58,272 people have died in Texas from a COVID-19 infection. The total military deaths in Vietnam was 58,220 the difference of course is that Texas is still in our 4th wave and unfortunately has many deaths to go.
Public School Students and Teachers
By last Monday all public schools in Texas had reopened and the results have not been good. As far as I know we haven't had 15 deaths in one district like in FL but we apparently are leading the nation in deaths of children.
"Texas schools have amassed more than 50,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in students in just a couple of weeks. The state is a leader in child deaths from COVID-19 with 59 as of Sept. 3. | via @TPRNews"
There were also 13,026 teachers and school personnel with COVID-19 duringnthe same period.
Children being taken to emergency rooms when schools are open have doubled from 300 to 600 per day.
Not all school districts are reporting numbers to the state claiming privacy issue but those that are reflect alarming numbers.
"At least 45 small school districts across Texas have been forced to temporarily stop offering in-person classes as a result of COVID-19 cases in the first few weeks of the new school year, according to the Texas Education Agency. "
"The shutdowns, which affected about 42,000 students as of Thursday, come as cases caused by the highly contagious delta variant have plagued administrators who hoped for a normal return to the school year."
It is important to note that last year schools districts had tools such as mask orders and fully funded virtual learning but this year Abbott has stopped their ability to use those tools or ended the funding.
How Did We Get Here
In the 1st week of May 2020 our Republican governor announced he was reopening the state from what had been a major shutdown.
He then had a telephone conference with legislators where he admitted cases would go up
"During a private call on Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott admitted that “every scientific and medical report shows” state reopenings “ipso facto” lead to an increase in novel coronavirus cases, even as he publicly announced plans that same week to end an executive stay-at-home order in the state.
“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.”
Abbott went on to say that the goal was never to get to zero.
"“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.”
At that time he also followed the example of his dear leader dt in espousing the idea that the increase was because of "improved capacity for testing" and not to an "increased person-to-person contact".
Of course he knew that was "ipso facto" a lie.
Austin and Travis County
On May 1st 2020 we had 1,683 total cases and 51 deaths on the same date in 2021 we had 82,402 total cases and 851 deaths. Over one half of those cases have been reported since December 10th 2020.
Travis county made a real effort to get people vaccinated but throughout those efforts Abbott at every turn issued Executive Orders to limit our ability to use any tools such as masks to make people realize that getting vaccinated would give them an advantage.
We have fully vaccinated 60.3% of our population (best of the largest counties) but we would need to get near 90% to compensate for the fact that children under 12 are not eligible for the vaccine (Texas has a higher number of children under 12 due the ages of our Hispanic population). Then of course we add UT Austin's 50,000 students.
Abbott
While Abbott did publicly get his vaccines he totally failed in the leadership necessary to help protect Texans because he remains scared of Lt. Governor Patrick, indicted AG Paxton and of course dt.
The University of Texas has a motto "what starts here changes the world" and in many ways over the years that has been very true of Texas including dramatic improvements in medicine. Abbott had an opportunity to promote the crucial participation of many scientists including UTMB Galveston and the work with Pfizer on their vaccine and UT Austin with scientists helping create part of methodology for the vaccine (started years ago). Then there is all the effort of doctors in the Houston medical center dealing with infectious diseases.
Abbott could have taken advantage of our overly prideful attitude to blunt much of the dt anti-vaccine lunacy but he never even tried. He could have done public service ads highlighting the work of great Texans on the vaccine and included the brave doctors and nurses in our emergency rooms and how we in Texas could help lead the way out of the pandemic and back to a booming economy but he was too scared to even try.
Everything is bigger in Texas but in this case it has not been better it has been a failure.
We have a memorial with the names of every US service person who died in Vietnam but we will never have any such memorial to those who have died of COVID-19 in Texas or the United States or even know all of their names.
58,272 deaths and still climbing.