Governor Gregg Abbott has banned any mask mandates, despite the fact that cases and hospitalizations are soaring. What’s the matter with him?
Erica Grieder of the Houston Chronicle wonders about Governor Abbbott’s indifference. Does he want to prolong the pandemic?
She writes:
We all know that the Lone Star State has experienced some setbacks in dealing with this horrid plague, namely the emergence of the highly transmissible delta variant as the state grapples with lagging vaccination rates. On Wednesday, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis, more than 10,000 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported to the Department of State Health Services — the largest single-day jump since mid-February. And across Texas, 5,662 people were hospitalized.
And here comes Abbott, a Republican, bravely into the breach, responding by…imposing further limits on the capacity of local officials to take action in response to The governor on Thursday issued an executive order barring local governments from imposing mask mandates or the like, even in areas where COVID patients account for 15 percent of hospital capacity over the course of seven straight days. The order also reiterates that cities and counties can’t mandate vaccines, and it bars any public entity or recipient of taxpayer money from asking about a consumer’s vaccination status.
“The new Executive Order emphasizes that the path forward relies on personal responsibility rather than government mandates,” Abbott said in a written statement. “Texans have mastered the safe practices that help to prevent and avoid the spread of COVID-19.”
If that’s the case, why are hospitalizations on the rise?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Abbott and DeSantis get my vote for the “Dumb and Dumber” award for governors. Desantis has gone as step further than Abbott. In Florida it is illegal for any government agency to mandate wearing masks. Both have politicized a public health crisis. BTW if “personal responsibility” worked well our prisons would be empty.
I am thankful for the Texas Democrats that refuse to the silenced by Abbott. They left the state rather than allow Abbott enact even more voter restrictions. Now joined by other Democrats from Georgia and Florida, they are applying pressure on the Democrats to get a voting rights bill through before the midterms. The very articulate Beto O’Rourke is still around pushing for voting rights. He and Rev. Barber are marching on Austen to “end the filibuster, pass all provisions of the For the People Act, restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act, raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hr.”https://www.revolt.tv/2021/8/1/22604852/rev-william-barber-ii-and-beto-orourke-lead-moral-march-for-democracy
cx; refused to be silenced
One Word — Panderdemic
ha. Sad truth
If public schools are looking for guidance on how to operate after the pandemic the US Department of Ed has one that is as good or better than all the ed reform orgs plans and it comes without the anti-public school bias and ideological Right wing editorializing that permeates ed reform.
Follow a plan that isn’t anti-public school and doesn’t have a political agenda of promoting charter schools and vouchers and bashing public schools.Just sensible advice and guidance that was developed with the input of people who actually work in and use public schools.
There are choices. No one has to remain within the ed reform echo chamber. We have a pro-public education President now (finally, after a 20 year hiatus) so the US Department of Education is no longer in the business of privatizing public schools, and it’s free:
https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-releases-%E2%80%9Creturn-school-roadmap%E2%80%9D-support-students-schools-educators-and-communities-preparing-2021-2022-school-year
Following the ed reform echo chamber is a choice. Public schools can choose to look elswhere.
The GOP has raised knuckleheadism to a high art. If you’re going to be a knucklehead, then go full tilt boogie as do Abbott (Hey Abbott!) and DeSantis. Common sense and public health be damned.
If public schools can tune out the anti-public school electioneering disguised as “policy” they’ll be fine. It has to have sunk in by now that none of this, none of it, does a single thing to benefit their schools or students. The next logical question is “why?” These folks made a conscious decision to launch a multi-level political battle in our schools when our schools were reeling from a pandemic and trying to right themselves.
That isn’t about our students. A mask war doesn’t do anything for them, just like the CRT war that preceded it.
“That isn’t about our students. A mask war doesn’t do anything for them, just like the CRT war that preceded it.”
Nailed it.
Texas Abbott is paid lots of shadow $$$ for his decrees. It is now RIP for the true believers and the TX school children.
“If they could convince enough of their people to avoid the vaccine, they could keep COVID-19 transmission rates high and garner headlines from easily duped mainstream outlets declaring things like ‘Biden falls short or Biden fails to contain the virus.’
For a brief moment in early July, it seemed the plan was working, with a series of headlines that seemingly blamed Biden.
The (Abbott) noise machine convinced millions that the best way to undermine Biden’s presidency was to refuse the COVID-19 jab. And sure enough, they were successful at jacking up COVID-19 rates, filling the hospitals and generating a lot of negative headlines. But the final part of the strategy — where Biden gets blamed for the results of GOP sabotage — is falling apart.”
Amanda Marcotte/SALON
I am going to say this again. By percentage of population this virus is still hitting Minorities harder than it is whites. Yes more Whites are dying. But not as a percentage of population . And not till significant numbers of whites started dying did they see any political peril. Not when it was a Blue state or Blue voter virus.
