Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer may not have been the worst governor dealing with the coronavirus, but she’s doing her part to make it a competition. Her latest move on Wednesday was to bring back organized sports, but only if athletes wear masks during both training and actual games.
Whitmer’s executive order mandates masks for “athletes training for, practicing for, or competing in an organized sport when the athlete cannot maintain 6 feet of social distance, except for occasional and fleeting moments.” While swimmers are exempted from wearing masks, athletes playing football, volleyball, and soccer are not. The Detroit Lions are also exempted from the order.
This means that young athletes, who have a minimal risk of serious complications from the virus, must now artificially jeopardize their own breathing to participate in sports. The World Health Organization has said that young athletes should not be wearing masks during physical activity, while the Cleveland Clinic warns that it may lead to chest pain, dizziness, lightheadedness, and difficulty breathing.
So Whitmer is forcing young athletes to compromise their own respiratory process to prevent them from catching a virus that has little effect on the young, while also fighting to be able to force nursing homes to accept infected patients. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 344 COVID-19 deaths among the nearly 83 million people between the ages of 5-24. When it comes to the elderly, Michigan has nearly as many nursing home COVID-19 deaths as Texas, despite having almost 1,200 fewer nursing home facilities.
Whitmer’s handling of the virus has been sporadic, defying her own social distancing orders to go protest while arguing that those protesting her lockdown orders were undermining her job. Banning gardening supplies and paint was, of course, a crucial step toward limiting the spread of the coronavirus.
Thankfully for the country, Whitmer’s incompetence ended her chances of becoming Joe Biden’s running mate. But residents of Michigan still have to deal with a governor stumbling her way through a pandemic. It appears that every decision Whitmer has made thus far is the wrong one, but it still hasn’t discouraged her from reevaluating her failed strategy.
