like it or not, the US economy's restarting

 From The Epoch Times:

Multiple Governors Announce Significant Rollbacks of CCP Virus Restrictions

Governors across the United States have either ended their states’ COVID-19 mask mandate or are considering ending it soon—and have ordered rollbacks on capacity limits and restrictions on businesses.

In one example, Utah’s statewide mask order is scheduled to end April 10 under a law that was approved on March 5, and Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, told Fox News on March 6 that he won’t veto it.

“We anticipate that by April 1, every adult in the state of Utah will be eligible for the vaccine,” Cox said. Utah, he said will “have about 1.5 million vaccines in the state by April 10, when that mandate goes away.”

Meanwhile, Texas, Mississippi, Iowa, Montana, and North Dakota have now ended, or soon will end, statewide face coverings amid the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee never required face coverings.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, said March 4 that the state will end its mandate in about a month, saying that starting April 9, wearing face coverings will be “a matter of personal responsibility and not a government mandate.”

On March 2, Mississippi and Texas both ended their requirements for masks and allowed businesses to operate at full capacity. The move drew condemnation from President Joe Biden and other White House officials.

“Starting tomorrow, we are lifting all of our county mask mandates and businesses will be able to operate at full capacity without any state-imposed rules,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, said in a Facebook post last week. “Our hospitalizations and case numbers have plummeted, and the vaccine is being rapidly distributed. It is time!”

And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, said the state is “100 percent open.”

What will the left do in response to this long-overdue explosion of freedom?  Well, predictably, it'll freak out at first, and we'll once again see a deluge of vitriol from the legacy media about how opening the economy equates to killing Grandma, being racist, etc.  Of course, Andrew Cuomo has taught the nation all about killing Grandma (and so have some of his fellow governors), so this hypocritical, self-righteous hyperventilation is easily ignored.  Next, the left will make efforts to persuade individual lefties to boycott any and all "reopened" states, but that's not going to stop Californians from continuing to pour into Texas.  (I have very mixed feelings about that.  I kind-of hope the satirical Babylon Bee is right:  Texas opened itself up specifically to scare Californians away.  When blue-staters bring their blue voting habits into a red state, they ruin things for everyone eventually.)

I also wouldn't be surprised to see COVID death statistics go up during this reopening, but I doubt it's going to be a major spike.  The infection rates might spike, but rampant infection will also lead to herd immunity more quickly; when SARS-CoV-2 finally becomes endemic in the US population, it'll simply become part of the new normal.  You hear about widespread flu during flu season; you hear about occasional spates of flesh-eating bacteria; you'll doubtless hear about patches of COVID here and there.  A new normal.  If you were hoping for total eradication, well... look at polio.  It's been effectively eradicated from the world's population, but does this mean it's totally gone?  Horror-movie logic applies here:  if you can't definitively confirm the monster is gone, then assume it's not gone.  We assume it's not gone a lot when it comes to other diseases and calamities—cancer, murder, leprosy, AIDS, etc.  Get used to it.  China fucked up, and this is now the world we live in.

Granted, countries with senior-heavy populations like Japan and South Korea might need to be more cautious than other countries.  COVID is a problem for the elderly and the infirm.  But these East Asian nations already mask up for reasons other than COVID, so I suspect that they, too, will arrive at their own culturally determined version of the new normal.  We all will.  And life will go on, hopefully minus the current superstitious paranoia.