Eastern Wayne Today

Michigan Capitol Confidential columnist Michael Van Beek wrote in an op-ed that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was overdoing it in closing down the state in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the restrictions have been carried too far and are turning Michigan residents into criminals.

“It is true, of course, that the economy is not and was not ever fully shut down,” Van Beek wrote in the Michigan Capitol Confidential column. “But the governor’s attempt to regulate nearly every aspect of our social lives promotes the public perception that this is what happened, because her approach is to prohibit everything, except that which she specifically allows.”

Van Beek said Whitmer’s role in state health officials' order prohibiting indoor gatherings, allowing only those with 10 or fewer participants and from no more than two households, goes too far. For example, a child at home may play with no more than one friend, unless the friends are siblings.

Large families are not allowed to invite more than a couple of relatives to their home at any given time.

Van Beek said the outdoor rules are just as ridiculous. Outdoor gatherings permit no more than 25 participants from three households or fewer. This includes backyards, neighborhood parks and cornfields -- literally every inch of the state, he said. A golfing foursome would not be allowed, unless two of the four golfers live in the same house.

Residents of Michigan are attending church and seeing doctors in person, but gatherings at entertainment and recreation venues are prohibited, unless they follow strict social-distancing mandates. Restaurants, child care, barbershops and gyms are similarly restricted.

Van Beek said, as a result, the state is unable to enforce the overly ambitious restrictions, and people routinely violate them anyway. He added that the prohibitions appear to have been adopted “just for show” because most people can’t realistically obey all of them.

The end result is that people who violate the restrictions face imprisonment and fines of up to $1,000, for example, for something as innocuous as inviting a friend over to your house and then a third person shows up unexpectedly.

Beek said that instead, “voluntary compliance” should be the goal and that severe restrictions and penalties only force people in a negative stance.

"That’s not trusting people to do the right thing, and it might be the source of the ‘everything is closed’ myth the governor would like to erase,” Van Beek wrote, according to Michigan Capitol Confidential.