Politics unmasked
Abbott’s foolish denial about coronavirus spike is only leading Texas into a disaster.
The emperor has no mask.
Gov. Greg Abbott may indeed have donned a patriotic-colored face covering at a coronavirus news conference on Monday, but his attempt to cloak Texas’ dangerous spike in cases with a fine drape of reassurances and wishful thinking revealed a simple truth in the governor’s pandemic leadership: There’s no there there.
“Texans need to step up and work collaboratively,” the governor said, to “corral” the new coronavirus by following his plan to assure that the state “remains wide-open for business.”
While Harris County enforced an order that businesses require customers to wear masks and health experts rang the alarm about an explosion in new coronavirus cases, Abbott offered no significant changes in policy.
Flanked by charts showing disturbing medical trends, Abbott declined yet again to make masks mandatory out of concern for “personal liberty” and suggested that it is not yet necessary to consider dialing back any of the reopening phases that have clearly played a role in the surge of coronavirus infections in Houston and across the state.
This might look like smart politics, but it’s foolish, shortsighted leadership at a time when Texans are facing a deadly serious situation. It is time for the governor to slow the rush to reopen, limit the size of public gatherings and send a clearer message that social-distancing guidelines must be observed for businesses to keep operating.
Texas is at a crossroads.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, issued a strong warning over the weekend that if things don’t change soon, Houston will become the next global hot spot in the pandemic.
“My observations if this trajectory persists: 1) Houston would become the worst affected city in the U.S., maybe rival what we’re seeing now in Brazil 2) The masks = good 1st step but simply won’t be enough 3) We would need to proceed to red alert,” Hotez wrote Saturday on Twitter.
How can Abbott continue to claim the reopening has been going as planned?
Texas is the largest state in the country not to have a mask order. Statewide orders are in place in 16 states. Abbott’s resistance to order one is a prime example of his muddled approach.
If he truly believes that a statewide mandate wouldn’t work because urban and rural communities require different responses, then why did he bigfoot mask orders in Texas’ major cities where leaders deemed them necessary? Surely, the governor is aware that some of Texas’ worst hot spots are in rural communities where people falsely believe they’re insulated from the virus and walk around obliviously mask free.
Abbott appeared to backtrack a little last week by allowing Bexar County to impose a mandate on businesses to require customers to wear masks, opening the way for Harris County and others to follow.
But rather than admitting that stronger measures are needed, Abbott sought to save face with a bizarre explanation of how it was up to local leaders to figure it out.
“There has been a plan in place all along,” Abbott told Waco TV station KWTX. “All that was needed (was) for local officials to actually read the plan that was issued by the state of Texas.”
People are dying. This is no time for tea leaves or smoke signals or any other forms of obfuscation. Texans need clear, consistent guidance.
At this point, even that may be too little too late.
The trajectory Hotez refers to is frightening.
The state reported a 5 percent increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations on Sunday for a cumulative total of 3,409 patients, a figure that has more than doubled since Memorial Day.
The 2,726 new cases recorded Sunday constituted the sixth-highest single-day increase in Texas, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis.
Houston Chronicle data shows that Harris County is averaging 610 new cases per day over the past week, compared with 313 new cases per day the previous week.
The World Health Organization warned late last week that the pandemic has entered a “new and dangerous phase” with daily COVID-19 cases hitting record highs worldwide.
The new cases reported June 18 “were the most in a single day so far” at 150,000, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news conference.
The United States has the worst outbreak in the world with 2.3 million infected and more than 120,000 dead.
The coronavirus isn’t going away. The best we can hope for is that it doesn’t get worse.
That requires a strong response from all of us and real leadership at the top.
Governor, your attempts to dress up this disaster aren’t fooling anybody — least of all the virus.