Last week Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a three-week “pause” for dine-in service for restaurants.
Such a simple, little word with such devastating implications.
What exactly does a “pause” look like for people who work in the restaurant industry? I will break it down in the course of one day, so people can understand the gravity of what that little word actually means to thousands of people who work in this industry.
On Nov. 13, the Friday before the “pause” started, Joe Muer Seafood in Bloomfield Hills had three managers, 14 servers, seven server assistants, four bartenders, three hostesses, one head chef, one sous chef, eight line cooks, two prep cooks, four dishwashers — 47 people worked, and 47 people got paid.
One week later, Joe Muer Seafood had one manager, one head chef, one line cook, and one server. Four people worked, and four people got paid.
This is what a “pause” looks like: 43 fewer people worked, and 43 fewer people got paid.
This is going to happen every day for the rest of the three-week “pause.” This is happening at every restaurant in Michigan, whether you are Joe Muer Seafood or American Coney Island.
The loss of wages for the thousands of workers in the restaurant industry will devastate families and our economy. The thousands of restaurant workers flooding our unemployment system will devastate an already challenged unemployment system. The Joe Vicari Restaurant Group will sadly have to lay off almost 700 people.
But it does not stop there. All of our vendors will be suffering, too. Our meat and seafood vendors, produce vendors, bread vendors, coffee, liquor, and wine vendors will all be met with purchase orders that are a fraction of what they normally are or with no purchase orders at all. This will lead to certain layoffs or furloughs in all the above industries.
The Michigan Liquor Control Commission fined several restaurants and suspended liquor licenses after keeping their dine-in facilities open during the statewide shutdown.
The Meeting Place in Fenton had its license to sell alcoholic beverages suspended. The Big Boy in Sandusky received a $5,000 fine, while The Meeting Place and Woodchips BBQ in Lapeer were fined $1,000.
The Meeting Place and Woodchips kept their indoor dining rooms open after the Michigan Department of Health. Human Services issued an epidemic order on Nov. 18 requiring all restaurants and bars close to dine-in service. They can remain open only for carryout or drive-through service until Dec. 9.
A Canadian doctor who caused a firestorm of controversy earlier this month after blasting government-imposed COVID-19 measures at a public city meeting in Alberta is not only doubling down on his comments but is going even further.
“I take the Hippocratic Oath extremely seriously. The first line is do no harm, and that is what motivated my presentation,” Dr. Roger Hodkinson told The Epoch Times in a Nov. 24 interview in reference to a Nov. 13 speech he made to Edmonton city councilors in which he called it the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public” that lockdowns and masks were being used in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19.
“If I see something going on that’s harmful, I feel as a physician that I’m obligated to stand up and say something,” he added before going on to call lockdowns that are spreading across Canada “draconian.”
Dr. Hodkinson, CEO and Medical Director of Western Medical Assessments, laid out his credentials at the beginning of his Nov. 13 presentation to city council.
“I’m a medical specialist in pathology which includes virology. I trained at Cambridge University in the U.K. I’m the ex-president of the pathology section of the Medical Association. I was previously an assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine doing a lot of teaching. I was the chairman of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada Examination Committee and Pathology in Ottawa, but more to the point I’m currently the chairman of a biotechnology company in North Carolina selling the COVID-19 test,” he said.
“The bottom line is simply this: There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians. It’s outrageous. This is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”
“There is absolutely nothing that can be done to contain this virus,” he said, adding: “This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS. It’s politics playing medicine and that’s a very dangerous game.”
Hodkinson called using masks to prevent the spread of the virus “utterly useless,” noting that “there is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever.”
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