Good morning. States are lifting pandemic restrictions before health experts think is wise.
A crowd outside a bar in Columbia, S.C., on the first night of extended operating hours.Travis Dove for The New York Times
‘It is time!’ Or is it?

By now, many of the basic facts about how Covid-19 spreads are clear. People tend to become infected by inhaling droplets that come from the mouths and noses of others. Crowded indoor spaces — where infected droplets can linger in the air — are the most dangerous places. They are particularly dangerous when people are not wearing masks.

Yet consider some of the new policies that state governments have put in place this week:

Texas and Mississippi both announced they would lift their mask mandates (following Iowa and Montana, which did so last month) and allow businesses to operate at full capacity.
Massachusetts removed capacity limits on restaurants.
South Carolina will allow gatherings of more than 250 people.

In announcing the changes, Tate Reeves, the governor of Mississippi, wrote: “It is time!” Greg Abbott, Texas’ governor, said, “State mandates are no longer needed,” while adding that he hoped Texans would practice “personal vigilance.”

People’s desire to return to normal life is understandable. If anything, many medical experts believe that the country has been too slow to restart some activities, like outdoor socializing and, above all, in-person school with precautions. The costs of an unending shutdown — in lost learning, lost earnings and mental-health problems — do sometimes outweigh the reduced risk of Covid transmission.

But many of the changes that went into effect yesterday are different, these same experts say: They represent a rushed return to normalcy, rather than a careful weighing of costs and benefits.

“Ugh,” Tara C. Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University, wrote, saying that the Texas changes could cause a rebound in cases. Dr. Leana Wen of George Washington University called the lifting of mask mandates an irresponsible mistake, because masks let businesses and schools safely remain open. Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine told The Houston Chronicle: “I would recommend holding off. Let’s wait another two weeks.”
A drive-through vaccination site in Robstown, Texas, last month.Go Nakamura/Reuters
Better does not mean over

It’s true that the Covid news over the past month has been enormously positive. Regular readers know that I think journalists and scientists have sometimes been too dour — to the point of presenting a misleading picture, especially about the vaccines. Still, there is a big difference between a less severe problem and a solved problem.

The pandemic is a long way from over. The number of confirmed new cases has stopped falling in the past two weeks, both in the U.S. and worldwide, perhaps because of the spread of highly contagious new virus variants. In the U.S., the average daily number of cases is higher than at almost any point last summer. Over the past week, more than 2,000 Americans have died each day on average — worse than any point last summer.
By The New York Times | Sources: Health agencies and hospitals

“Please hear me clearly,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the C.D.C., said on Monday. “At this level of cases, with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained.”

Politicians defended the new round of changes by pointing to the sharp decline in cases since January. And that decline does justify a loosening of some restrictions, many epidemiologists say. It’s even possible that a continuing increase in vaccinations will be powerful enough to overcome the rush to loosen. Nobody can be sure of Covid’s future path.

The question is which risks bring enough benefit to be worth taking. Does it make sense to give people permission to shed their masks? Or crowd into enclosed spaces where they will exchange droplets of breath?

Most scientists say no — and say that the changes have increased the chances of avoidable infection, illness and death.
THE LATEST NEWS
THE VIRUS

President Biden said the U.S. would have enough vaccine doses by the end of May to cover every American adult, two months earlier than he previously estimated.
Brazil’s Covid crisis continues to worsen. It’s a warning for the rest of the world, experts say.
Vacant offices and storefronts are driving down the value of commercial real estate in many cities, hurting the tax base.
And employers are wrestling with a question: Does it make sense to go back to the way things were?
The Times’s Carl Zimmer and Keith Collins explain what vaccine efficacy numbers really mean.
Dolly Parton received a dose of the Moderna vaccine, which she helped fund. She tweeted that she had gotten “a dose of her own medicine.”
The New York Times
Me: Masks caused the reduction of Covid outbreaks – not the vaccine – too soon for that to have any effect yet