It is science not liberal. The hospitals were full of dead and dying. Macho dullards are not heroic they're misinformed and leading the dumb over a cliff.
They are doing it now because the vaccination rate is high enough that the increase in transmission will not translate into overwhelmed hospital systems. Doing it earlier in dense population centers would have been complete madness.
No one is looking at Florida or Texas and thinking they were right then other than people who’ve lost all perspective on the truth.
And New York and California are still lifting covid restrictions.
State's are realizing that Florida and Texas were right from the beginning and copying them.