Texas Governor Asks for COVID Help After Royally F--king Up Pandemic Response

As you’ve probably heard by now, Texas governor Greg Abbott has spent the last year and change doing everything in his power to turn his state into a COVID-infested hellhole. And lately, he’s been successful! Ranking in the bottom third of vaccinations in the country, Texas recorded almost 17,000 new cases on Saturday, a single-day figure not seen since February, according to The Wall Street Journal. Hospitalizations have almost doubled every two weeks since the start of summer. Austin officials warned of a coming “catastrophe” on Monday. Patients in Houston have been transferred out of the city, with one being sent to North Dakota. At least 53 hospitals have run out of ICU beds, with others quickly dwindling. “This surge is by far the fastest and most aggressive that we’ve seen,” Dr. Desmar Walkes, Austin-Travis County’s health authority, said last week. “ICU staff are seeing a younger population in our hospitals. Patients in the ICU are sicker and stay in the hospital longer than with prior surges, putting more strain on hospital resources.”

Things are so bad, in fact, that Abbott has asked that hospitals postpone all elective medical procedures voluntarily, and on Monday, directed the Texas Department of State Health Services to find additional medical staff outside the state as the delta variant overwhelms local medical resources. But apparently they’re not yet bad enough for him to reverse his idiotic stance on masking and other public health measures, or rethink the order he signed making it illegal for other officials to enforce them.

The governor is taking action short of lifting his emergency order banning county and local government entities from requiring the wearing of masks and social distancing to lower the COVID-19 risk. Abbott has said repeatedly that Texans have the information and intelligence to make their own decisions on what steps to take to protect their health and the health of those around them. Meantime, one of Houston’s two county-owned hospitals was pitching tents to accommodate its COVID-19 overflow. Harris Health System and Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in northeastern Houston added nearly 2,000 square feet of medical tents in the hope of taking control of the anticipated increase in patient volume and keep staff and non-COVID-19 patients safe.

The hospitals don’t have enough ICU beds, they’re pitching tents and shipping people out of state, but ask people to wear masks? What are you, nuts? In related news, Texas does not appear to be scrapping its insane new guidance for schools, which as a reminder says that:

Schools need not conduct contact tracing

Schools do not need to let parents know if a student has tested positive for the virus

Parents can still send their kids to school even if they’ve come in contact with an infected person

On the bright side, Abbott has made time to catch up on extracurricular activities:

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