As areas across the nation burn, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) finally lifted her state’s stay-at-home order on Monday, announcing new guidelines for people to follow as they reopen businesses.
“While Michiganders are no longer required to stay home, we must all continue to be smart and practice social distancing, and encourage those who meet the criteria to get tested for COVID-19,” Whitmer said in a statement.
According to Fox News, Whitmer’s new guidelines will allow businesses to reopen and restaurants to have dine-in service.
“Under the new guidelines, stores will be able to have customers without appointments and restaurants will be able to have customers dine in, but social distancing requirements remain in place requiring limited capacity,” the outlet reported. “The state has noted that coronavirus cases and deaths have dropped more sharply and treatment capacities at hospitals and other health-care facilities have improved, among other criteria.”
“Whitmer moved 93 percent of the state into ‘phase four’ of the reopening plan, with hopes to move to ‘phase five’ by July 4. In addition to stores and restaurants being able to open up to customers, day camps and pools will be open as well,” the report continued. “Outdoor public gatherings, which had been limited to a maximum of 10 people, will now be allowed to have up to 100, as long as social distancing is practiced.”
Gyms will only be permitted to hold outdoor classes while movie theaters and salons remain closed.
Whitmer instituted one of the strictest lockdowns in the whole nation, sparking massive protests in her state. According to a recent poll, Michigan residents overwhelmingly approved of the way Whitmer has handled the COVID-19 pandemic. From Deadline Detroit:
A Washington Post-Ipsos poll finds that 72 percent of Michigan residents overall approve of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
The sample for Whitmer wasn’t large enough to estimate results by party. But the paper notes that a stand-alone Fox News poll in April found 64 percent of registered voters approved of Whitmer’s handling of the situation, including 90 percent of Democrats compared with 35 percent of Republicans.
As reported by Detroit News, Whitmer recently came under fire for the state’s nursing home policy during the pandemic, which required those facilities to take COVID-19 patients.
“Whitmer issued an executive order last month that requires seniors who are positive for COVID-19 to be brought to the TCF Center in Detroit or to ‘regional hubs,’ which are nursing homes where the state says there has to be separation of the COVID-19 positive and negative patients,” the outlet reported.
In response to the protests in her state, Whitmer increasingly adopted hostile language by threatening to extend the lockdown even further while pushing talking points about the “new normal.”
“We’re gonna be in a new normal for quite a while. And it doesn’t mean that sports is over,” Whitmer said in a press conference last Friday. “We need a vaccine, and we need to have mass quantities available,” she continued. “Or we need to be able to test and be able to acknowledge that we’ve got some immunity that’s built up. We’re not there yet and until that happens I think all the organizers of these leagues understand how important it is that we act responsibly here.”
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