Houston sees glimmers of hope in the midst of a difficult spring
It appeared at sunset, like a mirage — a food truck on a quiet street in Montrose, peddling the kind of confection that might appear in the daydream of a child, or a bleary-eyed adult.
The delight is a DoughCone, a handmade cone of donut batter, crusted with cinnamon and sugar, lined with Nutella, filled with ice cream and topped with whatever you might like — gummy bears or rainbow sprinkles, almonds or coconut, crushed Oreos or Reese’s pieces, or all of the above.
The Houstonians who queued up along Colquitt Street were indulging themselves. But they were doing so responsibly, in a sense. Most wore cloth masks, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ordered by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, though Texans are under no obligation to do so under Gov. Greg Abbott’s ambivalent statewide order. Everyone was spontaneously social distancing, arranging themselves along the easement in approximately six-foot intervals.
And, whether these evening snackers realized it or not, they had something to celebrate: in Houston, at least, public health experts are seeing glimmers of hope.
It’s been a dreary and difficult spring, thanks to the novel coronavirus. The United States has seen more than 86,000 deaths due to COVID-19, with over 1,200 of them in Texas, where the virus continues to spread — maybe more swiftly as a result of Abbott’s decision to being reopening the state on May 1. The state reported 58 deaths on Thursday, a single-day record, and then the same number on Friday.
The virus also has taken a severe toll on the state economy. Nearly 2 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the past two months, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation says some 1.6 million Texans lost their employer-sponsored health
insurance over the same period. Houston, the center of the nation’s oil and gas industry, has been particularly battered by turmoil in world markets.
Yet Houston has emerged as something of a bright spot, in these bleak circumstances.
We’re flattening the curve in Harris County, according to medical experts, as the rest of the state is struggling to do just that.
According to a Houston Chronicle analysis of case data, Harris County has been averaging 100 to 200 new cases per day since the end of April, even as the case count in the state’s other large counties continues to rise. “We’re simmering, not boiling,” said Dr. Paul Klotman, president of Baylor College of Medicine.
Simmering, that is, not subsiding: it would be premature to assume that the crisis has passed. And the data in Harris County has to come with an asterisk, given that Texas continues to badly lag in testing per capita. Still, we’re seeing evidence that all the sacrifices Houstonians have made over the past two months are making a meaningful difference as we await the development of a treatment or vaccine.
“As a region we’re doing pretty well,” said state Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, on Friday afternoon. Walle, who also serves as Harris County’s recovery czar, quickly emphasized that the comment needs to be understood in context: “There’s a pandemic. People are dying. But when you compare us to other large population centers, relatively speaking, we’re doing well.”
That’s surprising, perhaps. There are — to paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — plenty of known unknowns with this coronavirus, to say nothing of the unknown unknowns. But the Houston area has a number of risk factors that make it relatively vulnerable to a pandemic.
Houston is among the largest cities in the country, with some 7 million residents living in the nine-county metro area. It has a poverty rate, according to the Census Bureau, of 20.6 percent, and a long-running problem with air pollution that contributes to a high rate of conditions such as asthma, which can make people more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
Although it’s not nearly as densely populated as New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, Houston is crowded enough, under normal circumstances, and gregarious, for lack of a better word. As the virus began spreading in our communities this spring, Houstonians were enjoying cookouts, crawfish boils, political rallies, patios, sporting events and the rodeo, which was canceled March 12.
Houston is, beyond that, a major hub for domestic and international travel. The first
presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 identified in the state, in March, were among a group of people from the area who had recently returned from a cruise along the Nile River, in Egypt, even though that country was at the time reporting no cases of the novel coronavirus.
In addition to everything else, a Houston Methodist Hospital analysis of the genetic makeup of the first infections treated here, in March, found that 70 percent of the specimens examined had a mutation that appears to make the virus more contagious.
That’s a pretty stacked deck, in other words. And since we’re all sick of the coronavirus, if not sick with it, it’s worth taking a moment to feel good about the effects our efforts thus far. Houston’s public health professionals and first responders deserve tremendous gratitude for their tireless work this spring, and local leaders such as Hidalgo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner should be commended for their bold actions and steadiness. And the behavior of individuals has a tremendous impact on the spread of this virus, so those of us wearing masks, and spacing ourselves apart, have also helped.
“Frankly speaking, the public’s been very good!,” said
Walle. “Folks have been compliant! They’re listening. They’re using their own common sense.”
That’s something to raise a toast to this weekend — or a DoughCone, perhaps.