Whether the governor is responding to political pressure or, as he says, letting the data dictate dates, more of New Jersey is becoming more accessible to more of New Jersey’s people. But that new openness comes with a risk. In almost two dozens instances across the country states have reported an uptick in cases after easing restrictions, from Florida to Washington state. Epidemiologist Stephanie Silvera explains how that happens.

“All you need is one person who’s sick who can now quickly spread it to create this cluster of cases,” she said.

And that’s exactly what happened in South Jersey. You may have heard about a cluster of cases – more than a dozen at this point – in Bucks County, Pennsylvania that were traced to a house party in Cape May County, about 100 miles away.

David Damsker runs the health department in Bucks County.

“We noticed pretty early, we had one particular day on Saturday where we had a lot of people from the same area of Bucks County that were all younger. And we started making some phone calls, we’re asking them and a few people mentioned being in New Jersey over Memorial Day weekend,” Damsker said.

Indoors, at a party, with food and drinks.

“So when we started making the other phone calls, we then started asking about that specifically and we started getting more people with the same exact experience, so we knew right there we had a source area for cases,” he said.

An optimist might say, “Hey, that’s some good contact tracing there,'” but someone else might say, “Hey, this is why you can’t just swing the doors open to the state.” Damsker notes that nationally, only one-third of positive cases have actually been traced.

Silvera says the governor’s message Tuesday was not “we’re out of the woods.”

“The reopening message seems to be that it’s safe to gather, which it isn’t right now, so if you’re indoors the risk is obviously higher than if you’re outdoors. And even if you’re outdoors, you still want to maintain your spatial distancing. And if you need to be within 6 feet for more than 10 minutes or so you should be wearing a face covering because all you need, as we’re finding with this case, is one person who’s sick,” Silvera said.

But hospitalizations and the need for respirators are still trending downward, evidence, say some, that economic rebound has to be weighed against potential health risks.

“There is guaranteed depression, death, suicide, addiction, of not reopening. There is a mitigated risk of reopening,” said state Sen. Declan O’Scanlon. “You will have incidents, though, like that party. It’s going to happen. And we either need to accept that and move forward in as reasonable a way as possible, or we lock down for a year or two and go with it and guarantee the horror that that will cause.”

The fear, even from the country’s top experts, is that all this eagerness for reopening could be met with a viral response in the fall from a disease that may have been held at bay by the very precautions many are now eager to ease.