(This chart uses figures from The COVID Tracking Project.)Governor Abbott is taking this first steps to reopening the Texas economy today. At 12:01am, he is ending the stay-at-home orders and the mask wearing orders in many Texas cities (and those activities will now be voluntary), and is letting restaurants, malls, movie theaters, churches, libraries, museums, and retail stores reopen for business (at 25% capacity). In about two weeks, he will let them go to 50% capacity (and counties with less than 5 Coronavirus cases can reopen now at 50%).
But he is jumping the gun. The chart above shows the number of deaths due to the virus for April. Note that the deaths continue to rise, with no flattening. He is playing to the wishes of Donald Trump, and in doing so, he's putting money over the lives of Texans.
NOTE -- The state of Texas has a population of 29,000,000. About 314,790 tests have been done for the Coronavirus. That's 1.085% of the population. In other words, the governor doesn't have any idea how widespread the virus is among the Texas population -- and neither does anyone else.
