It came during Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez's Zoom message to the Brownsville Independent School District board.
Mendez was addressing the board and expressed his support of their resolution to start the school year August 25 with distance learning instead of face-to-face instruction in response to the spike in COVID-19 cases across South Texas.
On Wednesday, Texas again set a new high with nearly 10,800 new cases, along with a record 110 deaths.
The rising toll includes 35 deaths that officials on the border said happened Wednesday morning alone in Hidalgo County. That was more than twice the number of new deaths reported in Harris County — which has five times the population...
“For those people who think this virus is a joke, that it’s made up, not real, that it’s not having an impact, I want you to take a look at that chart,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said, waving to a graphic listing biographical details about the new deaths.
And in Brownsville, where Mendez said that the city had performed 9,000 tests on local residents, and where "well over 1,000" had recovered so far, but might have long-lasting effects, he said that although the Cameron County Health Dept. has recorded 35 deaths for the city, the reality may be different.
"The number is actually higher...a hospital alone has reported 51...," he said.
That revealing statement has been echoed across the city, with residents casting doubts on the numbers trotted out by Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño during his frequent press conferences. For a long time, the policy of concealment of the real mortality rate has been adopted by the county's health officials and despite the pages in the newspaper announcing local deaths, the numbers of the county health department remain unrealistically low.
Despite the 51 deaths alone in one Brownsville hospital, the county reported that the total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Cameron County is 79 with no additional deaths reported overnight.
That despite the fact justices of the peace have reported that they sign "four to 5" death certificates for coronavirus every day and medical staff today say that at least "a dozen" people died last night at one hospital alone.
How believable is it to say – given the 51 deaths reported in one Brownsville hospital so far – that there have only been 28 deaths elsewhere in the entire county?
When asked about the apparent incongruence in the number reported and the actual number of deaths – a county health department staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity – said that the department was at least "a month behind" in the reporting.
"It takes a lot of time to interview all the contacts to determine if the cause of death was the COVID-19 virus," he said. "We're far behind."
For a long time, Cameron County Clerk Sylvia Garza-Perez and other county administrators denied that increasing numbers of county employees had tested positive for the virus, but in the end, she herself fell victim to the disease and had to be placed on a ventilator before being sent home to recover t make room for more patients. Now we have an unconfirmed report that a person on the clerk's staff may have perished.
Mendez said that since May 26, the positivity rate had increased in Texas from 4.27 percent to today's 16.89 percent.
"We find ourselves in a very critical situation...in a scenario that the world has not seen in the last 100 years," he told BISD board members.
For Mendez to admit that local residents have not been getting the true picture from their elected officials is a hopeful first step toward fully understanding what they face and confronting a reality instead of a fairy tale based on wishful thinking.
10 comments:
Coronavirus hospital data will NOW be sent to the Trump Administration instead of CDC. Hospitals are to begin reporting the data to the Trump Administration on Wednesday and that the "database that will receive new information is NOT open to the public, which could affect the work of researchers, modelers and health officials who rely on CDC data to make projections and crucial decisions".
Along with Cameron County the CDC, the WHO, and the media have not been forthcoming or truthful throughout this pandemic. It is disastrous and a huge disappointment when ppl use their position to deceive the masses. Cameron County has been negligent and they continue to endanger the lives of their employees, their employees families and the public in general, by allowing county buildings to be open to the public as the #'s rise. The county should close all buildings to the public and require residents to use other means to conduct county business; such as Mail in, Online or Drive through options. During the time the building is closed to the public the county equip the buildings with a HVAC UV light into all county AC units to assure the safety of their employees and the residents they serve.
Juan, hearing that Emma Perez Trevino has passed, bro.
Trump’s first public utterance about the coronavirus set the tone for everything that followed. He was in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, after the first American diagnosis. “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?” asked CNBC anchor Joe Kernen.
“We have it totally under control,” Trump responded unhesitatingly. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” And off the president went for the next eight weeks. The rest of January and February were peppered with cheerful or sarcastic comments and tweets, minimizing the outbreak’s severity and the need for Americans to do much of anything.
La mucura esta pesada y Mama no puedo con ella.
It’s hard to believe that the Trump administration can mess with so many things and yet get nothing done in terms of reducing the incidence of the COVID-19 pandemic. I applauded yesterday when I read that Harvard and MIT and other institutions of higher education pushed back on the Trump administration pressure tactic to manipulate colleges and universities to open their doors for face-to-face instructional. The tactic was to cancel all international students visas if they were enrolled in online instruction. Trump is devious, a manipulator, and a bully. Vote him out in 2020!
As a former educator in the Rio Grande Valley with extensive experience in Higher Education as well ss secondary education, I understand the desire to reopen the schools, but I must reluctantly conclude that, notwithstanding the probable economic consequences of not opening the classrooms to regular, if modified, instruction, regular classes almost certainly should be postponed until a vaccine is released and delivered to our communities in sufficient quantities to inoculate the general population, most particularly, school age children. Effectively, I believe "normal" instruction must be delayed until the Spring semester. We must protect our children from the virus even at the cost of continuing economic dislocation. The situation in the Valley is, candidly, out of control, and there is plenty of blame to go around among all of our political leaders. Now is the time to use our heads not lose them! Note that I am not arguing that virtual education is effective for the vast majority of our students; it emphatically is not. But that is neither here nor there in the present situation. I don't care who you want to blame. It is irrelevant: there will be time to assess all of that when the dust settles and the dead are buried.
Why doesn't the city give the contract to count the number of Covid deaths to Neurosurgeon Eder Hernandez? NO bids. Just pay him whatever he wants and don't disclose it to the taxpayers. Don't even vote on it or ask how much he'll charge. Just give it to him and start cutting him those checks.
Anonymous 4:32 pm, well said. We hear you, let hope that our leaders will do the same.
fire the purchasing agent if there is one. go social media and hire and give city contracts.
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