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Texas and Mississippi to Allow Full Concerts With No Mask Restrictions Later This Month

  • Axl Rosenberg
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With vaccines for the coronavirus slowly-but-surely becoming available and the weather slowly-but-surely becoming nicer, it’s only natural that people are starting to talk about trying to open up this pit (and by “this pit,” I mean “the world”) again.

Having said that, people may be getting carried away and trying to open up this pit a little too fast: according to NPR, few states have managed to get at least one of two required vaccination shots to more than 15-20% of their population (Johnson & Johnsons’ single-shot vaccine was approved by the FDA less than a week ago). Experts believe that we need roughly 70-90% of the population to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity. And while President Biden believes that all adults who want the vaccine will have access by the end of May…, y’know, it’s currently just the beginning of March.

So I hear about restaurants and music venues and movie theaters opening again, even if just at limited capacity, and, y’know, of course I GET IT — I want those things to re-open as quickly as anyone. But when you’re talking about less than one-fifth of the population being even just partially vaccinated, when there’s all these new variants popping up all over the place, and… shoving a bunch of people into a room with no masks and no capacity limits, well, that seems ill-advised, doesn’t it?

This is all a long preface to reporting that Texas and Mississippi’s respective governors, Gregory Abbott and Tate Reeves, have announced that they are going to allow businesses to re-open without requiring masks but at full capacity. That includes concert venues and sporting arenas and stadiums.

Mississipi’s restrictions are dunzo as of today (Wednesday, March 3); Texas follows suit a week from today (Wednesday, March 10).

As of this writing, only 14.1% of Mississippi’s population has gotten at least one shot, and only 7.3% has gotten both shots. Texas is doing even worse, with a mere 12.7% having received one dose and 6.5% having received two. That means there’s roughly 2.5 million people in Mississippi who haven’t received any shot yet, and approximately 25 million who remain shotless in Texas. COVID-19 testing has fallen, nationwide, 30%, according to The New York Times, who also note that the U.S. is still reporting 65,000 new coronavirus cases a day and 2,000 new coronavirus deaths a day.

So while Steel Panther and Static-X will probably be playing sold out shows in those states by this time next week, I wouldn’t advise attending them. (I mean, I wouldn’t advise seeing Static-X under any circumstances… but if you absolutely must, definitely don’t risk your life to do it.)

Needless to say, Governors Abbott and Reed are both Republicans. They also both questioned the legitimacy of Biden’s election.

Individual businesses in both states will have discretion on whether to enforce their own capacity limits or mask mandates.

Read the governors’ statements on the matter below, then head to the comments section to call us libtard cucks. We are only too happy to be the libtard cucks whose families survived a pandemic.

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