OT: Michigan Executive Orders declared unconstitutional
Late last week, the Michigan Supreme Court declared that the Governor did not possess the authority to exercise emergency powers under the EPGA (1945 law) because the act unlawfully delegates legislative power to the executive branch in violation of the Michigan Constitution. Whitmer has said the EOs are in effect for 21 more days (referencing a rehearing rule that postpones issuance of the judgment order for 21 days), but that's probably not an accurate take given that the opinion has been filed and there's no way to enforce the EOs.
Curious to know if anyone's company is going to change the way they operate now? Anyone going to do anything differently? Company I work for is going to keep the status quo for the time being.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
Age is a good start - then maybe look at people with chronic respiratory and heart issues?
On the age front - from AZ dashboard numbers of confirmed cases - no exclusions for pre-existing conditions
Under 45 years old - 0.25% death rate -- (343 of 136k+)
Over 65 year Old - 16.2% death rate -- (4058 of 25k+)
October 5th, 2020 at 12:40 PM ^
Thanks. As I'm shopping I'll first ask for proof of age and then perform a quick medical screening on everyone I encounter to decide whether or not I should put on my mask to protect the vulnerable.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:49 PM ^
Your screening should also ask about how much contact those people have with someone who's vulnerable. THEN you'll know whether to put on your mask or not.
October 5th, 2020 at 1:22 PM ^
But first be sure to check which county you are in. If you cross the county line on the way to the store you may be off the hook for caring about other people all together!
October 5th, 2020 at 2:42 PM ^
No need to be a flippant a-hole. Where did I say anything about eliminating masks?
Your question was how do you determine at risk people in response to XM -which I answered and provided data.
If I had anything to say about it, I would probably: 1. strictly enforce safety measures at assisted care facilities, 2. empower/protect at-risk people to get $$ assistance and/or extended work from home options until there were some advances in vaccines or treatment, and 3. Ask people take some personal responsibility to be extra safe if they live with or have frequent contact with at risk people.
It is not your responsibility to protect the rest of the world from this virus but it is not a big inconvenience to do the bare fucking minimum, by wearing a mask, and practicing sane social distancing for the time-being. /end rant
October 5th, 2020 at 3:22 PM ^
Apologies. Agree with your last paragraph, just wear a fucking mask.
October 5th, 2020 at 11:57 AM ^
XM: Respectfully, as risk appears to be continuous and multi-dimensional (age, risk factors, dose of virus), it's not easy to sort the population into vulnerable and not-vulnerable.
Almost everyone will survive this if they get a low dose. (Curiously, COVID-19 is simultaneously overrated and underrated depending on political sorting.) "Low" isn't the same for older people and ones with risk factors.
There are many risk factors and degrees of them. Someone who's fifty pounds overweight is less vulnerable than someone who's two hundred pounds overweight.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
heron, i appreciate your tone and return that respect. i have an answer that i'd share in private convo/email, but i really do want to avoid the politics as even the most mild mention send so many over the walls and i really want to return this place to sports and light-hearted posting. i get enough seriousness with the rest of life, as you and others probably do, too. i posted as an FYI and want to leave it at that.
October 5th, 2020 at 6:46 PM ^
If her stance is that the Supreme Court invalidating EOs as of April 30th takes effect in October, she needs a better lawyer. Even if there is a 21 day review period, any citations issued since April 30th are going to be voided on day 21.
A better question is how much money does the state owe the businesses she shut down, apparently illegally, for 5 months.
October 5th, 2020 at 11:23 AM ^
meanwhile, 7000+ deaths in Michigan and 141,000+ infected, 1 out of 20 who is infected has died per https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/
no big deal though, i'm sure they were all "pre existing conditions" since 31% of the state is medically in the definition for "obese"
October 5th, 2020 at 11:47 AM ^
For Michigan 7124 deaths:
2911 deaths 80+=41%
1823 deaths 70-79=25%
1200 deaths 60-69=17%
548 deaths 50-59=7%
223 deaths 40-49=3%
68 deaths 30-39=1%
25 deaths 20-29=0.3%
What do these numbers mean? Basically that older people (yes many of which already have an array of pre-existing conditions) are the most vulnerable as we have all heard throughout the pandemic.
