What makes one gathering safe, another not?
Republicans fumed Wednesday after Mayor Sylvester Turner, citing the pandemic, canceled the Texas GOP convention. In June, party officials pointed out, the mayor had marched with a 60,000-person Black Lives Matter protest. So how could he argue that a July gathering of 6,000 political delegates was too dangerous to allow?
Medical authorities side strongly with Turner: The GOP convention would have been dangerous. Here’s why.
• Timing matters. “We’re in the middle of a flaming COVID-19 epidemic,” said Peter Hotez, a coronavirus vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, and also one of the pandemic’s mostquoted scientists.
“Right now it’s impossible to ensure the safety of people in any kind of large gathering. If it were a Democratic convention, I’d say the same thing.”
He points out that the Black Lives Matter marches came in early June, at the nadir of the COVID outbreak in Texas.
• Indoors is more dangerous than outdoors. As cavernous and well-air-conditioned as the George R. Brown Convention Center is, it’s still an enclosed space. “Outdoors there’s more room to dissipate the virus, to spread out the droplets or aerosols,” explained Diana Fite, president of the Texas Medical Association.
• The convention would have lasted for days. “When deciding what activities are safe, one of the risk factors that we urge people to consider is the length of time that they might be exposed,” said Fite.
Your body might be able to fight off the few virus particles you inhale in an encounter lasting seconds. But over a matter of days, inhaling a few virus particles per second adds up fast.
• A significant number of GOP delegates are likely over 65. To qualify as a delegate to the
state convention, a person must first vote in the GOP primary. In 2018, the average Republican primary voter was 60.1 years old, according to political consultant Derek Ryan.
“Not only are people over 65 at a high risk of contracting the virus, they’re at a high risk of ending up in the ICU,” said Hotez. And according to the CDC, people over 65 account for 8 out of 10 deaths in the U.S. • It would be hard to keep your distance. Inside the George R. Brown, “sufficient physical distancing might not be possible,” said UTHealth epidemiologist Cathy Troisi.
Texas GOP officials have stated that they revised floor plans to accommodate social distancing. But even if the spacing is sufficient, human beings are gregarious creatures, and delegates tend to be extroverts. Caught off-guard by the sight of an old friend, it would be easy to slip into a hug or a handshake.
• Some conventiongoers might not have worn masks. Face masks have emerged as a way to significantly reduce transmission of the virus, and early this month, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, ordered all Texans living in counties with more than 20 coronavirus cases (which is to say, the vast majority) to wear face masks while inside buildings open to the public. That would include the George R. Brown Convention Center.
The CDC particularly recommends cloth face coverings “in settings where individuals might raise their voice” — as in, a convention where delegates cheer for a candidate.
Even so, some Texas Republicans have taken strong stands against mask requirements. (In the words of one Houston protester’s sign: “Don’t mask my freedom!”)
“We assume most people at the convention would not wear masks because of their political philosophy,” said Troisi. That’s in contrast to Houston’s largest Black Lives Matter march, where Troisi estimates 90 percent of protesters wore masks.
• Conventiongoers could have taken the virus home. Hotez notes that some Republican strongholds, such as rural West Texas, have been relatively virus-free. But the Houston convention had potential to be a superspreader event, seeding outbreaks all across Texas.