The Guardian
Five residents from Starr county on Texas’s southern border died on a single day last week after contracting Covid-19. New infections in the rural border community of around 65,000 people have soared in recent weeks, and two intubated patients had to be airlifted to Dallas and San Antonio when overwhelmed local hospitals couldn’t care for them.
Texas has become one of the US’s new coronavirus hotspots, with new confirmed cases surging to around 14,000 of the county's total when measured by a seven-day average. Starr County isn’t even the hardest hit community in the Rio Grande Valley. After a rushed reopening, the state is scrambling to combat the virus by pausing elective surgeries and closing bars, while some officials worry it is too little, too late.
But Starr county’s public officials knew months ago that is was especially vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic: roughly one in three residents lives in poverty, a sizable slice of the population doesn’t have health insurance, and risk factors such as diabetes and obesity prevail. To protect their constituents, who are more than 96% Hispanic or Latino, they acted fast to curtail the contagion.
They developed what officials said was at the time the only drive-through testing site south of San Antonio. They closed schools. They implemented a stay-at-home order, curfew and mandatory face coverings. Only when necessary, they flexed their authority to fine and even jail anyone who flouted the law.
Their strategy worked.
The first few coronavirus cases trickled into Starr county in late March, but for three weeks in April, there were no new infections. Before the end of May, weekly tallies of new confirmed positives never once reached double digits. Even seasonal influenza, coughs, colds and fevers that would normally travel through the community suddenly vanished.
“What we did here was a model for the rest of the nation to follow, but it was lost,” said Joel Villarreal, the mayor of Rio Grande City, one of four small cities in the county. “In fact, I think we had it right.”
The inflection point came when the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, unilaterally decided to reopen the state, and stripped local governments of their power in the process. By early May, malls, restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and salons threw open their doors, albeit at limited capacity. Texans lost their fear of the virus as politicians told them it was safe to re-emerge from lockdown, and once masks became politicized, localities could no longer require their use.
“We had local input to close down. But to reopen, we didn’t have any, at all,” said Villarreal.
When local officials contacted the attorney general’s office for clarity about what orders they could continue to enforce, they were informed that the governor’s policies superseded their own. Any attempt to give feedback fell on deaf ears.
2 comments:
You idiot It was your local wanna be political government who has committed this corruption that has led to death. You are so money hungry that you were willing to commit murder to fill your pockets. Who opened the beaches? Who opened the spas? Who opened the gyms? Who opened the parks? Your local government. In Cameron county it was Mayor Martinez, in Hidalgo it was Mayor Cortez. Where were our so called congressmen like Filemon Vela? Where was Vicente Gonzales? Vicente Gonzales sitting on his ass after his fall. Get rid of these assholes and maybe shit will happen. Enough of this bullshit.
To the commenter of 8:29AM --I was all aboard with the Hidalgo County view of things until I saw your post pointing out I would be an idiot if I believed it. I don't want to be an idiot so I changed my mind. Thanks for the heads up. I have now realized life is much easier if I just believe what I imagine and don't worry about facts. I'm trying to be like you. I'm smart now.
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