Gov. Roy Cooper’s mantra during his rule of North Carolina by executive order has been that his decisions are based on “science, data and facts.”

But the fact is that governors in other states have looked at similar science, data and facts and decided it was time to reopen their states.

Georgia is very similar to North Carolina. The states have nearly the same population and are adjacent, but Georgia has had a very different reopening process.

Georgia ended its stay-at-home order and reopened many businesses including gyms and tattoo parlors on April 30. The result was widespread criticism. Even President Donald Trump said that he thought it was too early.

Some of the folks quoted as experts by the mainstream media predicted that Georgia would see a surge of new cases and some of those experts predicted that when that surge came, Georgia would be forced to reinstate the stay-at-home orders and close down the businesses that it had allowed to open like gyms and tattoo parlors.

It’s now been over a month since Georgia reopened for business and overall the testing data is not much different than North Carolina where Cooper still has not allowed bars and gyms to reopen and has much more restrictive policies than Georgia.

Two weeks after Georgia reopened in the middle of May, experts said that it might take longer, maybe until June, for the surge they were still predicting to show up in testing results. Now that it is June some experts say that it may take even longer for the surge to show up in the testing results.

Also, some experts point out that while Georgia is not mandating that people stay at home or that businesses remain closed that many people are staying at home of their own free will and businesses are practicing social distancing and requiring people to wear masks even when the state doesn’t require it.

In other words, the experts are saying that draconian measures that take away people’s rights might not be necessary because people in Georgia are smart enough to take care of themselves.

Perhaps the people in North Carolina are in fact as smart as the people in ,Georgia and if allowed to do so, the people of North Carolina would make smart decisions, continue to wash their hands frequently, wear masks when they were going to be closer than six feet to other people and when possible maintain social distancing.