Governor Abbott (R-TX) is yelling for medical help:
Gov. Greg Abbott appealed for out-of-state help to fight the third wave of COVID-19 in Texas while two more of the state’s largest school districts announced mask mandates in defiance of the governor.
Abbott’s request Monday came as a county-owned hospital in Houston raised tents to accommodate their COVID-19 overflow. Private hospitals in the county already were requiring their staff to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. …
The highly contagious delta variant is fueling the wave. [AP]
Remember, Gov Abbott is one of several Republican governors who’ve refused to issue new mask mandates or signed legislation banning mask mandates, he has hospitals that are literally overflowing, so of course he’s also reversing direction on those mask mandates … uh … no.
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.
So, ignoring the obvious questions concerning supplies and facilities, are medical professionals duty-bound to respond?
I suppose they will point at their medical oaths or motivations for joining the medical profession as reasons to respond, as balanced against burnout and exhaustion, and that’s all very valid.
But I’d like to point out that Governor Abbott is acting in bad faith. He’s duty bound to take actions to promote the public health; that’s why he has emergency powers that he can use at need. He’s refusing. He wants to hide his dereliction of duty behind the statement 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, but when your hospitals are overflowing with Covid-19 patients, it should be blindingly obvious that, No, they don’t have that ability.
Look, I’m not dissing Texas citizens. People in general are neither evolved nor trained to properly evaluate a virus, or the data describing it, that infects and degrades organisms as does SARS-CoV-2, much less its delta variant. Virologists and public health specialists are trained in this esoteric discipline; the rest of us just have to trust them.
This is where government has a role to play. It can disseminate information and orders at speed when necessary, informing citizens when a dangerous situation exists – like a tornado springing from the clouds. The time has passed when Abbott should have issued mask mandates and even vaccine mandates; as I said, he’s derelict, and the only reason I don’t recommend he be bounced from his position is that his Lt. Governor is, based on his idiotic statements during the 2020 election, no better. Ideology is all they know, and when the ideology is bad…
Abbott is obviously frantic. I wonder if he has national ambitions? This is the sort of behavior I’d expect from someone who sees the similarly incompetent Governor Noem (R-SD) as a competitor in an upcoming contest.
And doesn’t care about the lives of his constituents.