Is COVID real and should we be doing everything we can to limit transmission? Abso-freaking-lutely. Should we dismiss the pre-existing condition aspect? No, not at all. I'm here to bring the middle ground, I'm not a right/left fanatic. The fact is that COVID is dangerous, but it's also much more dangerous to people that have existing health issues. Both can be true, we don't need a political opinion to skew the data.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:08 PM ^
Thanks for the numbers. That is one part of the equation, i.e., how does one illness affect different aged people. It would be good to see how the age group death rates of Covid compare to the same age group death rates of the typical flu. For example, if the death rate for 40 - 49 years is 3% with Covid and .9% for the flu then that is a pretty big difference when applied against the U.S. population.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:17 PM ^
Very true, I pulled that off of the Michigan government website. I'm not sure how the pre-existing conditions and age groups fall in regards to death rate with the flu. We are also in a completely unknown space right now with long term health problems and how they will affect people that contracted the virus within those current age groups. A lot of unknowns, however there is also a lot of data (the accuracy of which will be debated for 100 years) out there to draw somewhat accurate conclusions on short term end results (death vs no death).
My other question with the flu, are they labeling deaths the same way that they do with COVID now? For example, if you have COVID and that leads to pneumonia resulting in death, it is reported as a COVID death. If someone goes into the hospital with bad flu symptoms, ends up with pneumonia and dies, does it get labeled as a flu death? Or does it get dropped in another bucket where pneumonia has its own category?
There are so many small variances on cause of death reporting that could make it impossible to compare one virus versus another.
October 5th, 2020 at 6:14 PM ^
Another factor that will be unknown until they write a post-mortem on this Charlie-foxtrot, is the nature of the co-morbidities v. death toll. We know that the number is about 94% of all deaths racked up to COVID involve at least one pre-existing condition. But looking at the range of these factors, some meant the patient was going to die very soon (i.e. someone in hospice who is exposed , tests positive and dies) as opposed to an obese person, who while not considered in the best of health was not likely to die any time soon. If the co-morbidities are the driver, and Covid just tipped them over the edge, then we should see a significant reduction in deaths to those factors in the coming years
October 5th, 2020 at 6:49 PM ^
To your question about flu deaths...the number you see reported every year is not the number of confirmed flu cases, they take that number and multiply it by 5-8x because they assume they don’t know every flu case. So similarly, you’d need to multiply the covid deaths accordingly. And yes, the flu can cause pneumonia and people dying of pneumonia with the flu are classified as flu deaths.
Covid and the flu are the same as HIV/AIDS, no one dies from the virus, they die from the symptoms, one of which is pneumonia.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:34 PM ^
at the national level:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
If you just compare straight deaths, it is pretty clear from CDC data, for every age group 15 and above, there are significantly more fatalities associated with Covid. For instance, in the 15 to 24 age group: 362 covid deaths vs 53 flu deaths. The ratio gets higher with age 25 to 34: 1513 covid to 151 flu, 35 to 44: 3956 to 250, 45 to 54: 10,389 to 577 and 55 to 64: 24,772 to 1240.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:45 PM ^
So, looking at those numbers from the link:
(1) The age cohorts are: 0-1, 1-4, 5-14, 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, 75-84, 85+
(2) Percent of CV deaths by age cohort: 0.01%, 0.01%, 0.02%, 0.19%, 0.78%, 2.04%, 5.35%, 12.76%, 21.57%, 26.46%, 30.81%
(3) Percent of NON-CV deaths by age cohort: 0.62%, 0.12%, 0.18%, 1.16%, 2.35%, 3.23%, 5.76%, 13.12%, 19.65%, 23.92%, 29.89%.
(4) Those numbers have a 0.997806 correlation factor. 99.78%!!!
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It's a story that isn't really part of the "mainstream narrative" --- but CV deaths by age are basically distributed the exact same as deaths of ALL types by age.
Most Federal and State policy doesn't really account for this.
October 5th, 2020 at 1:22 PM ^
Interesting way to look at the data. While not perfect, the CV deaths somewhat follow the same mortality curve as all deaths from everything else, in that it is not really impacting how/when die on the aggregate. Which I guess makes sense since the median COVID death age is very close the life expectancy in the US.
October 5th, 2020 at 1:07 PM ^
This is good info. I'm not overly concerned with the death total in flu vs COVID. Anyone saying the flu is comparable are off their rocker. I'm more interested in the pre-existing condition argument and how it relates to COVID vs the flu, and how deaths are reported. At the same point I also would like to know how deaths are reported when they were admitted due to COVID or flu, and then they die from something else (pneumonia is the prime example). I know that if you enter the hospital, have COVID, and die, it is being reported as a COVID death regardless of if it is due to pneumonia caused by COVID, but also if you come in with a GSW and have COVID it hits the numbers, when it's not necessarily a COVID death. My main concern is the motivation for healthcare providers to apply that COVID stamp for monetary gain when they might not be so inclined had someone come in with the flu.
