Gretchen Whitmer escaped some political mines this year.
First, she lifted her own restrictions on COVID-19, rented a private jet to fly to Florida to visit her father, and took her daughters home from Florida. Then she developed a multi-level plan to encourage Michigan people to vaccinate, but after a few weeks there was no fanfare or much criticism, and Michigan almost simply ignored the plan and she blew it up.
Just last week, she learned that the Biden Department of Justice is abandoning all investigations into how states such as Michigan and New York dealt with nursing home agreements during the height of the COVID-19 crisis last year. Although she is not directly involved in the work of the Department of Justice, we can only say that, unlike when Donald Trump was president, if you understand what I mean, the current owner of the Oval Office will answer her call as soon as possible.
A congressman from Michigan was dissatisfied with the decision, and stated it in a letter to Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general of the Department of Justice. In view of the decision to abandon this important investigation, Congresswoman Lisa McClain’s request to the Department of Justice is as follows.
“This decision has thousands of Michiganans in the relevant state. Families across the state are asking why their relatives and people with Covid are locked in facilities. For more than a year, Michiganans have been asking their governor Answered, but to no avail. Last year, the Justice Department seemed to finally get an answer for the people of Michigan from Governor Whitmer. On July 22, 2021, this hope was dashed with the department’s decision.
Therefore, we request that you conduct a formal investigation into why the Department of Justice did not investigate Governor Whitmer’s decision to place patients infected with COVID-19 in long-term care facilities. “
In the press release Operation Michigan Rise, They apparently agreed with Congresswoman McLean’s decision to request an investigation.
Eric Ventimiglia, executive director of Operation Michigan Rise, said: “The Democratic Party shamelessly tried to provide Governor Whitmer with political cover so that she could avoid being responsible for her deadly nursing home scandal. This is a new low in American politics.” Ventimilli Ya continued, “We commend Congresswoman McLean for her commitment to uncovering the truth about what happened in the Michigan nursing home. The Justice Department’s decision is a betrayal of all families who lost their loved ones as a result of Governor Whitmer’s policies, but we believe in something like Leaders like Lisa McLean will ensure that those responsible are accountable for their negligence.”
This is not a trivial problem. Try to understand not only what happened here in Michigan, but what happened in other states such as New York is not trivial in any way, shape or form. How we treat people who once cared about us is a damn important question and an indicator of the overall social conditions of our country.
Just in May of this year, an independent journalist named Charlie Le Duff released some disturbing data indicating that the number of deaths in nursing homes may be underestimated.From my article Report: The number of COVID deaths in Michigan nursing homes may be underreported by 40% or more…
Michigan seems to severely underestimate the number of Covid deaths in its long-term care facilities.
A joint investigation by “No BS News Hour” and the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy revealed that the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) did not thoroughly clean up important records to determine whether people who died of Covid were caring for residents at home, as its own guidelines suggest. As required.
In addition, our investigation found that DHHS did conduct a limited review of these important records last summer and found that 44% of them could be traced back to nursing homes.
Don’t expect the data in nursing homes to become better or more accurate. DHHS has given up cleaning up records completely because it is considered too “time-consuming”.
Why is this important?
As I said above, we have been told that all decisions made by state officials are based on science and data. Therefore, all closures and restrictions we have experienced in the Great Lakes State should be based on the best data possible.
According to LeDuff’s Deadline Detroit story above, they reviewed the records after having to file a lawsuit to obtain the FOIA request and found: From March to June 2020, the state audited 1,468 death records, of which 648 death records are traceable To long-term care facilities. Taking this 44% as an average value and applying it to the recorded nearly 7,000 other important recorded deaths, for those receiving treatment in a nursing facility, it would be close to another 3,000 deaths.
As we are often told, pushing people into nursing homes during a pandemic seems inhumane and is not based on “science and data.” When the work done by LeDuff and the Mackinaw Center showed that, at least in Michigan, there were some serious problems with the reported numbers, the federal government was willing to abandon the investigation. The Justice Department’s abandonment of this seems like the worst political trick.
Should we treat our parents and grandparents this way? A comprehensive investigation of how they were treated under the carpet?
I’m not good at this, and I’m glad that other people in Congress, such as Lisa McLean, are not either.
