Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s name-recognition rose when she accused the White House of blocking “aid” to Michigan. There was no proof Trump was preventing assistance (Pandemic relief), but then the story turned. A letter from a state licensing board broke the internet.
Related: The State Economy is on Hold Because 0.04% of the Population Has Had a Confirmed Case of this Flu
Okay, broke is hyperbolic. How about, put a little dent in it? One that dad might not notice unless the light hits it the right way.
Whitmer’s Administration appeared to be threatening the licenses of doctors and pharmacists who issued or filled prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine.
It all fits nicely into the current Trump-says, the media and Democrats say-the-opposite-machine we’ve been observing for nearly four-years. The media was, after all, continuously mocking the President for mentioning chloroquine and reported success overseas as a treatment for that thing “we’re all in together.”
Cue the Telephone game
The Detroit Metro Times noted a few days ago (after Gov. Gretchen asked the Feds to send her some that sam drug, please) the about-face was more of an about-confusion.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, a Clarklake Republican, told The Detroit News that he asked the governor to issue the original letter to prevent people from hoarding the drugs and thus depriving non-coronavirus patients of their medicine.
“We needed something to prevent [chloroquine] from becoming the next toilet paper,” he told Miles. “I quickly requested of her staff that they put something out, and somehow in the translation it was prohibiting use of these drugs — and that wasn’t the intent.”
Shirkey told Whitmer to tell the licensing board to tell medical professionals, and they screwed it up. The order was meant to dissuade hoarding and protect supplies for people with Lupus and Rheumatoid arthritis. (We don’t see a lot of Malaria in Michigan, not even in Dearbornistan.)
Protecting supply is not a bad idea, especially if you find yourself near the end of your 30-day supply, and some virus comes along and hijacks your lifeline for alternate uses.
Whitmer’s request for more in this context is not a contradiction to an earlier statement. It is the correct response of a governor to the matter at hand. And while she may well have found herself siding with the media that was mocking Trump, even they have come around.
The China ban was racism until it turned out to be the single-smartest thing any World Leader had yet done. And now the New York Times, the Paper of Anti-Trump record, notes that “A group of moderately ill people were given hydroxychloroquine, which appeared to ease their symptoms quickly, but more research is needed.”
More research is always needed unless we’re talking about Global Warming; where the only thing likely to receive an ounce of scrutiny is the marketing that continues to fail to move a majority of Americans on the non-issue of how man’s love affair with cheap energy (and all the modern conveniences it provides like sanitation and health care) impacts the planet.
The New York Times is saying it without saying it. Trump was right to suggest it when he did.
The only question remaining is whether Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi’s likely investigation of the Administration’s response will note that the President (ridiculed as he was by democrats and the corporate media) was derelict in his duties for not mentioning it sooner.