This gives some of that information. Thanks for the link.
October 5th, 2020 at 2:41 PM ^
I'd like to see the Flu side by side in age groups too, but I fear even that wouldn't be very apples to apples.
Fact of the matter is most people who get the Flu are very young or very old. Everyone can get the Covid. I suspect the mortality rate is about the same, we just have a completely different population getting the Covid. To be clear, a population that likely has a higher average mortality rate due to age distribution.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:17 PM ^
I'm not great with tone on message boards -- not trying to be on one side or another either -- except the side of "let's not actively expose people to this thing if we can avoid it"
I realize the majority of my comment above might not reflect that, I deserve to be punched in the mouth for it
October 5th, 2020 at 12:32 PM ^
Those numbers imply the median age of CV death (in Michigan) is 76 years old.
FWIW, how those compare to some other numbers:
(1) The median age of people who died in the United States in CY 2017 was 77 years old. Reference table 2 of the link below. If you put those numbers into Excel, you'll see that 44% of all Americans who died in 2017 were 80+, and 54% of all Americans who died in 2017 were 75+. So, 77 years old is pretty much the median, although the table doesn't explicitly state that number.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf
(2) The median age of US H1N1 deaths was 45 years old.
https://www.cdc.gov/H1N1flu/ages_deaths.htm
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Net:
(1) taking the Michigan numbers at face value (and they aren't materially different in any other states), the median age of CV death is basically the same as the background median age of death in America before this pandemic.
(2) CV doesn't nearly hit the younger age cohorts in the same proportion as other recent viruses.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:36 PM ^
I'm interested in why it appears Michigan's death rates are substantially higher than most other jurisdictions. For instance, here is my State's death rates as of this morning:
80+ = 15.75%
70-79 = 7.22%
60-69 = 1.25%
50-59 = .45%
40-49 = .29%
30-39 = .03%
20-29 = .02%
And my State's statistics are based on total cumulative rather than taking into account whether or not the virus is a primary or secondary cause of death. I just don't understand how the death rates are so substantially different. Could it be that Michigan got hammered much earlier on than most other states and therefore reliable treatments were not yet understood?
October 5th, 2020 at 12:50 PM ^
Almost definitely, yes.
As of today, the top 10 states in deaths/per confirmed cases are CT, NJ, MA, NY, NH, MI, PA, RI, LA and VT.
That's a group of 8 northeastern/mid-atlantic states that have NYC at their center. Plus Michigan and Louisiana.
Exactly the places where it was worst in the early spring.
For the record, it's an underrated story how much better we have become in treating the virus over time. And that is likely to continue to improve.
October 5th, 2020 at 11:29 AM ^
Whitmer is invited to the socially distant BBQ.
October 5th, 2020 at 11:33 AM ^
GOOD.
October 5th, 2020 at 11:53 AM ^
It's more than a little ironic that the Mackinac Center acknowledges that Whitmer's EOs were legal under the 1945 act (and its subsequent related acts) and this article does not advocate for its abrogation by the courts.
The 1945 Act was passed by a Michigan legislature with overwhelming Republican majorities in both chambers and signed by a Republican governor.
https://www.mackinac.org/emergency-powers-under-michigan-law
October 5th, 2020 at 12:19 PM ^
Thought this was a Michigan Football blog... MGOBLOG ?
October 5th, 2020 at 12:19 PM ^
Is there a reason we haven't learned to stop talking about this on the board. All it does is piss everyone off. I assume it's related to this impulse?
October 5th, 2020 at 4:14 PM ^
That was a sad day when Steve Irwin was stabbed in the heart by a stingray.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
Winter is coming.
The fall was our last chance before the cold weather forces everybody inside to breathe the same air. Aerosols and droplets travel farther in dry air, too. If Michigan's at a thousand cases per day now, December and January are going to be BAD.
October 5th, 2020 at 3:24 PM ^
Cases don’t really matter. In fact, high cases/low deaths can be a good thing.
October 5th, 2020 at 3:42 PM ^
Unfortunately, as cases are going up, we are starting to see hospitalizations follow. Just like in the spring when people said it didn’t matter that cases were rising because they ignored the fact that hospitalizations follow cases, deaths follow hospitalizations
October 5th, 2020 at 3:53 PM ^
Here in Michigan, cases are up, but hospitalizations and deaths are still relatively flat even though every death is a Covid death and we comb the past death certificates in search of more cases that we can add to the list.
