Michigan has the worst-in-the-nation rates of COVID-19 transmission. Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who once tried to order people not to go to their vacation homes or go boating, is at a loss about what to do. Her instincts are saying “lockdown” but the polls say she’d be tarred and feathered if she tried it.
But she still issued a “travel warning,” telling the citizens of her state not to have fun on spring break or to go anywhere there are a lot of people gathering.
I guess her chief operating officer never got the memo.
Tricia Foster, the governor’s chief operating officer, posted photos to Facebook of herself vacationing in Siesta Key earlier this week.
Screenshots of the post, obtained by The Detroit News, show Foster confirming she was in Siesta Key. “Are you in Siesta Key? I swear I saw you walking today,” one Facebook friend commented on Foster’s post. “Likely,” Foster replied.
After Breitbart first reported on the trip, Foster deleted the post.
In another comment, Foster wrote that someone, who Breitbart reports is “apparently” her son, had missed the trip and was “home with covid.” Whitmer has said that family members of someone who tests positive for Covid should self-quarantine and avoid travel.
Warnings “are for thee… not for we” says @GovWhitmer’s admin. #migov pic.twitter.com/Z6OPrSdJ3Z
— Tori Sachs (@Tori_Sachs) April 9, 2021
Mich. Supreme Court Denies Whitmer’s Desperate Attempt to Resurrect COVID Lockdown
Most egregiously, the governor’s office issued a defense that refers to Breitbart as a “white nationalist website.”
Brietbart’s report is “a partisan attack from a garbage white nationalist website,” said Bobby Leddy, Whitmer’s press secretary, said in an email to Newsweek. He added that Foster “is fully recovered from COVID and fully vaccinated,” citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that fully-vaccinated people can travel domestically.
“The administration encourages everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible so we can return to normal life more quickly,” Leddy said to Newsweek. He did not comment in response to whether Foster’s daughter and her friends had been vaccinated prior to the trip.
Yes, but what about her son “home with Covid”? If the boy was sick, what’s the daughter doing running around Florida infecting other people? People who are 16 years old and over have only been eligible for a vaccine since April 5. It’s funny how the children of the rich and powerful always seem to be at the head of the line.
By the way, you can still spread COVID if you’re vaccinated. Those CDC guidelines recommend that vaccinated people wear masks and keep up social distancing.
The article and Whitmer’s office’s response come after an April 2 press conference in which the governor said she is worried about spring break travel amid rising COVID-19 cases in the state, specifically between Michigan and Florida. She urged travelers to get tested upon returning from their destinations and announced 37 additional pop-up testing sites across the state as part of a special testing program.
The surge in COVID cases across the nation is the result of many things; pandemic fatigue, disgust with hypocritical political leaders who flaunt their power to break the rules, a large segment of the public reluctant to get vaccinated, and incompetent national leadership. But despite all, deaths and serious illnesses continue to decline.
We will beat this pandemic and we’ll do it without much help from those like Governor Whitmer and Joe Biden.
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