Virus’ sudden arrival is wake-up call for us
It’s here — the new coronavirus — and Houstonians aren’t sure how nervous to be.
Five people had tested positive in Harris County and three more had done so in Fort
Bend County as of late Friday, bringing concerns about the virus closer to home than before. All eight had been exposed to the virus on the same trip to Egypt.
This scary new virus has spread to more than 65 countries after emerging in China late last year. The United States has had more than 300 cases, 15 of which have been fatal as of Friday.
Dr Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Congress last week that the outbreak will likely be deemed a global pandemic by the World Health Organization — and epidemiologists have said that a majority of the world’s population could be infected eventually.
It was predictable that COVID-2019 would reach the densely populated and highly globalized Houston area. And now that it’s here, it’s unclear what we can do on an individual basis other than following the now
familiar advice from public health officials: wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your face.
Houstonians are responding stoically.
“I’m washing my hands, I’m using hand sanitizer — aren’t you? I’m trying to be clean,” said Geoffrey Berg, a Houston attorney. “But this is the burden of being a primate, I suppose.”
State Rep. Gene Wu, who represents House District 137 in west Houston, has been keeping a close eye on both the outbreak itself and the public reaction to it for months. Along with his wife, journalist Miya Shay, he’s hosted a number of dinners in Chinatown in recent weeks as a way of supporting restaurants at risk of a sharp downturn in business due to speculation and fears.
“My description would be ‘nervous hopefulness,’ ” Wu said when I called him Friday. “We’re concerned that it’s going to get worse, but at the same time I’m confident that our local people are going to do a really good job of managing and containing it.”
That confidence appears warranted: Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Mayor Sylvester Turner and Fort Bend County Judge KP George have all taken the threat seriously and addressed the public about cases reported so far and the precautions being taken in response.
Also reassuring is that all of the cases reported so far are travel-related. Houston is not experiencing “community transmission” of the type being reported in Seattle.
In many ways, it seems like business as usual in the Houston area.
Although the organizers of South by Southwest on Friday canceled their annual March festival in Austin, Houston-area residents waited in long lines to vote in the Texas presidential primary on Tuesday and streamed into the grounds of NRG Park for the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
There was hand-shaking and hugging, celebrating and sharing snacks and commiserating over the lengthy waits at polling places.
We were also going to work, to classes and to worship services. We were snuggling with our pets, such as dogs that give us sloppy kisses, despite the fact that the World Health Organization had reported a Pomeranian in Hong Kong had tested positive for the virus.
But the news Wednesday night that an elderly man had recently tested positive in Fort Bend County — followed by the confirmation of cases the following day in Harris County — did make a big impression in Harris County.
By Thursday afternoon, a Bath & Body Works in Rice Village was nearly sold out of hand sanitizer, with just a few bottles left in the Japanese Cherry Blossom and Watermelon Lemonade scents. The H-E-B in Montrose, similarly, was entirely out of Clorox wipes and nearly out of toilet paper, and customers were raiding the aisles for staples such as shelf-stable milk, flour, canned soup and pasta.
Similar scenes were playing out across the city.
The anxiety is understandable. The new coronavirus is known to be highly transmissible, and the disease it causes is considered to pose a particular risk to certain populations — the elderly, for example, and people with pre-existing health conditions.
In the United States, the vulnerability of those populations — as well as fears among the public writ large — have arguably been increased by a slow-to-the-point-of-bungled federal response. President Donald Trump, who has sought to play down fears about the virus and at one point dismissed Democratic concerns about his response to it as a “hoax.”
It’s now clear that Trump’s assessment was overly optimistic, and limited testing has hurt efforts to get an understanding of the depth of the problem. Trump on Friday morning signed an $8.3 billion emergency spending package to combat the virus and the administration is scrambling to increase testing capacity.
Meanwhile, local officials keep a wary eye out for new cases. Ten people in Fort Bend have been contacted about self-quarantining, for example.
Whether these precautions are sufficient to contain the outbreak locally remains to be seen.
“Houston’s such a big place, and we’re not few and far between,” Wu said. “If there were an uncontrolled spread, I think you would see it immediately.”