Politics Gone Viral

While it's true that the Republicans have majority control of our legislature, it is our governor, who is a Democrat, that has been calling the shots with her state of emergency powers.  Not that I blame her for anything, just saying.  Mitt Romney is a member of the US Congress who doesn't even live in Michigan, so he has little to do with our local situation.  I don't know about this "red state blue state" thing.  It is my understanding that the states with large urban populations have been hit the hardest, with New York being the worst and Michigan being number four or five down the list.  Old Dog asked why Michigan has been hit harder than Illinois, and we have both been speculating about it, but I don't think either of us knows the answer for sure.

I have been questioning the numbers, and I found some of the answers in today's newspaper.  It seems that the number of recoveries were first reported last week, and they plan on updating every Saturday, which explains why the number hasn't changed in the last few days.  They count anybody who is still alive 30 days after the onset of symptoms as "recovered", so anybody who was infected before the shutdown should either be recovered or dead by now. These numbers are a couple days old and are rising as we speak: City of Detroit-7004 cases; Oakland County-5,364 cases; Wayne County-5,205; Macomb County-3,620; Genesee County-1,030.  These four counties represent mostly suburban areas around Detroit.  I don't know how their populations compare to Detroit, but it appears that Detroit is the epicenter of the disease.  I suppose a case could be made that poverty is a factor, but that wouldn't explain why the northern rural counties have way less cases than the relatively richer suburban counties.  Okay, we also have way less people than any of the urban or suburban counties, so the poverty argument cannot be totally discounted.  In the last election, the suburbs, which had previously voted Republican, joined with Detroit to elect a Democratic governor.  Make of that what you will.

It has occurred to me that Uncle Ken's socialist paradise might already be upon us, since our civil liberties have been suspended indefinitely and there are empty shelves in the stores.