You could see a chiropractor, but couldn’t get a cancer treatment.
Sick old people were ushered into nursing homes, but their kids had to stand outside the window to visit.
You could put a kayak in the water, but not a motorboat. Because you might touch a gas pump and transmit Covid that way.
When Covid hit in 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer shredded the Michigan Constitution, common sense, and the health department’s pandemic plan, written years earlier. She embraced one-woman rule, central planning, and an arbitrary approach.
Now, five years later, Whitmer has finally admitted the truth.
“We were doing the best we could with very little or very bad information,” Whitmer recently told podcaster Caleb Hammer.
If you’ve been looking for a mea culpa, this is probably as close as you’ll get.
And just like that, Whitmer kicked over the Covid sandcastle long protected by the Lansing media. With no next move in politics, Whitmer is free to admit the truth: She was making it up as she went.
The state’s pandemic plan from 2015, which only said that “confirmed and probable” cases should isolate, was memoryholed.
Instead, we were told that 10 million people—minus the essential workers dancing on TikTok!—needed to stay home.
Lockdowns for all were the one true path to “flatten the curve.” Maybe for 15 days, maybe for 30, maybe for as long as the governor felt like.
We’ve heard that “the science is always changing,” but that’s not what Whitmer is claiming here.
And it’s not what Whitmer was saying then, when she spoke with certainty about the need for lockdowns. Or when she said that her Covid restrictions were rules, dammit, not “helpful hints.”
Without media scrutiny for the governor, Michigan was subjected to a two-year-long game of Whitmer Says.
“Assume you are sick,” Whitmer said at an early Covid press conference. Such an assumption was never the plan before March 2020.
But Whitmer said it, and the media repeated it, and they repeated others who said it.
Without evidence, the “assume you are sick” narrative caught on. Some people wear masks to this day. Because Whitmer never said not to, they don’t know how to end the charade. Their panic was too useful to turn off.
Most of Michigan’s top news outlets declined to cover Whitmer’s appearance on Hammer’s “Financial Audit” podcast. Not the Detroit Free Press, not MLive, not Bridge Michigan.
Detroit News did cover Whitmer’s appearance. But the story’s one mention of Covid served to plug an archival story on earmarks. It never quotes or contends with Whitmer’s “very bad information” remark. Strange omission, that.
The Lansing media has an incredible ability to go dark and miss newsworthy moments. We saw it all during 2020. Five years later, nothing has changed.
What have we learned? To question everything. Even if it comes from the governor’s mouth. Especially when the media reprints it without challenge.
The next time someone says to put life on hold, that it’s “only 15 days,” be sure to ask what will happen on day 16—and how they know that.
James David Dickson is an enjoyer of Michigan. Join him in conversation on X at @downi75.
