HHS’s Azar says there are have been no coronavirus spikes linked to states that have reopened

Despite the media’s relentless attacks against Donald Trump’s push to get America back to work, new evidence has surfaced showing that reopening is not causing the dreaded second wave of coronavirus cases.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar revealed in a CNN interview on Sunday morning that “we are seeing that, in areas that are opening, we’re not seeing the spike in cases.” In fact, Azar pointed out that “We still see spikes in some areas that are, in fact, closed, very localized situations.”

NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo even admitted last week that 66% of new COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state were from people that spent the majority of their time at home.

Cuomo and the media shrugged off the obvious trend, though, chalking it up to “personal behavior,” suggesting that those following shelter-at-home orders that still contracted the disease may not be washing their hands enough or adequately socially distancing.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R) was excoriated by the media for beginning to reopen the state on April 24, but now — weeks after reopening — the state has still not seen a spike in cases.

“Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th,” Kemp tweeted on May 9.

Despite the mounting evidence that reopening the economy is not likely to cause an exponential increase in deaths, media outlets such as the Washington Post are still pushing the narrative. The Post’s editorial board editor Fred Hiatt published a piece on Sunday reiterating the same tired talking points:

Trump is busily inciting people across the country — and especially in swing states — to ignore public health guidance […] Such recklessness, in defiance of his own administration’s guidance, risks igniting new waves of the disease. That could lead not only to thousands more deaths but also to further devastation of the economy.

Conveniently, Hiatt completely ignored the fact that dozens of states have already been in the process of reopening — some several weeks now — and, according to the New York Times on Saturday, cases and deaths in the US are declining across the board.

Democrats have been hyperventilating about the risk of reopening for weeks, but Azar pointed out that never-ending lockdowns have consequences that reach beyond Americans’ pocketbooks. He said in another interview with CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday:

It’s actually health versus health. We see- we see suicidality. We see reduction in cardiac procedures, cancer screenings, pediatric vaccinations. There is a real- a very real health consequence to these shutdowns that must be balanced against as we- as we try to reopen this economy and move forward.

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