Name: The COVID-19 Disaster That Did Not Happen in Texas
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The COVID-19 Disaster That Did Not Happen in Texas

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When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, lifted his statewide face mask mandate and his limits on business occupancy in early March, Democrats that he was inviting a public health disaster. Yet a month and a half later, newly identified coronavirus cases in Texas have by more than 50 percent, and daily deaths have dropped even more.Meanwhile, states with stricter COVID-19 regulations have seen spikes in daily new cases. This is not the pattern you would expect to see if government-imposed restrictions played a crucial role in curtailing the pandemic, as advocates of those policies assume.Abbott's critics did not mince words. President Joe Biden the governor's decision reflected "Neanderthal thinking." Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party,&nbsp;&nbsp;it was "extraordinarily dangerous" and "will kill Texans."One reason those dark prophecies have not come true: The practical impact of Abbott's changes was much less significant than his detractors implied.Most businesses in Texas had been allowed to operate at 75 percent of capacity since mid-October, when Abbott also&nbsp;&nbsp;bars to reopen. It was implausible that removing the cap would have much of an impact on virus transmission, even in businesses that were frequently hitting the 75 percent limit.While Abbott said Texans would no longer be legally required to cover their faces in public, he urged them to keep doing so, and many businesses continued to require masks. At the stores I visit in Dallas, there has been no noticeable change in policy or in customer compliance.Conversely, face mask mandates and occupancy limits did not prevent COVID-19 surges in states such as , where the seven-day average of newly confirmed infections has risen more than fivefold since March 1; , which has seen a nearly threefold increase; and , where that number has more than doubled. Cases also rose during that period, although less dramatically, in other states with relatively strict COVID-19 rules, including , , , , , and .Florida, a state often criticized as lax, also has seen in daily new cases: 34 percent since mid-March. But Florida, despite its relatively old population, still has a per capita COVID-19 only a bit higher than California's, even though the latter state's restrictions have been much more sweeping and prolonged.In any event, COVID-19 surges are happening mainly in states with more legal restrictions than Florida or Texas is imposing. The Washington Post nevertheless "experts…agree" that rising infection numbers are largely due to "a broad loosening of public health measures, such as mask mandates and limits on indoor dining"—a claim that is tenable only if you ignore all the countervailing examples.States differ from each other in various ways that may affect the spread of COVID-19, of course, so you can learn only so much from comparisons like these. But several systematic studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of broad legal restrictions.While&nbsp;some researchers have&nbsp;&nbsp;that lockdowns had an&nbsp;&nbsp;others&nbsp;&nbsp;there is&nbsp;&nbsp;that they affected&nbsp;&nbsp;or&nbsp;. According to a&nbsp;Nature Human Behaviour&nbsp;&nbsp;of 226 countries published in November, "a suitable combination of NPIs [nonpharmaceutical interventions] is necessary to curb the spread of the virus," but "less disruptive and costly NPIs can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic ones (for example, a national lockdown)."In a 2020 National Bureau of Economic Research&nbsp;, UCLA economist Andrew Atkeson and two other researchers looked at COVID-19 trends in 23 countries and 25 U.S. states that had seen more than 1,000 deaths from the disease by late July. After finding little evidence that variations in public policy explained the course of the epidemic in different places, they concluded that the role of legal restrictions "is likely overstated."That much seems safe to say in light of more recent experience in the United States.© Copyright 2021 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, lifted his statewide face mask mandate and his limits on business occupancy in early March, Democrats that he was inviting a public health disaster. Yet a month and a half later, newly identified coronavirus cases in Texas have by more than 50 percent, and daily deaths have dropped even more.Meanwhile, states with stricter COVID-19 regulations have seen spikes in daily new cases. This is not the pattern you would expect to see if government-imposed restrictions played a crucial role in curtailing the pandemic, as advocates of those policies...

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Jacob Sullum

Reason is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 50,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune. Reason was founded in 1968 by Lanny Friedlander (1947–2011), a student at Boston University, as a more-or-less monthly mimeographed publication. In 1970 it was purchased by Robert W. Poole Jr., Manuel S. Klausner, and Tibor R. Machan, who set it on a more regular publishing schedule.

The COVID-19 Disaster That Did Not Happen in Texas

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