The Patriot Post® · Reopening the Lone Star State

“Texas governor reopens more businesses and schools days after highest jump in Covid-19 cases in the state,” blared CNN’s headline. Business Insider reported, “Texas reported its highest single-day increase in new COVID-19 cases as restaurants, salons, and cinemas open to the public.” Likewise, the Houston Chronicle sounded the alarm: “Rising cases, inadequate tracing put Texas at risk during reopening.”

The same could be said for numerous other states: Cases are rising slightly as states reopen. Leftmedia outlets seemingly tout this as proof that no state should be easing lockdown edicts. The Atlantic even called Georgia’s reopening an “experiment in human sacrifice.” Texas is now entering Phase Two of reopening — hence the apocalyptic headlines.

But some of us have been saying for some time that a rise in coronavirus cases is the necessary price for reopening. The devastation to our economy outweighs the risks.

More to the point, the drastic rise in testing that has accompanied reopening means … drumroll please … there will be more confirmed cases. That doesn’t necessarily mean more cases, but rather confirmed ones. This is not proof that states are doing the wrong thing by allowing the economy to open back up at reduced capacity and letting some people return to work under conditions as safe as can be contrived. Unmitigated reopening and total lockdown are not the only two choices.

Hot Air’s Karen Townsend puts Texas’s plight in perspective: “Governor Abbott has taken a slow and deliberate approach to reopen the state. Not only has Texas been dealt a blow by the coronavirus pandemic and the nation’s economic collapse but the oil and gas industry has hit unprecedented lows, too. The Texas economy is a driving force in the strength of the nation’s economy, the second-largest in the United States. Reopening Texas will be good for the national economic recovery.”

Texas, by the way, became somewhat of a poster child for the ridiculous measures taken to enforce lockdowns when salon owner Shelley Luther was arrested and fined for daring to fix people’s hair. She eventually went free. The rest of Texas is slowly following suit.

As Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “It is time to reopen America in a smart and deliberate fashion and stop calling people murderers because they want to get back to work. The American people are responsible enough to live free and confront risk. Let them do so.”