Opinion: Murphy Needs to Open Everything Right Now

Gov. Murphy's Hail Mary play may have worked out for him.

He decimated the economy after his initial blunder of putting positive patients back into long-term care facilities and was hopeful for a federal bailout. Now that fellow Democrat Joe Biden is in the White House and both chambers of the House are in Democrat control, he may be able to get away with it.

The endless parade of financially irresponsible politicians in New Jersey goes back a while, all to save the state's public pension system and government workers. They happen to be the biggest contributors to Democrat campaigns, so they call the tune and the politicians dance to it. No different with Murphy. If you're in that group, congratulations — no hard feelings, just hard facts.

With COVID-19 cases dropping along with hospitalizations, he can make the "calculated risk" of opening things back up again with little fear of overwhelming the health system. Was our health system overwhelmed in 1957 with the Asian flu? Estimates are between 1 and 4 million people died worldwide, when the Earth's population was much smaller.

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The U.S. had roughly half of our current population and an estimated 120,000 people died here in America. Very few people who were around then remember there being a pandemic, but its effects worldwide were similar to today's virus. The media didn't whip up the panic that it does today and Big Pharma wasn't pushing a vaccine paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Makes you think, doesn't it?

I'm not saying there is a big conspiracy of U.S. government, media and giant pharmaceutical companies, but we sure acted differently in 1957 when medical science wasn't nearly as advanced as it is today. Why wasn't there as much of a push for readily available therapeutics as there was for a vaccine? Things never should have been shut down to the extent they were after the initial 15 days, but for a variety of reasons, people here in New Jersey and other parts of the country went along with it, to devastating ends.

If you're in a secure job, such as in government, you haven't felt the economic storm like many others did, and your guy Murphy will be here to make sure of that til at least early next year and maybe beyond. God help us all if that's the case. You may want to stick it out here for the long run, but your kids and grandchildren may not when they see the price they'll pay.