Why Is CDC Pressuring Gretchen Whitmer to Shut Down Michigan yet Again but Refusing to Give Her the One Thing That Might Help

AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, Pool

There is an interesting little drama playing itself out in Michigan.

Throughout the fearmongering that has accompanied the spread of the China virus, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has honored her Germanic given name by using tactics that would have made the Third Reich smirk with approval to shut down Michigan’s economy and social activity via lockdowns and a vigorous used of “stay at home” orders. As the number of new cases dipped over the past months, those restrictions have been eased. But the way Whitmer’s administration has been to whipsaw between opening and closing businesses and allowing residents freedom or restricting them to their homes at every change in infections. See the complete list of openings-closings-openings-closings here.

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Right now, Michigan is Ground Zero for new cases of the Wuhan virus in the United States.

CREDIT: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

CREDIT: New York Times Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

Whitmer is in something of a bind. The political price she is paying for the gratuitous infliction of pain is increasing. She is up for reelection in 2022, and her approval rating is slipping. It is hard to see how she can go into that election year with Michigan still shutdown and win…though this is Michigan which probably only rival Illinois in the shenanigans the Democrat machine pulls off and gets away with. She is also trying to dodge accountability for a terribly botched vaccine distribution plan in Michigan that has it performing far worse than any comparable state by blaming…wait for it…travel to Florida (see Gretchen Whitmer’s State Is Overrun With a COVID-19 Surge, Guess Who She’s Blaming). If fairness, she may have a small point there, Gretchen Whitmer’s Top Aide Gets Caught Red-Handed in Florida. She is attempting to thread the needle by asking Michiganders to voluntarily hide under their beds and bankrupt their own businesses without resorting to state aid to accomplish that; see Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Asks Citizens to Stop in-Person Sports, Indoor Gatherings Themselves.

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You’d think she would be getting help from the Biden bunch, but that isn’t the way it is playing out.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that Michigan should “close things down” to help address the country’s worst coronavirus outbreak, days after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer instead urged people to voluntarily restrict certain activities.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky made the statement after being asked about some public health experts’ calls to send additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine to the state, for which the governor has been advocating. The administration of President Joe Biden has stuck with allocating to states proportionally by population.

“So when you have an acute situation, extraordinary number of cases like we have in Michigan, the answer is not necessarily to give vaccine,” Walensky said, explaining that it takes two to six weeks to see the effect of vaccinations. “The answer to that is to really close things down, 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 decrease contact with one another, to test … to contact trace.”

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Are we really going back to “fifteen days to flatten the curve” and “thirty days to stop the spread?” Of course, we are.

Joe Biden called Whitmer last night and offered her resources EXCEPT for an increase in Michigan’s vaccine allocation.

That’s right. They are sending people to assist with administering vaccinations but no additional doses.

Looking at raw numbers of infections is a rather dull tool for analyzing the state of the disease, but that is the coin of the realm, A look at the hospitalization data from late March shows a much lower number of hospitalizations than during their “surge” period, and the overall hospital capacity shows about 77% of the available beds being used. As a point of reference, pre-pandemic hospital bed utilization was about 66%.

The question that intrigues me is why CDC Director Walensky is urging a failed strategy on Whitmer. Why do I say failed? Because the strict lockdowns have been conclusively demonstrated to be irrelevant to curbing the spread of the China virus.

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And why would the federal government, while hitting the panic button (at least to we rubes our here in the boondocks), refuse to provide Michigan with the one thing likely to help them: more vaccine doses? I mean other than wanting to run up the body count so they can keep the pandemic going forever.

My speculation is that it is vital to the CDC’s credibility (yeah, I know, I peed on myself a little bit writing that) that Whitmer order another lockdown. The worst thing that could happen in Michigan would be for Whitmer to leave voluntary rules in place and the number of cases to go down (SPOILER ALERT: the number of cases will go down). That would highlight the fraud the CDC has perpetrated on the nation, and that is not good for the Unit 731 LARPers at CDC or for the Biden bunch. If Whitmer caves to Biden’s charm and orders another lockdown, the number of cases will still go down, and CDC will be able to claim, and to have that claim amplified in the media, that it was their quick and decisive recommendation to inflict unnecessary misery on the residents of Michigan that saved the day.

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