LANSING, Mich. — Sen. Lana Theis, R-Brighton, issued the following statement on Thursday, after a Whitmer administration official deflected blame for underreporting COVID-19 deaths at long-term care facilities during a joint Senate-House oversight committee hearing:
“The real tragedy is that, against logic, reason and scientific opinion, Gov. Whitmer and health department bureaucrats made the decision to put people with known cases of the coronavirus into long-term care facilities. They did this knowing that the elderly are the most vulnerable to the virus. These decisions, for which no one has been held accountable, resulted in the untimely deaths of thousands of Michiganders. And to add insult to injury, the very policies that caused seniors to contract the virus also prevented their families from consoling them, from saying goodbye to them and even from holding funerals for their loved ones.
“It is entirely unacceptable that Gov. Whitmer’s administration failed to report the true number of long-term care residents who passed away from COVID-19. But what is perhaps worse is the insidious deflection the administration has undertaken to make everyone squabble about what should and shouldn’t have been reported instead of the governor’s disastrous executive orders that threatened seniors’ lives from the onset of the pandemic.
“Make no mistake: The Whitmer administration is politicizing and attacking the independent Office of the Auditor General — one of the most respected auditors in the nation — in a blatant attempt to hide the truth because the facts don’t match their narrative. The governor would rather us all fight about the numbers because it means we then aren’t talking about the actual issue: Her deadly policies.”
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