Five years after the Covid era, it’s easy to blame missteps on the fog of war. It’s easy to blame ignorance and say: We didn’t know what we didn’t know.
But when it came to Whitmer’s nursing home policy in 2020, which turned nursing homes into hospitals by demanding they take in Covid-sick seniors, Whitmer knew pain would result.
This being the five-year anniversary of the pandemic panic, I took a stroll down memory lane for evidence of what got us here.
Whitmer’s March 12 press conference is a good place to start.
By March 12, 2020, Michigan had a whopping 12 cases, a growth of 10 cases in one day in a state of 10 million. Naturally, what you want to do then is panic, throw a late-night press conference, and start it at 11 p.m. so every news channel in Michigan with an 11 p.m. broadcast runs it live. We’re all in this together!
The entire press conference is worth watching, if only for the funereal demeanor and the way it contrasts with the low case-count (12) and the death toll (0). This was a performance, and with the news cameras running, Whitmer had a captive audience.
With the 10 million people of Michigan watching, Whitmer spread a conspiracy theory that would affect public behavior and policy for years: asymptomatic spread.
“Make smart choices during this time,” Whitmer warned. “Even if you feel healthy and are asymptomatic, you can unknowingly be carrying and spreading the virus. Assume that you are and take these orders seriously to keep yourself and your loved ones, your coworkers and people at risk of serious illness.”
At once, we were being told two very different stories about the virus.
Whitmer told us that the global virus is global and fast-moving. She meant to stoke fear, to justify the state of emergency in a way the numbers did not.
And to keep people from assuming that the lack of apparent symptoms mean they pose no threat, Whitmer said people could carry and spread the virus without even knowing it.
It was never true, and never logical, that the same body (a) should hide at home in fear of catching a global coronavirus and (b) might catch the virus without showing any symptoms.
But Whitmer said it, and a media that claims to measure every fact twice before publishing once printed the conspiracy theory without challenging it or even asking curious questions. Without logic, without truth, without evidence, asymptomatic spread became a thing in the Michigan news pages, but never in reality.
When Dr. Joneigh Khaldun spoke up at the March 12 presser, Michigan’s then chief medical officer robbed Whitmer of any plausible deniability for her nursing home policies.
Under Khaldun’s vision, nursing homes, which serve the elderly, should be shut tight. No visitors should be allowed, and no staff or residents who could not pass a Covid test.
“Long-term care facilities, nursing homes and other institutions that take care of the elderly are those with chronic medical conditions, should limit non-essential visitors as much as possible, and screen staff and visitors for temperatures and respiratory systems prior to entry into the facility,” Khaldun said.
But that’s not what Whitmer did.
Instead, in May, Whitmer condemned Michigan’s elderly nursing home residents to the worst of both worlds: No visits from the family and friends who make life rich. They were not allowed inside. Meanwhile, the nursing homes had to take in Covid-positive patients.
This was an act of ego on Whitmer’s part, and a failure to acknowledge the limits of her magic wand. Whitmer could mandate separate wings for the elderly and the sick-and-elderly all she wanted, but buildings are what they are.
Not many nursing homes in Michigan have empty wings waiting for the day the governor mandates they take in sick old folks.
And even if a building did have a sick wing, what it didn’t have was a group of staffers, perhaps with antibody protection, who would only serve residents on the sick side.
Since there were no segregated wings, and there were no segregated staffs, nursing-home residents died by the thousands. At least 8,000 elders died, alone and afraid, as a result. My colleague Charlie LeDuff believes the number could be even higher.
And Whitmer knew better the entire time.
Khaldun’s policies would’ve denied elders the comfort of loved ones, but kept them safe from outside forces that come bearing viruses.
Whitmer claimed to be acting on the advice of her experts. But her most destructive policy was not a failure of advice or expertise. It was one woman, acting on ego, exposing the limits of her magic wand. She waved the thing around pretty good, until it snapped against a brick wall called reality.
Before Gretchen Whitmer ever signed her first nursing home order, she knew better, and the media knew enough to challenge her.
The rest of this year, I’ll continue to seek truth and reconciliation for the events of 2020. It would behoove us to move on from the Covid era at some point. But there can be no reconciliation without truth.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
