Last Call For Open For Getting The Business

Texas is open for business and COVID-19 is more than happy to take new customers.

The latest number of of coronavirus cases in Texas jumped by 1,801 in a single day, the highest daily rate since the state started tracking data. The number of cases reported now stands at 46,999, according to the latest figures released by Johns Hopkins University.

There are currently 19,093 active cases statewide with 1,791 patients hospitalized -- which is an increase of 75 from yesterday.

A total of 678,471 people have been tested out of a statewide population of around 29 million people.

The state of Texas has also reported 1,305 fatalities -- an increase of 33 but down from the two day high of 58 and 56 the previous two days.

Again, the choices we made to close in April gave us good numbers in May.  The choice to reopen in May without having a testing, contact tracing, and treatment protocol in place means the numbers will get very bad in June and onward.

As in Kentucky, a federal judge in North Carolina has reopened churches despite Gov. Roy Cooper's orders.

A federal judge issued an order on Saturday that allows North Carolina religious leaders to reopen their doors to their congregations in spite of the governor’s warning that they risk spreading coronavirus.

Gov. Roy Cooper said he wouldn’t appeal the ruling blocking his restrictions on indoor religious services.

A hearing is scheduled May 29 on whether the order will become permanent.

The order prevents Cooper from taking enforcement actions against religious worshipers but also states they should observe recommendations for social distancing and reduce transmission of the virus when possible.

Governor Cooper's spokesperson issued the following statement in response to the order.

"We don't want indoor meetings to become hotspots for the virus and our health experts continue to warn that large groups sitting inside for long periods of time are much more likely to cause the spread of COVID-19. While our office disagrees with the decision, we will not appeal, but instead urge houses of worship and their leaders to voluntarily follow public health guidance to keep their members safe."

There's more and more evidence that America is simply bored of social distancing and that we refuse to do it.  Even in New York City.

Lockdown-weary New Yorkers ditched the distancing to get social instead this weekend — transforming parts of the Big Apple into a raucous, late-season Mardi Gras.

Yet the city’s COVID-be-damned attitude was nothing compared with the scene in Belmar, NJ, a beach popular with Staten Islanders and Brooklynites.

Huge crowds waited shoulder-to-shoulder on the boardwalk for their turn to buy beach badges.

“The line for beach badges was like four non-socially distanced blocks long,” tweeted Jarrett Seidler, who described the boardwalk as “obscenely packed.”

Outside popular bars on the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, the East and West Villages and in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, The Post found booze hounds arriving for the takeout cocktails and then staying — and staying — to sip drinks on packed sidewalks and soak up the lively scenes.

“How are you going to drink with a mask on?” one reveler, hairdresser Akeem ­Kelley, told The Post.

His mask dangled below his chin as he stood outside the Upper East Side’s popular Dorrian’s Red Hand bar — where crowds exceeding three dozen people, nearly all unmasked, were found in the early evenings of Friday and Saturday.

“They don’t care about us,” said Ann Trent, 72, of Manhattan, on Saturday.

She sat on a bench at the west end of the Brooklyn Bridge as a steady stream of mask-free sightseers and bicyclists passed her by, and she mused, “What happened to all of us protecting everyone else?”

The crowds, which enjoyed summer-like weather that climbed to a high of 76 degrees on Saturday, apparently had forgotten that they live in the epicenter of the pandemic.

Outside the East Village Social on St. Marks Place, two guitarists helped kick off the weekend’s festivities Friday night by plugging into a portable amplifier and jamming for tips from the gathered crowd.

“Obviously too many people,” one bartender conceded to The Post on Saturday.

Most of the bar-hopping social-distance scofflaws who were observed Friday and Saturday were young — and many chose not to wear masks.

Donald Trump and his staff consider the pandemic to be "over", so for tens of millions of Americans, the pandemic is over.

Look at Illinoisans crossing the border into Wisconsin.

On the first weekend without any statewide stay-at-home orders, Wisconsin was open for business, and at least along the southern border, people from Illinois poured in.

Hundreds of day-trippers, including many in cars with license plates from the Land of Lincoln, flocked to the tourist haven of Lake Geneva on Saturday.

They shopped, ate lunch, strolled the banks of the lake, went on boat tours and set up picnics.

And outside, at least, there wasn't a lot of social distancing.

Illinois is still locked down to fight the novel coronavirus while Wisconsin is under a patchwork of local regulations after Wednesday's decision by the state Supreme Court to throw out Gov. Tony Evers' safer-at-home order.

“Illinois is closed and we’ve been wanting to get out,” said Castano Penn, a Chicagoan who works at a senior living center and was not wearing a mask Saturday as he strolled the streets of Lake Geneva.

"I know it’s probably bad," he said. "I’m just kind of done with it all.”

But the coronavirus is certainly not done burning its way through the global population.

You may be "done" with COVID-19.  COVID-19 sure as hell isn't done with you and your family and your community.  Not by a long shot.

The second, far deadlier wave of COVID-19 infections is now open for business and that will be frighteningly apparent in a few more weeks.