Democratic officials angered by Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s handling of the growing numbers of coronaviruses in the state this week had a lackluster place to voice their frustrations over the rapidly escalating public health crisis that kills their voters: a Zoom press conference.
“While some states followed the advice of public health experts, Texas did not,” Dallas-area state representative Toni Rose said Wednesday from a webcam, a photograph of the Texas Capitol superimposed behind her.
It was certainly not the first time that Democrats in the state opposed a pandemic approach criticized by some as too reckless, and months of power struggles between local and state leaders in Texas over closures, masks and more followed.
But the policy of the COVID-19 situation in the state, Democrats yelling into the void, at least until Governor Greg Abbott ordered the use of masks in hot spots across the state on Thursday, had already given way to difficult numbers. , not only from cases, but also from hospitalizations, with the state’s medical system suddenly under pressure that seemed unthinkable even a few weeks ago.
“If the rates [of infection] continue to increase 50 percent week-over-week, you can only do it for that long, “said Dr. David Lakey, vice chancellor for health affairs and medical director of the University of Texas system and member of the Texas Medical Association COVID- 19 Working group.
He added that medical directors across the state, at least this week, are “really busy, but they are managing it.” The fear, he explained, is what the next week will be like, or the week after. And while ICU beds, fans, and wards are generally maintained so far, “they are beginning to see some challenges for the staff,” such as respiratory therapists and nurses. As the challenges increase with increasing hospitalizations, staff became ill or were forced to quarantine after exposures.
And the numbers get more sinister.
Texas broke another record for new daily cases Tuesday, with 8,076 infections, according to state data. The previous record on Monday was 6,975. Days earlier, the record was 5,996. On June 16, the state broke the 4,000 mark for the first time.
As state Democratic Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, who represents San Antonio, said during the press conference, Governor Greg Abbott “played” with Texas in an aggressive reopening and “we have lost.”
After large numbers of mayors and judges tried to shuffle their feet over the governor’s swift reopening plan earlier this spring, the state attorney general sent letters to leaders in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio warning that the higher standards Strict that the state’s could be met with legal action. However, as the waves worsened across the state, Abbott gave his tacit consent for local officials to impose masking requirements on businesses and urged individual Texans to masquerade.
This week, Abbott went much further, shutting bars across the state and suspending elective medical procedures in eight counties. Bar owners who previously said they supported Abbott’s reopening turned against the governor, and some protested outside the state Capitol with signs saying “The Question of Bar Life.” And on Thursday, Abbott made a notable change, ordering residents to wear face masks in all counties with at least 20 COVID-19 cases, and empowering local authorities to dissolve the gatherings of more than 10 people.
But conversations with health experts and medical professionals in the state suggested that the emerging crisis at Texas medical facilities was already well advanced.
Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical complex, indicated last Thursday that its basic intensive care capacity reached 100 percent and that it was “on track to overcome an ‘unsustainable overvoltage capacity’ of intensive care beds for the July 6th”. The Houston Chronicle reported this week. Last week, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston began admitting adult patients due to the increase, according to the newspaper. Internal communications at Houston hospitals revealed a lack of space and therapeutic medications, as the region’s medical facilities worked to treat more than 3,000 COVID-19 patients, including some 800 in intensive care, NBC News reported Wednesday. and Propublica.
Meanwhile, as of Tuesday, about 75 percent of the beds in the Tarrant County Intensive Care Unit were occupied, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram First reported.
With recent hospitalization growth rates, facilities in Tarrant and Dallas counties could reach their augmentation capacity in as little as four weeks, according to Rajesh Nandy, associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Columbia School of Public Health. North Texas.
“The easiest way to see this is: let’s say that the trend does not change and that the hospital’s capacity remains the same as it is today. Under those assumptions, it would be two to three weeks before they are operating at full capacity, “Nandy, whose team has studied COVID-19 local and national data since the pandemic began, told The Daily Beast.” It would probably take three to four weeks when we would be overloaded, even with surge capacities. At that point, we would have to consider creating new facilities at the convention centers. “
Despite those warnings, Dallas-area hospitals have repeatedly said they don’t need to prepare for a pop-up facility at a nearby convention center, and the chairman of the board of trustees of the Texas Medical Associations told the newspaper there is ” a number of safety valves that could be pushed. “
Still, Nandy said, “Our healthcare system will be overwhelmed if it continues.”
And ragged and frustrated medical providers across the state have said they are anxious for the days to come.
“We are in a completely different place now than we were just four weeks ago,” said Dr. Pritesh Gandhi, an Austin-based primary care physician and associate medical director of the People’s Community Clinic, which serves central Texans. uninsured and underinsured. . “In the past few days, our clinic has seen three to four times as many patients for the driving tests we had weeks ago, and reflects the massive spread of the community.”
Gandhi, a Democratic candidate for Texas’ tenth congressional district, called the efforts of the medical community to provide care to Texans during the past month of waves as “extraordinarily challenging” and said it has been “complicated by failures both at the level federal as well as state. “
“We are testing more, having more positives, having more symptomatic patients, doing more driving tests,” Gandhi told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “The staff is getting sick, just like anywhere else.”
Gandhi, and the group of Democratic state representatives who held the press conference, denounced an underlying stream of “scientific denial” and “hostility to public health,” perhaps best captured in an interview that Lt. Governor Dan Patrick gave to Fox News hours before. He said that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, and the face of the federal response to the pandemic, was “wrong every time on every issue.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Patrick told Fox News on Tuesday night. “I don’t need your advice anymore.”
Dr. Lakey, a former commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services who was appointed by former Texas Governor Rick Perry, was more forgiving of Abbott than others in the state. He said he does not envy those, like the governor, who have had to navigate the medium term between complete state closings and complete light switch openings.
“It is a very difficult time in public health,” Lakey said. “No one has a crystal ball. There is no perfect plan. “
“You make your plan, and then you have to be ready to adjust your plan,” Lakey said. “That is not a sign of failure, it is a sign that you are looking at the data and trying to make the best decision.”
But both Rose and Rep. Donna Howard, who represents Austin, said their constituents would likely benefit from a second statewide shutdown, and that Abbott’s decisions had been deeply damaging. Martinez-Fischer emphasized that orders to stay home were a tool that should never have been taken from local hands.
“We know it worked before,” said Howard. “That contained the spread before. We have to do what we have to do here, and unfortunately closing down may be our only option. “
Whether that is true or not, it is unclear whether Abbott would do so, as he said “closing Texas again will always be the last option.”
On the other hand, many public health experts wonder if it would be necessary.
As Lakey pointed out: it is no longer March. Those trying to fight the crisis in Texas have the benefit of months of nationwide observation, intubation studies, clinical trials, and promising therapeutic treatments like Remdesivir. And the order of the mask could help change course.
“We have learned from that experience and are bringing those lessons to the response,” Lakey said.
Still, he and others point to the myriad of unknowns in the coming days, from the July 4 weekend celebrations to college students who are likely to return to campus in just a few weeks.
As Gandhi said on Wednesday: “We are angry and exhausted at the incompetence.”
“It didn’t have to be that way.”
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