Some restaurants in Michigan are refusing to comply with measures required by the state to stem the spread of the coronavirus, claiming that the virus is overly politicized and science unreliable, the Washington Post reported.
“I don’t think it’s as bad as they say,” David Koloski, owner of the Sunrise Family Diner, told the Post. “The whole thing with the coronavirus is political. I think the Democrats are committed and don’t want to go through with it.”
The state is currently in blockade, but last week Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that restaurants could reopen at 25% capacity on February 1.
Stand Up Michigan, a group of business owners who protested against the restrictions of COVID-19, maintains a continuous list of restaurants that are challenging the order to close restaurants. There are currently over 60 restaurants in 33 counties defying order.
For weeks, restaurants like the Sunrise Family Diner remained open for indoor dining with limited application of wearing a mask or social detachment, partly because the police support them and some residents are willing to drive for many hours just to publicize their disapproval. Whitmer, reported the Post.
Koloski told the Post that he simply cannot afford to place orders just to go.
“If we didn’t open, we would have closed the shutters. Doors closed. Outside a house, a job, a car. Me and the rest of my team,” said Koloski.
He added: “I am not aiming a gun at anyone’s head and making them come here.”
Although the state has seen a reduction in cases, 17 of the state’s hospitals have 90% capacity.
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Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital had several ICU expansions, the Post reported. The facility typically has five to 10 free ICU beds, but 30 to 40 people who need them.
“You see that and you know that there is a percentage of these people, once they get COVID, some of them will die. And it doesn’t have to be that way,” Sparrow President Alan Vierling told the Post. “This is not like getting leukemia, where you can do everything right and getting leukemia and dying. With that, you have a choice.”
The overload of patients meant that Vierling had to have an additional 90 travel nurses who worked 12-hour shifts, five days a week.
Last week, the state recorded 12,535 new cases and 487 deaths compared to 16,452 new cases and 430 deaths the previous week, Detroit News reported. On Saturday, the state registered 1,358 new cases.
Two months after the blockade was enacted in November, health department spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin told the Post that cases per million people decreased by 70%.