Starting Monday, May 4, certain non-essential Missouri businesses are allowed to re-open with certain guidelines. Large Missouri cities like Kansas City and St. Louis have extended their stay-at-home orders to at least mid-May, but smaller surrounding counties may reopen businesses this week. These businesses should not go back to “business as usual,” and here’s why.
- These recommendations for reopening do not come from medical professionals.
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During these unprecedented times, lawmakers and politicians have been thrust into the healthcare world, and most officials are doing their best to stay up-to-date on all things COVID-19. However, most politicians do not have a background in medicine or epidemiology, and therefore are not qualified to make educated, reliable healthcare decisions without consulting with medical professionals. Keep in mind that the Missouri reopening is not recommended by medical professionals, only politicians, and the main motivator of the reopening is economic recovery.
- We are seeing improvements, but COVID-19 is not gone.
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Smaller counties in Missouri are experiencing decreases in cases, but the pandemic is far from over. We cannot view every little improvement as a sign to stop the measures that caused the improvement in the first place. The best way I’ve seen it described is this: If you’re skydiving, your parachute is used to help slow your descent. So, would you take the parachute off as soon as you start slowing down? I certainly hope that you would wait until you are safely on the ground.
- There could be consequences if we open up too soon.
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I get it. Staying at home for the past month has sucked. For those of us who have followed the stay-at-home recommendations, being stuck at home for the majority of the past 30 days has been nothing short of torturous. But if we open back up too soon and see a second huge spike in cases, the last month will have been for nothing. We’ll have to start back at square one. And the only thing I can think of to make all of this worse is starting it all over.
Yes, some parts of life are not fun right now. But we have a collective responsibility to do what we can to flatten the curve. Right now, the best chance we have at beating this beast of a disease is to stay home as much as humanly possible. Just because movie theaters and nail salons are reopening in some parts of the country does not mean that we all need to run to get our manicures and catch a flick. Try to stick to your at-home pampering and Netflix marathons for a little longer to ensure that the world is a safe, healthy place for all.Â