If I can use NY State as an example demographics as an example. 17.3% of the State is Black. Blacks are 12.8 % of the vaccinated. 70.4 % of the state is White. Whites account for 70.6 % of the vaccinated .
Let me know how those numbers are in Red states where no reach out to minorities is done while anti mask and anti vaxx nonsense is spread.
If you think I am attributing super vile character traits to Republican politicians. You might want to think about that a few minutes.
Abbott is apparently a narcissist or psychopath or both.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Gov-Abbott-s-deadly-pattern-of-16001845.php
Narcissists and Psychopaths Are More Likely to Refuse to Wear Masks, Says New Research
https://www.newsweek.com/narcissists-psychopaths-face-mask-requirement-mandate-social-distancing-covid-19-coronavirus-1519732
4 Reasons Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths
1. Seductive personalities
Whether in dating, hiring, or electing people, narcissists and sociopaths are the two most seductive personalities on the planet. For those narcissists and sociopaths who also want to be politicians, they learn how to seduce whole populations and can be temporarily highly effective—long enough to get elected—but then are usually very harmful in the long run. Yet most people miss the simple early warning signs of these high-conflict politicians (HCPs): 1. Preoccupied with blaming others; 2. Lots of all-or-nothing thinking; 3. Unmanaged or intense emotions; 4. Extreme behavior or threats.
Narcissists greatly exaggerate their accomplishments, then they charm people with their grandiose ideas. “I will build you a house/franchise/wall/whatever. It’ll be the best ever. Believe me.” They often convince themselves it’s true. On the other hand, sociopaths flat-out lie and make serious threats. “I have a secret plan, but I can’t tell you until after I’m elected. You’ll be amazed. But I have a lot of secrets and don’t expect me to ever tell you, or I may have to hurt you.” …
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/5-types-people-who-can-ruin-your-life/201905/4-reasons-why-we-elect-narcissists-and-sociopaths
This is science – but it’s not proverbial rocket science. Leadership and a vaccination. What a concept?
Hot line the legislature. School boards do what’s safe for kids and not compliance. Superintendents take a stance. Parents – vaccinate your kids and send them with masks.
Why all the rationalizations?
So what whose statistics are comparatively worse than others etc. etc.
Kids can’t read. Who cares about test scores and who is in the bottom 25% or other machinations – they can’t read – teach ’em to read. Testing doesn’t help.
People are sick. So test ’em and compare statistics? Vaccinate ’em and waste time on who’s the reddest of virus and match the red of the voters.
People are dying. Are we so numb to news that would have been outrageous years ago it’s like another traffic accident?
500 kids quarantined in one AK high school first week of school.
The argument in Florida is that “the vaccine is readily available,” so if someone doesn’t get it, it’s on them.
But what they don’t realize is that one of the highest percentage groups for remaining unvaccinated are Trump supporters.
And what about kids under 12 who can’t get vaccinated? All these “pro-family conservatives” don’t care about the health or lives of kids. We already knew that; this is just throwing it into starker relief
Why? AlterNet answers, “The core authoritarian fear is that they’ll be humiliated and exposed as weak”. That explains why right wingers like Tucker Carlson refuse to say they’ve been vaccinated. Also from AlterNet, “Why Tucker Carlson went to Hungary…he is enthralled with what Orban calls his philosophy of illiberal democracy which includes government support of churches.”
How’s this for indifference? People WANT to believe that Covid-19 doesn’t affect children and that children are not vectors for transmission. They WANT to believe that they can crowd them into tiny rooms where they breathe each other’s air all day, and they won’t catch the disease.
Magical, superstitious thinking.
But since the beginning of the pandemic, 4.1 million children in the U.S. have been diagnosed with the disease, representing 14.3 percent of all cases, and those numbers probably vastly under-represent the actual number of kids infected because kids are so rarely tested.
And in those circumstances, with the extremely virulent Delta Variant now dominant and half the population still unvaccinated and most Covid restrictions now lifted, we are sending the kids all back to school and pretending that it’s OK that we are not giving them N95 or equivalent masks.
And our hospitals are filling up again.
And under these conditions, what happens? The disease lingers in a great many people–including in that vast reservoir of kids with Covid–and it mutates.
It mutates until it takes a form that defeats our vaccines entirely.
All this does not give me confidence in the wisdom of people. I would say what it makes me think of them, but Diane does not allow such language on her blog.
This is how the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
–T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
Are the Republican politicians too stupid to realize they’re killing off their voters with all of their anti-vaccine, anti-mask propoganda? So many of the unvaccinated are Republicans. Maybe we’re seeing natural selection play out in real time.