Monday, April 13, 2020

The Weekly 'Flatten the Curve' Wrangle *updates

The Texas Progressive Alliance remains committed to flattening the curve as it brings you the best of the left of, about, and from around the Great State over the past week.


Gerald Parker, who served in the Bush administration and is now at Texas A&M, says that we are just at stage two of this five-stage pandemic.


Phase Three would be (a second stage of) containment before we have a vaccine to deploy. I’m optimistic that in three to six months we’ll have (a better treatment for coronavirus symptoms), a therapeutic in our toolkit that can rescue those who become severely ill.

But it's going to be at least 18 months, I believe, before there's a vaccine available to deploy in any meaningful way.

While we wait for a vaccine, we’ll enter a second stage of containment. During this time, we need to restart our economy -- and we need to do it safely.

What's essential to go the next phase is greatly expanded lab testing -- both the antigen and the antibody lab testing -- so we can have a much better view of what's happening in our community. Despite the rapid advancement that's occurred in lab testing over the last month, we're still catching up. And without the lab testing, we're still almost blind to what's really happening in our community.

I think everybody is now familiar with the epidemiology curve -- the curve from “flattening the curve” -- and its peak. Once we’re on the other side of the peak, once we're seeing a decreasing number of cases, we'll be back in a position where we can attempt to contain the virus in our communities with surgically applied social distancing measures -- not community-wide social distancing measures.

We’re going to have to target new infections more aggressively. We’re going to have to isolate those and do contact tracing. It takes a lot of resources to do that.

Our public health authorities don't have the manpower to do this. We need a lot more public-health soldiers.




It's not just the statistics that are lacking ...


Some of our so-called leaders are short on empathy.


Perhaps we should send him a copy of the newspaper.


COVID-19 is not an equal opportunity infection.




And the discrimination goes far beyond the numbers.


In a second Wrangle coming tomorrow, we'll have the latest on the legal developments regarding Ken Paxton's outlawing of women's reproductive freedoms.

Ross Ramsey of the TexTrib via Progrexas asks the right question: is in-person voting during a contagion really the best we can do?

It’s plainly ignorant to tell people to stay away from one another and then to require them to gather in their precincts to cast votes.

Jim Malewitz, a former Texas Tribune reporter who now works for Wisconsin Watch, was on hand this month when that state required many of its voters to line up or shut up. He tweeted a Kenosha News photo of a voter outfitted for the occasion. You should go look.

Voting by mail is well established in other states, but you don’t have to look far to find politicians -- Republicans in particular -- who think it’s a bad idea. Start right at the top, with President Donald Trump, who voted by mail in the last election: “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

[...]

There are arguments, debunked by election experts, that voting by mail is more vulnerable to fraud. And some argue, with some evidence, that it could be difficult to handle a vote-by-mail election without big investments in voting processes.

That last one is just a good reason to start early instead of waiting until September to make some decisions.

[...]

Maybe it’s not the IQ of voters we’re testing here.


Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast, feeling better and back on a regular blogging schedule, has the latest on Abbott's court battle to stop prisoners from being released due to the pandemic.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court of Texas on Saturday issued a temporary stay on Judge Livingston's temporary restraining order, meaning Abbott's order for now is back in effect. The court has requested briefings on the subject, with responses from the litigants due on Monday. See coverage from the Texas Tribune.


SocraticGadfly notes that the Freedom from Religion Foundation had a court win over Greg Abbott upheld on appeal, and as with the original filing, it's a case he wishes both could have lost.

The Texas Signal worries about the rise of anti-Asian racism.


And the TO announces their new EIC.


One of Ahtone's last pieces of work at High Country News -- along with several others -- detailed the appropriation of indigenous peoples' lands for public colleges.


And closing out this Wrangle with the lighter side ...

The Lunch Tray deconstructs stress eating and "anxiety baking".  It's Not Hou It's Me shows you where to pick up beer to go in Houston.
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