Personal Liberty vs. COVID-19

Yesterday, groups of protesters blocked traffic through the downtown area of Lansing, Michigan protesting the stay-at-home order given by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. What is most egregious to these protestors is that the Michigan Governor has not only ordered a shut down of non-essential businesses or limited gatherings, she has forbidden people in Michigan to visit other’s houses unless caring for a sick family member or dropping off a child (per custody agreements). She has also ordered stores to rope off areas that have non-essential items. So in essence when you do your weekly trip to Wal-Mart, Target, or Meyer (big box store that is all over Michigan) you can’t pick up food and buy a new pair of shoes. With shops being ordered to limit the number of customers in their buildings, this order should speed up the time a person is in the store.

Michigan Conservative Coalition and Michigan Freedom Fund has problems with these public safety measures and decided to protest them in their state’s capitol yesterday.

These people were ok with having their freedom’s taken away after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but have issues with temporary measures to save their lives. YOU CAN BUY EVERYTHING ONLINE, YOU DO NOT NEED TO MEANDER THROUGH A STORE DURING A PANDEMIC.

I understand these people’s frustrations. Many of these people have lost their jobs, are stuck in their homes and have no way of knowing when they can go back to work and when the economy will be up and running again. Nobody knows. That is why the number of prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications have risen since February. Protesting the Governor is making it worse. It’s making is so everyone nationwide will have to stay home, because you all don’t want to stay at home.

The world lost 5% of its population during the Spanish Flu, and this was before air travel. If we don’t listen to the experts and stay home, we will lose more. I don’t want to lose my parents or grandmother at the altar of the economy. I want my son to grow up knowing his older relatives. I am scared. I feel uncertain as well, but knowing there are experts who are smarter than I am giving advice to the president makes me feel a little bit better.

This current presidential administration has made many people in the country question expertise, and this is not the time to do that. Listen to the doctors, stay at home so we can visit you for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

It has been almost twenty years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We still have to take our shoes off at the airport. We still have full-body scanners. And we know that TSA could be trained better, but we live with that security theater at the airport because it makes many people feel better because the government has “done something” about terrorism at home. But when the governor of one of the hardest-hit states in the country “does something” to help prevent the spread of a disease that is killing people in her state she has protesters who are going to end up with the disease and maybe die from the disease that she is trying to protect them and their relatives from.