chrismat

I grew up in a household with two smoking parents, and it sucked. So on a personal level, nothing would be better than the world collectively giving up the nasty habit. However, I would never, ever advocate or vote for forcing people to do that. Why? Because you could make the exact same case for every single vice. Alcohol has zero benefits for your health - don't even try to give me the "but wine has antioxidants" B.S., the math between the negatives and positives is still in the red (ha!). How about caffeine and other stimulants? Foods too high in fat? Red meat? Too much sunshine? XYZ thing that is considered "unhealthy" this week by the "experts"? Don't get me wrong, reasonable limits imposed at a societal level can certainly make sense (banning smoking from restaurants and airplanes, having blood-alcohol driving laws, et cetera). But the fundamental question here is do you really want to trust your personal decisions on health, diet, and entertainment to those elected via a popularity contest? And the "experts" they solicit their advice from?

The population of Texas is 29,000,000 - so even (incorrectly) assuming that these 50,000 people died exclusively from Covid and not compounded by several co-morbities... that's 0.17% of the state's population. And even as a factor of the number of cases in TX (2.84mil, last check), that comes to 1.7%.

Not sure where you live - but I travel full time in an RV and have stayed and traveled through El Paso, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and everywhere in between in the last 3 months. Maybe some are still hiding at home, but from my experience the overwhelming majority of Texans seem to be out enjoying the sunshine and open businesses.