Between a rock and a hard place
Remember that phrase used by frustrated parents to rowdy kids in the car? Don’t make me turn this car around. That is what the latest coming from Texas Governor Abbott sounds like as he addresses a spike in COVID-19 cases in the state. In this case, the state is the car and Abbott is saying that if Texans don’t get with the program, he’ll have no choice but to put the state back into lockdown mode.
Back in May during a private phone call, Governor Abbott admitted that the act of reopening businesses in the state would cause an increase in new cases of the coronavirus.
“How do we know reopening businesses won’t result in faster spread of more cases of COVID-19?” Abbott asked during a Friday afternoon phone call with members of the state legislature and Congress. “Listen, the fact of the matter is pretty much every scientific and medical report shows that whenever you have a reopening—whether you want to call it a reopening of businesses or of just a reopening of society—in the aftermath of something like this, it actually will lead to an increase and spread. It’s almost ipso facto.”
“The more that you have people out there, the greater the possibility is for transmission,” Abbott said on the call, which a spokesperson confirmed was authentic on Tuesday. “The goal never has been to get transmission down to zero.”
That was an expansion of what the governor was telling Texans at the time, though. Publicly, Governor Abbott only acknowledged that the number of cases would rise due to increased testing. The phone call shows Abbott admitting that increased physical contact would inevitably cause a rise in cases, not just increased testing.
Texas is experiencing a spike in cases, there is no argument there. There is an increase in the number of positive cases from testing, as the governor predicted, but there is also a spike in hospitalizations which is even more troubling. Last night eyebrows were raised as reports began coming in that the Texas Children’s Hospital, a part of the Texas Medical Center in Houston, released a statement that it is providing additional capacity through ICU and acute care beds across its campuses to both pediatric and adult patients.
