This week is the marker for six months of COVID-19 in Michigan.
The first cases announced on March 10th, nothing has been the same since.
“I found myself saying, ‘We’ve never lived through anything like this,’ and I feel like I’ve said that time after time after again,” says Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Michigan has been through a lot in the past half year as it fought against COVID-19.
Starting as one of the hardest hit states, Michigan has rebounded and is leading the way to recovery.
That came with a lot of decisions made by Gov. Whitmer. The hardest she says was closing schools.
“That was a tough decision,” she says, “It weighed heavily on me.”
The most difficult fight? The pushback on mask wearing.
“If we could get the politics out of simple actions like that.”
And the criticism.
Closing down sectors of the economy, controversial nursing home strategies and budget cuts, many not popular but Whitmer stands by the science at the time.
“If I could go on a time machine with the knowledge that I have today,” says Whitmer, “Would we make different decisions? Of course.”
That’s the biggest thing, how much the fight has changed as they learn more.
“Do you think about the incredible amount of knowledge that we have gotten about this virus in the last six months?” says Whitmer, “We know a lot more but there still a lot to learn though.”
The biggest will be a vaccine, the only way out of this pandemic according the Whitmer.
“That’s a very compressed timeline,“ says Whitmer, “ Ordinarily it’s a five-year process and if in the next six months there is a number of approved vaccines and they can start ramping up? That would be great.”
With it, will come new challenges, like people willing to take a vaccine. Already many saying they won’t.
“We’re going to have to give the public assurances,” says Whitmer, “I’m going to want to know, before I take a vaccine, that there is some efficacy that is safe.”
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