The 7 stages of reassuring the public that your state didn’t open too soon

1. We opened the state, and COVID cases haven’t gone up. The alarmists were wrong! 2. OK, cases are going up, but it’s just because we’re doing more testing. What really matters is test positivity rate. 3. OK, test positivity is going up, but it’s just young people with mild symptoms. What really matters is hospitalizations. 4. OK, hospitalizations are going up, but these aren’t critical cases. What really matters are deaths. 5. OK, deaths are going up, but these are people who really died of something else and just happened to test positive for COVID. 6. OK, people are dying of COVID, but these are people who would have died eventually anyway. COVID just changed the TIMING of their deaths. 7. [Silence]