Posted on 05/19/2020 4:21:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
On March 24, President Donald Trump said he wanted the country and the economy "opened up and just raring to go by Easter."
Easter came and went. And Trump was mocked for being aspirational and unrealistic. Yet, with Ascension Thursday at hand, 40 days after Easter, the president seems to have been ahead of his time.
The country, as a whole, is, and has been, opening up. Sunday's New York Times reports that, for weeks now, more than two-thirds of the states have been relaxing restrictions as Trump had urged.
The reasons: weariness with the lockdown and sheltering in place, a growing belief that the worst of the pandemic is behind us and undeniably positive news from several fronts in the coronavirus war.
"New Cases in U.S. Slow," ran The New York Times top headline Sunday, adding the cautionary warning, "Posing Risks of Complacency."
The facts suggest a positive trend. The number of newly confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. has been dropping for a month. The number of deaths has fallen from 2,200 a day in April to closer to 1,400 a day in mid-May. Several days last week recorded fewer than 1,000 deaths, an awful toll but a clear improvement over April.
As of Friday, the rate of new cases of the coronavirus was declining in 19 states and rising in only three. New Orleans and Detroit have seen sharp drops. The number of new cases in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island has dropped. New cases in Cass County, Indiana, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where meatpacking plants had seen outbreaks, have declined.
"On eight of the past nine days," said the Times, "there have been fewer deaths announced than there were seven days prior, indicating that the virus toll appears to be easing. More than half of the 24 counties that have recorded the most coronavirus deaths, including Oakland County, Mich., and Hartford County, Conn., are seeing sustained declines."
Still, the thrust of the Times article was about the new crisis we will be courting, should we try to resume normal activities too soon. Do that, says the Times, and we could easily forfeit all the progress we have made.
Message: Social distancing, sheltering in place, wearing masks, working at home -- the practices that broke the back of the pandemic -- should be sustained for those able to do so.
Clearly, the opening in many states has been driven by popular protest and public demand. Crowds have ignored social distancing to demonstrate for an end to the shutdown. Protesters have refused to wear masks and engaged in the time-honored practice since the '60s of civil defiance and disobedience.
The protesters seem to be saying: We deplore the losses and know the risks, but we cannot live our lives behind closed doors in our homes until the elites tell us, as though we were children, when we may go out in the yard.
Hence, the next question we are all likely to confront:
If there is a sudden resurgence of the coronavirus, a second wave, and the media elite and blue state governors demand a new shutdown, a new closure of beaches, parks, shops, restaurants and churches, will the people of this republic comply with those demands or defy them?
Will the nation answer back to the elites: We did that. We sheltered in place. We wore the masks. We socially distanced. We stayed in our homes. We stayed home from work. We have done all we were told to do to contain the virus. But, now, with the shutdown having put 36 million Americans on unemployment and sunk our GDP to Depression-era levels, we're going back to work.
The political divide has already begun to appear.
Among those making the case for ending the shutdown and reopening the country and economy will be Trump, red state governors like Ron DeSantis (R) in Florida and Brian Kemp (R) in Georgia, conservatives in Congress and populists.
The proponents of a second shutdown will be liberal governors and mayors, the mainstream media and the Nancy Pelosi wing of Congress.
It should not go unmentioned that the latter's political interests are best served the longer the shutdown endures and the worse the economic situation on Nov. 3. If the economy has failed to begin a robust recovery by fall, the greater the odds that Joe Biden wins the White House.
Yet, even if the pandemic returns in the fall, the establishment cannot keep the country closed indefinitely.
Prediction: If the people conclude they have done all they can do to mitigate the suffering from a virus they cannot eradicate, they will resist the imposition of another shutdown, and the establishment will have neither the will nor ability to push them back into their homes.
Ultimately, the people will decide when this shutdown ends, and when a plurality so concludes, the elites will be swept aside.
Now, having killed a large percentage of the nursing home population thru idiotic State policies, Cuomo and other Dem Governors take out their gross mismanagement on the people and private businesses in the State. Fits right in with the Lib shibboleth of punishing the innocent and protecting the guilty.
I just today got my VA 1 year post radiation lab results. PSA was <0.01. I will no longer "worry" about that particular Cancer.
Nation would never recover. The first one was unconstitutional and a bad mistake.
Mine is a Commie detector.
No. I’ve been done with this one for several weeks. The numbers and the reality do not support the basis of the lockdown. More and more people are seeing this same thing. Very few people are going to go through this BS again without a lot of pushback. Enough so that any attempt will crumble into disarray all the way from individual businesses up through entire States. The leftists tried it once, and in many ways it worked far better than they could have hoped for. But like so many things the leftists do, the intended result(s) were not achieved. President Trump remains popular and still looks to be reelected by a significant margin. Especially if they can get the economy moving again. It will further highlight the differences between leftist policies in struggling blue States and resurgent red States. The leftists, in promoting and over hyping the pandemic, may have handed President Trump a landslide, the House and Senate, and wiped out ‘rat control of a few State legislatures and Governor’s positions.
Congrats!
I haven’t either but my son hit my key fab to my car so I am unable to start my car. I am tired to have to ask my to take me shopping. He refuses to let me go with him to Walmart which is just a little over 2 miles from our house. I am handicapped and can only walk with a cane. I have a degenerative disc disease and generative hip joint disease, which walking very painful. I hate using those handicap carts they have as they are way to slow.
Thanks for sharing. This is beautiful
Oh wow......that certainly is worth the read.....the yearning of the heart and mind for freedom without restraints.
Americans are already fed up with the first shutdown
Yep, my business has been beset by mask police and then also people that think we have too many rules. I’m over this and the virus police
Our company put unbrella picnic tables at the rear of the business with accomodations for smokers during lunch and breaks. Actually as many non-smokers as smokers used this opportunity for meetings as they did for breaks!
There’s something to be said about being ‘outdoors’ during work hours...
Probably not - but they are converting the apolitical "They're all crooks!" non-voter into someone who might go out of his (and I say "his" deliberately) way to punish Democrats at the polls this time.
Trump partially awakened this sleeping giant last time - I expect it will be fully awake and roaring by November. :)
What is this talk of a second lockdown? The virus is in decline and people want to get going.
I know—the virus needs to do as it is told! ;-)
NO
Had we known what we know now we'd have never cowered in our homes in the first place. We cannot do it again just because fascist dems want to steal an election and cling to 'emergency powers' that never go away.
I won’t. In fact I’m pretty much done with this one.
So there.
L
Many parts of the country haven’t moved past the first one yet.
The second time will not be the cakewalk the first was. People get sick of going broke.
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