Next coronavirus phase calls for cautious but immediate reopening of economy: Jim DeMint
Six weeks into the COVID-19 lockdowns, many Americans and their state governments are ready to start reopening their economies. The elite left and media mob — who are still getting paid to work from home — are outraged. But their hysteria has nothing to do with public health. It’s about politics, power and the 2020 election.
Governors like Henry McMaster in South Carolina, Brian Kemp in Georgia and Greg Abbott in Texas are doing the right thing by rolling out careful, prudent and data-based plans to safely reopen their states. So are other governors like Kristi Noem in South Dakota and Mike Dunleavy in Alaska, whose less densely populated states had no need to fully lock down in the first place. In every instance, these governors have applied best practices to the specific needs of their communities, and ably led their states through the initial phase of the epidemic.
The operative word here is “phase.”
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The purpose of the lockdowns was to slow the spread of the disease in these early, urgent weeks, to keep our front-line health care system from being overrun — to “flatten the curve,” as we often heard from the experts.
And we have! Infections are falling. Our hospitals were not overrun. Our heroic front-line health care workers and first responders endured extremely difficult days in several heavily populated cities, and we now have the capacity to start managing this epidemic more like a normal disease.
Thanks to President Donald Trump’s leadership, our manufacturing and supply lines are finally producing the personal protective equipment, the medical supplies and the medicines necessary to fight back. Businesses around the country have used this painful timeout to reorganize their operations — not just to accommodate social distancing, but to meet changing market demands.
Contrary to the media narrative, the data is unclear on how much good these shutdowns have actually done. And there is no scientific evidence to justify forcing Americans to stay in their homes for months on end.
What is clear is that the emergency phase of the epidemic is drawing to a close, and that our economy is on the verge of collapse. The next phase calls for cautious, prudent but immediate reopening of our economy. Different regions and communities and industries will reopen at different speeds. And that is exactly what America’s good governors and mayors are trying to do.
Americans have done the hard things to keep us safe. Now it’s time for politicians and the media to give them back their jobs and their lives. We are grateful for the courageous governors who are doing the right thing.
Former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., is chairman of the Conservative Partnership Institute and serves on the presidential working group to reopen the economy.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Next coronavirus phase: cautious but immediate reopening of America
