Elaine Roberts, a packer at a supermarket, tried to be careful. She put on gloves and stopped taking the bus to go to work, trusting her father to drive her. She wore masks, on space-themed fabrics sewn by her sister, as she stacked products on the shelves, helped people get into their cars, and pulled cars out of the parking lot.
He noted that many customers at the Randalls store in a Houston suburb were not using them, even as coronavirus cases began to rise in early June. Governor Greg Abbott, who had lobbied to reopen businesses in Texas, refused to make the masks mandatory and blocked local officials from enforcing the mask requirements.
Mrs. Roberts, 35, who has autism and lives with her parents, became ill first. Then her father, Paul, and her mother, Sheryl, were hospitalized. While no one can be sure how Elaine Roberts became infected, her older sister, Sidra Roman, blamed supermarket customers who she said had endangered her family.
“Wearing a piece of cloth is a little awkward,” he said. “It is much less uncomfortable than the ventilators, the dialysis lines, all those things that have happened to my father. And it’s not necessarily you who will get sick and hurt. “
What happened to the Roberts is, in many ways, the history of Texas, one of the nation’s hot spots. For weeks, politicians split to keep the economy open, citizens became polarized about wearing masks, and doctors warned that careless behavior could endanger others.
In southeast Texas, communities already hit by the pandemic faced a new but no less terrifying enemy on Saturday, when Hurricane Hanna hit the coast with heavy rain and winds.
