> The democrats are not in control of the country, they are in control of a few states...< Yes but (assuming I understand your point correctly) the U.S. federa

> The democrats are not in control of the country, they are in control of a few states...< Yes but (assuming I understand your point correctly) the U.S. federal government isn't in control of the country either in this context. They certainly could have been more cooperative with states in terms of distributing supplies and communicating new developments as they came in but, short of bringing in troops and asserting themselves by force, they lack the authority to implement a hard nation wide lockdown. Given the early panic over the virus it's hard to imagine a federal level quarantine not resulting in violence. >No one would say NY would be better off if they hadn't cut it down a lot and shut down.< I'm not sure if I phrased my first post badly or if we agree here. When I said the lockdowns were egregious compared to Rep. states I was speaking relative to the present. I agree things would have been much worse if early and cautious action hadn't been taken. >Now look at Texas where their daily positive covid 19 detection has double in the past weeks from about 750 a day to 1500 a day. They are going to have a lot more people getting really sick, because that just following from daily exposure.< This is basically the entire national debate. We've seen increasingly that just getting the corona virus isn't a death sentence for most people. Texas' infections have been rising, which will by extension lead to some amount of additional deaths, but Texas also has an extremely low death toll compared to other states in terms of deaths per million people (going by Worldometer). The significance of this is that most infected arent going to die and dying after infection, for the most part, isn't a random lottery and so whether it's wise or not to continue to force people to remain in lock-down is a value/political judgement rather than a distinctly scientific one. This holds especially true when people in need are refraining from visiting hospitals for fear of getting the virus and instances of depression and suicide have risen dramatically as a consequence of lock-down policies. You can argue fewer people might still die with heavy lock-down measures in the present but those deaths arent the same people and so what's ultimately being dicussed is whether or not it's fair to drive certain individuals to death or unnecessary physical suffering in order to save people they largrly have no relation with. And that's before discussing the small business owners who have lost their life's work due to government mandates (consumers didn't stop going out by choice after all). My point about the parties themselves was purely meant to highlight that at this stage both sides could probably be managing their policies better (regardless of value distinctions) but neither wants to make it look like the other team was correct. The irony is that neither side would be taking the same actions since for Dem states like California this would be loosening up a little while for Rep stated it would be tightening up or at least implementing financial support for at-risk individuals and their cohabitants. From here, my broader point was that it's an election year and so, regardless of if any particular state is actually beholden to a particular plan of action, anyone who breaks too far off from the party line (in a manner that risks bad optics) is going to lose clout within their party. I'm not endorsing that as the way things should be but that's the apparent state of things going by the predominantly partisan split in terms of current lock-down action.