‘Every person has learned a harsh lesson about social distancing. We don’t need a nanny state to tell people how to be careful…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) With about two weeks left until many of the state-issued shelter-in-place decrees end, some restless citizens are starting to demand that America reopen for business and return to work sooner than laters.
In North Carolina, a Facebook group called #ReopenNC, which had gotten more than 26,000 members as of Tuesday morning, held a protest outside the state capitol in downtown Raleigh.
“We want to Reopen NC,” said Ashley Smith, one of the administrators of the group, told WCNC. “Our economy cannot stand for this.”
Although police arrested at least one the protestors for violating Gov. Roy Cooper’s stay-at-home orders, many remained undeterred, according to CBS 17. Some retreated to their cars but continued honking their horns as police used a bullhorn to try to disperse them.
Police are telling people they’re violating the executive order and need to be at least six feet apart. Some are going to their cars to honk @WNCN pic.twitter.com/B1nr974FSf
— Michael Hyland (@MichaelWNCN) April 14, 2020
Similar demonstrations occurred last week in Ohio and Wyoming, reported Fox News.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, where Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer‘s restrictions have been among the most draconian—including a ban on “travel between two residences”—a group called Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine had received well over 300,000 members as of Tuesday and was planning a rally for April 30.
But #reopenNC is dwarfed by the Michigan FB group – “Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine” – which has 262,000 members, 2.6% of the state’s population! In a week. As someone wrote me, people in MI know when you lose jobs, they don’t come back. https://t.co/j1O9hYDnUg pic.twitter.com/AcFn0aJ5Wi
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 13, 2020
A second group in Michigan, titled “Operation Gridlock,” was being led by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and planned a “drive-by” demonstration in Lansing on Wednesday, with at least 15,000 cars expected to participate.
“People with issues are having trouble seeing a doctor because everyone is focused on the virus” one of the organizers, Meshawn Maddock, told Fox News. “My husband and I are checking in on my in-laws, but even doing that is now breaking the law.”
Michigan reportedly totaled about 25,000 total confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,600 deaths on Tuesday—around 6 percent of the national death total.
As has been the case with most urban areas with high populations of lower-income residents, Detroit has been among the hardest areas hit. Wayne County, one of several that divides the metropolitan region, has the third-highest number of deaths in the country, with just over 700 as of Tuesday.
However, that number is far eclipsed by New York County, where more than 7,300 deaths accounted for roughly 30 percent of the total U.S. mortality rate, according to the data from Johns Hopkins University.
Even so, several of the U.S. hot zones—or those that were projected to be ravaged by the pandemic—already are reporting a decline in new cases, including New York.
Many of the dramatic projections of an apocalyptic toll have been revised drastically downward. And several regions are said to be over-reporting their COVID deaths due to the loose guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that allow them to count anyone suspected of having it.
The result is a growing skepticism and cynicism among those who see the greater devastation being the economic impact of the closures.
Fox News reported that “16.8 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last three weeks—meaning one in ten working Americans was out of a job.”
Fearmongering media and left-wing partisans continue to justify the curtailment of personal liberty and the economy-killing restrictions, suggesting that “contrarian” opponents are in denial of the virus and have been given false information.
Many, however, support measures to prevent its spread, while simply demanding that common-sense be restored to mitigate, rather than exacerbate, the negative fallout.
“Every person has learned a harsh lesson about social distancing,” Maddock said. “We don’t need a nanny state to tell people how to be careful.”
Even New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, despite his state, which just passed the 10,000 mark in COVID deaths, having accounted for more than 40 percent of the nationwide total, acknowledged that an indefinite shutdown was not in the cards.
“We should start looking forward to ‘reopening’, but reopening with a plan and a smart plan because if you do it wrong, it can backfire,” Cuomo said recently during a meeting with five other northeastern governors.
“What the art form is going to be here is doing that smartly and doing that productively and doing that in a coordinated way—in coordination with other states in the area and doing it as a cooperative effort where we learn from each other where we share information, share resources, where we share intelligence.”
However, President Donald Trump—who has been enthusiastic about returning the country to normal as quickly as possible—questioned Cuomo’s suggestion that he and the other left-wing governors would be holding the reins.
He reiterated on Tuesday that he had ‘total’ authority over when to reopen.
Trump pointed to Cuomo’s hypocrisy in demanding extensive emergency help from the federal government while threatening to sue if the president usurped his autonomous decision-making ability.
Cuomo’s been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state’s responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc. I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020
In a separate tweet, Trump seemed to suggest that if Democratic governors and other leaders attempted to push beyond the limits of reason, .
Tell the Democrat Governors that “Mutiny On The Bounty” was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020
In the 1962 Marlon Brando film, based on a 1932 novel of the same name, the crew aboard the title ship takes charge and sets the captain adrift, only for the crew to then turn on the new “captain” when he tries to reinstate order, setting the ship ablaze.
During his daily press briefing on Monday, Trump outlined his own plans for reopening the country, indicating that the U.S. was “very close.”
“We’re very close to completing a plan to open our country.” pic.twitter.com/xnV4XxwnjL
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 13, 2020