States everywhere are opening back up but many have precautions in place with some more extreme than others. The precautions can be viewed as a way for us to make sure that we balance restarting our lives with not spreading or contracting COVID-19. Looking at the facts, however, they seem more like a way to make Americans feel safe about coming back out.

I want to make sure that emphasis is put on the word “feel.”

Early last month, Tucker Carlson pointed some things out about quarantines that didn’t really make sense. There were many places that enacted them, including America, but regardless of that fact, the virus still spread far and wide. There were several reasons for that, and the big one was that our quarantine wasn’t really a quarantine at all:

“A mass quarantine makes sense if you’re fairly certain it will prevent mass infection. But are we certain of that? Despite what you may hear on television, we are not certain of that still. In fact, there are some indications it hasn’t been as effective as we’d hoped it would be,” said Carlson. “Italy imposed one of the toughest lockdowns in Europe. Almost a month later, as we just told you, an overwhelming majority of at least one town had been infected with the virus anyway.”

One reason that we’re seeing breakout infections despite the quarantine is that we’re being told to shelter in place unless we need to go to the grocery store, which isn’t a real quarantine. It can’t be helped, however, because then people would starve.

“People would starve to death,” said Carlson. “Instead, the directive we’re living under is this: ‘stay home, except to buy food. The one place you can go is the supermarket, where, by the way, everyone else in the neighborhood has been this week.’ From an epidemiological standpoint, this is lunacy. If you wanted to infect an entire population, you’d encourage everyone in a specific zip code to meet regularly in one enclosed location. It doesn’t make sense. Authorities must know it doesn’t make sense, that’s obvious, but instead of changing course, or fine-tuning, they’re doubling down, hoping that vehemence will compensate for bad science.”

(READ: Tucker Carlson Points out Things About the Lockdown That Don’t Make Sense)

To Carlson’s point, it’s hard to understand why we thought the virus wasn’t going to spread when we were sending everyone to a singular location in their area to buy items that we would end up putting in our mouths. Not that it mattered anyway, we now know that by the time we began this global lockdown it was too late. The virus had already been present since last December.

Now we’re telling people that if they wear a mask and stay a few feet apart then we should be fine. That’s not true. Viruses can enter your system is very sneaky ways and you’ll never guess them all. You may touch a surface where the virus had landed thanks to someone who touched it after touching their child’s hands who had just touched a wall that someone had sneezed on just minutes ago. The moment you take your mask off — and you will — your hands will touch your face then if not moments after and, congratulations, you’re now hosting the Rona.

The good news is you’re likely to not even know because exhibiting symptoms is apparently rare and your chances of living through it incredibly high. For all intents and purposes, COVID-19 will be inconsequential to your life.

Many Americans know this. Currently, in my city of Dallas, Texas, my nearby shopping center looks like pre-COVID days. Food trucks are hosting parking lot picnics, more people are walking around Kroger and Target without masks than are, and patrons are enjoying patio dinners and drinks. Nobody seems to care about social distancing unless they’re required by the establishment they’re patronizing to do so.

Many of the “precautions” are really just there to make people “feel” safe about going out. Texas has the right idea of making these precautions mere suggestions and is even coming down on local governments who are making these suggestions into orders. The state seems to understand that wearing a mask and standing apart from someone is really just a way to make people feel safe about going out, but rest assured, going out is the main goal here.

My two cents? Let’s even drop the precautions. Just open. If we still need to practice any safety, it’s to practice it around places like nursing homes where the elderly with preconditions that make them vulnerable may suffer, but slowing down or stopping the healthy from living their lives is a waste of time.