Jaselle Ríos

Professor Hugetz

ENGL 1301-05

October 26th, 2020

Intro and First Two Body Paragraphs

The majority of 2020, our lives have been consumed with worry and stress about the

immediate threat of the ongoing pandemic, Covid-19. Corona infections spread like wildfire all

throughout the world, and with no certified cure and with symptoms that can either appear or not,

it’s proven extremely difficult to slow down the spread. With new information coming every day

about new symptoms and new questions, the question is still in the air of whether or not to

reopen the United States in order to prevent a economic downfall. The virus has been a part of

everyone’s lives for a while now, and everyone is anxious to ‘return back to normal’, but is it

worth it? While some leaders, economists, health care professionals, and politicians believe that

the worst of the Corona Virus pandemic is behind us and we should reopen the country, others

believe it is too risky to complexly reopen a country while infection rates are continuing to grow.

When the virus broke, everything came to a halt. Corporations, small businesses, schools,

everything was shut down in order to prevent the spread. It began with employees being laid off

in the masses, the U.S lost 20.6 million jobs from March to April alone.

(https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/us-job-losses-due-covid-19-highest-

great-depression) This means that the United States saw a unemployment rate lower than that of

the Great Depression. This information could be taken to the side of the debate that the states
need to open back up in order to provide employment and attempt to help the current state of the

economy. America was devastated when the pandemic hit, not only by the numbers of infections

and death that took a toll, but also on the economy and the sudden drop of unemployment. Many

went jobless, and lost their only source of income. So one could argue that reopening could give

these people a chance to gain their livelihood back.

The rise of cases that came with the reopening of businesses should have been a warning

sign to government officials, but the economy was in such a rut, it seemed to be the only option

to help save our economy. In the reopening of states after a few months of quarantine, COVID-

19 cases began to surge in the places that reopened. While some states experienced a steady

opening with no immediate breakouts, other states were seeing a massive rise in cases within

weeks.