Over 3,700 people died from Covid in April, which is more than the rest of the year combined.
October 5th, 2020 at 5:23 PM ^
hospitalizations started rising Sept 24, about a week after cases started rising.
October 5th, 2020 at 6:24 PM ^
What are the masses doing now that will force them inside with larger(r) groups of people in the winter? People already aren’t doing much gathering of any size. Most aren’t going into work. You will be inside more with your family and those closest to you, but that’s about it. Larger public exposure will not be a thing
October 5th, 2020 at 12:41 PM ^
Nothing will change for me. We will continue to wear masks, continue to utilize zoom/google meet, and continue to socially distance ourselves in in-person meetings. We never shut down, never worked from home, and never slowed down.
Its REALLY hard to find decent labor right now - lets hope more businesses will open back up and more people will go back to work. Wear a mask, wash your hands, and be smart.
October 5th, 2020 at 12:42 PM ^
I would hope that one of the good things to come out of this would be a broader discussion about the role of the legislature vs the executive in times of national (and more local) emergency. While it is ripe for abuse, the executive branch is in a better position to act quickly on the other hand, the legislature has a key role to play in overseeing that action. At least at the federal level, one of the challenges is that the legislature has shown significant inability to act quickly (in most years they can’t even pass a budget on time). At the state level, many legislatures are only in session for part of the year. Finding the right balance is challenging, but it would be better to do that when an emergency wasn’t staring you in the face.
October 5th, 2020 at 4:40 PM ^
100% agree!
It's of course impossible to foresee every variable; but I would hope that we can learn from this, and implement more effective measures in some sort of bi-partisan way. (Yes, I know... I live in Utopiaville...)
October 5th, 2020 at 12:53 PM ^
Not company-related, but I saw that the school district I grew up in immediately removed their mask requirement for schoolkids. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
October 5th, 2020 at 1:11 PM ^
No. Davison did not implement an new EO that took effect today as it no longer is declared.
October 5th, 2020 at 1:01 PM ^
I think this will be an example of be careful what you wish for. The legislature might actually have to pass some laws now. It doesn't seem like they're prepared to do so.
October 5th, 2020 at 1:27 PM ^
That is exactly what happened in Wisconsin and we are paying for that right right now.
October 5th, 2020 at 1:09 PM ^
It nuanced, likely intentional, but it made no decision on the EOs. I suspect that doesn’t support your underlying narrative. There is and was no comment on the validity or appropriateness of her decisions. It declared the law, passed in 1945 and deployed multiple times, was unconstitutional.
I’d expect health officials to restrict life the same.
October 5th, 2020 at 1:19 PM ^
Not personally affected, but this will reopen things less that you might think.
Basically the governors orders provided a lot of punishment on individuals and businesses that didn't abide by health dept guidelines. Now that punishment is largely removed. Businesses can still face health dept fines, but I think that's way smaller.
But businesses still have health dept standards to abide by. So most will still follow those, restricting occupancy and requiring masks. A few will probably break those standards to try to survive as best they can (since restaurants and bars are in such tough shape already).
October 5th, 2020 at 1:40 PM ^
Curious if this has anything to do with football season starting. Will there be fans at UM home games? Also curious are MI folks able to go to fitness centers to exercise?
October 5th, 2020 at 2:50 PM ^
No fans at games as of now*-- this is a B1G decision not a school or state decision. Can change going forward but I would guess it will have to be agreed by all schools. (*I think families etc. are allotted a very small amount of tickets - like 2 per family)
Pretty sure fitness centers reopened a few weeks ago in MI. (Saw a thread elsewhere asking how busy it was in people's gyms)
October 5th, 2020 at 3:08 PM ^
"I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!"
I always felt this in my heart but was afraid to say it until now: Covid is good for you!
October 5th, 2020 at 3:17 PM ^
What a dipshit tweet.
October 5th, 2020 at 3:27 PM ^
As a flaming liberal and an engineer, I agree with this decision.
I think having an emergency executive action is perfectly legit, but this crisis is already 7 months old. You cannot have a single person have this much influence over daily lives without rest of the government in having a say.
If these measures are indeed needed, the legislature and the executive branch need to come up with a joint plan to deal with it over the long term. Emergency declarations should be just for enough time to get to this plan and no more. Otherwise, any dictator can use "emergencies" to over-ride any constitutional protections.