With Texas being one of the many states seeing recent surges in Coronavirus cases, those in charge such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott  have been urged to speak on the subject. As of November 18, 2020, Governor Abbott turned down any ideas of putting Texas into lockdown and stated that trust still remains in the two month old blueprint he has been following. Tensions rise with local officials and citizens who believe that the authorities should enforce stricter health safety regulations such as shutdowns, mask mandates, strict social distancing laws, and legal punishment for those who don’t follow are justly and rightly worried about a newer and much worse coronavirus outbreak.

    The authorities should absolutely enforce health safety regulations more strictly and those who do not comply should be charged with public endangerment. 

   Social distancing should be one of the highest enforced regulations. When we sneeze or cough and our bacteria enters the air, just standing far enough away from someone could save their life. This is the easiest way for someone to protect themselves, others, and their personal rights to choose whether to wear a mask or not. 

   Making guidelines like monitoring capacity in shops and stores needs to be mandatory, because it protects the safety of the workers, customers, and the sanitation of the products. Owners of stores of shops should be aware of how much square footage the store has and then, with the six feet guidelines, mark places on the floor that people can stand. Especially in the fruit and vegetable sections of grocery stores, it is difficult for the employees to make sure that the products are sanitary, but if there are places marked on the floor of where an individual can stand or walk, it can be easier for them to sanitize the products and areas that are heavily touched. 

   Not following these guidelines are by definition deliberately engaging in behavior that poses a serious or substantial risk of injury to another person, and are viable to be charged with public endangerment. If citizens are given multiple options of safety guidelines to accommodate all types of beliefs or people, and they still choose to not follow any of them, then they are committing a crime. They are knowingly possibly endangering others even when given many options to protect both themselves and others. 

   Many far right, far left, or legal officials proclaim their doubts about the Coronavirus statistics, because they say that they don’t know which news source to trust and they say that stricter health regulations shouldn’t be enforced until the full truth of the virus is known and made public. It is very dangerous that lots of misinformation spreads about case numbers, death numbers, and further government actions, because individuals can be led to believe that certain aspects of this pandemic shouldn’t be taken seriously. As we have seen with the over 200,000 deaths due to Coronavirus, we know that it shouldn’t be taken lightly and enforcing harsher safety protocol, even if all the knowledge of the virus isn’t known yet, could be the only thing that will help protect people until we know more about the virus. 

   With the virus case and death numbers steadily rising, authorities are working hard to look for some preventative measures to protect citizens. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has stated that among the protective measures, he will not enforce, is a statewide lock down, and he will continue to use the previous blueprint of action. Officials and some citizens are hoping that the health and safety regulations must be held more strictly in the near future, in hopes that cases and deaths will slow down. These health regulations are vital to the safety of the public and need to be upheld more strictly by the authorities.