said patients come to hospitals and wait for hours, even though a nearby hospital may have the resources to help them immediately.
“If somebody has to wait 12 hours in one of our ERs, but they can be seen within two hours, five miles away, I think we have a moral obligation to tell the patient,” Fox said.
Thirty-three states report every day how many new hospitalizations from coronavirus there are, while 18 states release data on how many coronavirus patients have recovered,
Michigan has not made either statistic publicly available, despite having the third-most cases in the nation, reported the nonpartisan Center for Michigan’s Bridge magazine.
Some have summarized Whitmer’s orders by saying, “Citizens can smoke grass, but they can’t mow it.”
That popular phrase comes from the fact that the progressivist-minded Whitmer banned the sale of gardening and yardwork supplies, including seeds and all lawn-care services.
Yet, under the state’s arbitrary definition of “essential” services, Michigan’s citizens can still head down to a pot dispensary to buy marijuana, which was recently legalized there for recreational use.
Examples of Whitmer’s numerous confusing orders abound.
- Citizens can travel to their cottage from out of state, but they cannot travel to their cottage if they live within the state.
- Citizens cannot travel to their family and friends’s houses.
- Citizens can canoe, kayak and paddleboard, but they cannot fish out of a motorboat.
- Citizens cannot buy paint, carpet, flooring or furniture, but they can buy lottery tickets, alcohol and Big Macs.
Localities throughout the state are refusing to enforce some of these orders.
Warren Mayor Jim Fouts, an independent, said he worried that Whitmer’s orders to slow the coronavirus might harm the state more than help it, The Detroit News reported.
He commented specifically on the ban on single-person lawn-mowing operations, which he said could easily be done while complying with social-distancing mandates.
“I’m not going to support giving any citation,” Fouts said. “We have a large number of senior citizens, and many of them have special needs. They don’t own lawnmowers; they rely on commercial services.”
He said Whitmer’s lawn-mowing ban could lead to tall weeds that would attract disease-carrying rats and mice.
Sheriffs in Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee and Mason counties said they will not enforce Whitmer’s decrees to the full extent but will instead “deal with every case as an individual situation and apply common sense,” MLive reported.
“While we understand her desire to protect the public, we question some restrictions that she has imposed as overstepping her executive authority,” the sheriffs wrote in a letter to Whitmer. “She has created a vague framework of emergency laws that only confuse Michigan citizens.”