Gov. Greg Abbott has been unwavering lately in his refusal to implement statewide safety precautions to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
But as cases and hospitalizations are reaching heights not seen since February, Abbott’s pandemic playbook in recent weeks has largely focused on blocking local mandates and committing to protecting the rights of the unvaccinated.
Abbott recently declared Texas is “past the time of government mandates.” And he unveiled a second special session agenda Thursday that includes ensuring kids can return to school in person this fall if they want to, without any mask or vaccine requirements — a move that came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s updated guidance that recommends “universal indoor masking by all students.”
Abbott, who has publicly advocated for vaccinations and got his shot on TV, summed up his current mentality toward the pandemic during a speech Wednesday in Dallas that focused on the economy and other issues facing the state. On the pandemic, he started off by encouraging vaccination and calling it the “surest way to end the pandemic.” But then he made one thing clear.
“Going forward, in Texas, there will not be any government-imposed shutdowns or mask mandates,” Abbott said. “Everyone already knows what to do.”
Abbott started shifting his emphasis to personal responsibility over government intervention after ending his own statewide mandates earlier this year, but he’s been doubling down on that position in recent weeks as the delta variant has wreaked havoc across the nation and renewed calls for stricter safety precautions.
The numbers have prompted even the state health department to ring the alarm in a way that Abbott has not, tweeting Wednesday that Texas is “facing a new wave” and the variant “has erased much progress to end the pandemic.”
The hamstringing from the state is again frustrating big-city leaders, mostly Democrats, who want to have more power to fight the virus.
“The only other option is to violate the governor’s order, and that causes a great deal of confusion and in all likelihood [will] lead to lawsuits,” said Nelson Wolff, the usually mild-mannered Bexar County judge. “I think his order provides that if a public official attempted to do that, he can be fined and removed from office. If anybody needs to be removed from office, it’s the governor.”
While Wolff said Bexar County was not ready to defy Abbott, some local governments already have. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced Monday that the city’s almost 22,000 employees will be required to wear a face covering inside city buildings where social distancing is not feasible.
With Abbott’s latest hardened resistance to new virus-fighting measures, his critics see politics at play. They note the primary opposition he has drawn in his 2022 reelection campaign and the national pressure for GOP governors to lead the way in keeping their states open.
At the same time, Abbott has shown intense interest in stopping the spread of COVID-19 among migrants coming into the state via the Mexican border, part of a ramped-up crusade against illegal immigration since President Joe Biden took office. Abbott has issued an executive order telling state troopers to pull over drivers transporting migrants “who pose a risk of carrying COVID-19.” A federal judge blocked the order Tuesday.
That is all despite increasingly alarming coronavirus numbers in places like Texas. New daily cases and hospitalizations have been on a sharp upward swing, reaching levels not seen since the last surge in the winter. The state’s positivity rate — the percent of virus tests coming back positive — was 17.7% on Tuesday, well above the 10% threshold that Abbott has previously identified as a danger zone.
Even more, several of the state’s hospital regions have seen the percentage of COVID-19 patients comprising their capacity rise above 15%. That was the threshold that was once used to let local officials roll back business reopenings in a region — until Abbott effectively gutted it with his latest executive order.
“I think it’s pretty clear in the data that Texas is in the middle — or beginning, depending on how you look at it — of a really major pandemic surge, and not just in case counts but particularly in looking at health care needs across the state,” said Spencer Fox, associate director of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin. “Many regions are now facing numbers that we haven’t seen since the winter.”
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