Arthur Havlicek is on a never-ending journey to help the small business enterprises who comprise his membership to not only survive, but thrive. With that always at the forefront, he is understandably concerned about the current state of affairs with surging COVID numbers across the Great Lakes State. In fact, he has issued a warning of sorts in which he encourages everyone to do their level best to assure we don’t face state mandated shutdowns once again. Here’s his message:
It is no secret that Michigan has been making national headlines due to the rapid spike of COVID-19 cases around our state. Business owners who watch these trends as vigilantly as I do have rightly asked if they should expect to see restrictions reimposed, or worse, brace themselves for another shut down. Time will tell, but for now, businesses at least have some control over their destiny.
To put Michigan’s current ‘surge’ into perspective, more cases were reported between Wednesday, April 7 and Saturday, April 10 than in the entire month of February. This past week was the first time the state reported more than 4,000 hospitalizations since December 2020 and, if the current trajectory holds, we will likely surpass last April’s hospitalization peak. Not only do we lead the nation in new cases per capita, we currently lead all other states in COVID-related hospitalizations.
Unlike last Fall when most states were experiencing a similar surge, Michigan’s downward spiral seems to be an outlier. Neighboring states, including Indiana who recently turned wearing a mask into an advisory, have had negligible increases in case counts over the past thirty days. Other states have seen their cases consistently decline. Michigan, meanwhile, accounted for 16 of the country’s 17 highest metro areas in terms of case rates as of last Monday.
The troubling situation led Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to urge a voluntary two-week “pause” for youth sports, in-person high school classes, and indoor dining last Friday. While we have all become familiar with the concept of “two weeks to flatten the curve,” this is the first time since the pandemic began where the Governor’s administration did not issue an official directive that made the mitigation recommendations mandatory.
We were very encouraged to see the administration adopt this approach because, as regular readers will attest, we have been out-spoken advocates of allowing business owners to take into account their industry’s risk level as well as community-specific data when determining how and when to limit their operations to preserve public health.
Restaurants, for example, have still not recovered from the last “pause” and the data still does not indicate they are a significant source of community spread. According to the state’s own outbreak tracker data from April 8, the leading total outbreak sources are K-12 programs (301), construction (141), and long-term care (120), youth programs (91), retail (81), office settings (45), and bars and restaurants combined (44), followed by a number of other settings. In fact, bars and restaurants combined only accounted for 5% of the 1,152 new and ongoing clusters/outbreaks. Even more telling, only .3% of those clusters/outbreaks actually involved restaurant patrons.
Furthermore, while Michigan’s statewide totals are raising eyebrows, Berrien County’s status is not as dire. While there has been a rise in cases locally since the beginning of March, daily cases since then have remained relatively flat and the trajectory looks to be curving downward. We’ve seen a fraction of new cases per day compared to the hardest hit areas of the state and, because of that, our County Health Department has said Berrien County does not show a need for the same level of new action at this time.
That said, the next two weeks will be critical in determining whether or not we will return to required restrictions. Our success is predicated on our continued diligence in following all applicable public health guidelines. With that in mind, we are imploring our members, and their consumers, to use their best discretion regarding what further mitigation efforts may be necessary to keep our cases down and our businesses open.
It takes all of us to keep Southwest Michigan safe and, by working together, we can flatten the curve once again.
