By Bill Badour
BAY CITY – On Monday, April 13, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that the state is starting to flatten the curve, especially in the southeast.
Michigan chief medical officer Joneigh Khaldun, however, cautioned that “different areas of the state may be different in how many cases they’re seeing, and how fast that growth is. Easing up on social distancing measures too early would be devastating. More people will die and our hospitals will be overwhelmed.”
Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine echoed that easing up on social distancing too soon would give a chance for the coronavirus to come back into broad circulation.
“In every pandemic, there’s a tug of war,” states Markel. “On one end, there are the economic and business interests, and on the other end is the public’s health. We know from history that when citizens become restless and protest to their leaders about lifting these sanctions too early, another rise in cases invariably occurs. In some places, it was worse than the first peak.”
This second peak in cases notoriously happened during the Spanish Flu of 1918, a pandemic with more than 50 million deaths.
Despite this warning, some voices on the right – including President Donald Trump – have thrown their support behind opening the country and economy as soon as Friday, May 1.
Phase one of reopening the country consists of reopening restaurants, movie theaters, sporting venues, places of worship and gyms, as long as they adhere to strict social distancing guidelines. During this phase, schools will remain closed as well as high risk individuals being advised to stay home.
Exact dates to lift stay-at-home orders and reopening the economy will be determined by the state’s governor.