TREVINO, OFFICIALS, FLOUNDER VIS-A-VIS VIRAL ONSLAUGHT

Special to the El Rrun-Rrun

During the last depressing and recurring public exhibition of failure that Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño calls a press conference on COVID-19 infections this Friday, he said something scary.

He said that state law makes him the maximum authority on whether local school districts continue with distance learning or start face-to-face instruction.

"We are in close contact with all the superintendents and right now the majority plan is to have distance or virtual learning for the first four to eight weeks," Treviño said.

"We're tying to clarify some of the discrepancies and confusion with the state of Texas with regards to who's in charge and we feel clear that the law allows the county judge in coordination with the superintendents to determine their direction with regards to their learning and their plan. I will always defer to the educators and but I will support them in whatever shape or form they require and all of the have requested our assistance to support their virtual plan for learning..."

Let's hope so, because given local cities' and the county officials' performance during this crisis, they have been playing a constant game of catch-up that has resulted in the confusion and discrepancies of their own making. We cringe to think that this same type of approach to handling the virus outbreak will be used as a blueprint to open local schools. 

Treviño made this assertion of his authority on school openings after he and medical director Dr. Jaime Treviño and his Health Dept. Director Esmeralda Guajardo performed verbal somersaults trying to explain the divergence on the numbers of infected, hospitalized and dead residents the county has reported compared to the state numbers listed on their vital statistics reports.

"The numbers we report will always be lower than the state's" said Castillo, who expressed a "cautious optimism" that they would start top decline. Guajardo said that the county's totals were approaching 85 percent on parity with the state compared to a 50 percent parity in the past.

None of the duo's explanations for the under reporting fueled the confidence in the county's leadership in residents. How could it?

During his introduction, Treviño reeled off the rocketing number of positive cases that have made Cameron and Hidalgo counties the state's leading "hot spots" for infection. He said that although Cameron County is the 12th largest of 254 counties in the state it was the 8th in the number of cases. He also said that it was the sixth highest in the number of deaths in Texas.

And he said that although Tarrant County (Ft. Worth) had two to three times the number of positive cases than did Cameron, Cameron County had double the death rate.

It was obvious that there is little doubt that Treviño and his medical and health directors have lost the handle on confronting the virus spread in their jurisdiction. At first, their numbers were dramatically under counted until the state stepped in an sent personnel to give them an accurate picture of the situation.

The results were astounding. In just then last month (July) – at an average of about 400 cases a day – the number of positive cases jumped by about 13,000. Even more dramatic was the that the number of deaths soared during that same time period from 70 to 341.

The mantra from the three has always been the same: "Wear a face mask, maintain social distancing, and avoid crowds." Treviño hasn't seen fit to order shelter-in-place orders like his Hidalgo Couny counterpart Richard Cortez has done twice now in the last 30 days. Instead, he urges people to stay a home and to "avoid crowds."

The disconnect continued with Cameron County Workforce Commission director Pat Hobbs incongruently encouraging county business to "open and rebuild" the economy and Cameron County Clerk Sylvia Garza-Perez urging residents to participate in the U.S. Census.

These three seem to be operating in a parallel universe where people in the barrios and neighborhoods of Cameron County can just choose to remain at home instead of going to work to support their families. Simply, they just don't have the luxury of not working. A county employee said that unlike well-to-do populations, the average county resident here does not have a source of income other than work to sustain their family income.

"We don't have the luxury of staying at home," she said. "Even if we know someone has tested positive at work, we still have to come every day. Many of our local families are extended families who live in the same house. They have their parents living with them and when we come home, we have to be very careful that we don't being the virus home. It's not like the people in Dallas or Ft. Worth where families live alone."

The idea, she suggested, was that Treviño and local officials realize that the outreach with the virus information and suggestions on how to stop its spread be made with site-specific approaches that take that unique social setting here into consideration and form their plan to address them. A press conference once a week where they throw out numbers – until now not based on reality – isn't doing the job.

"They just don't get it," she said. "The well-to-do can afford to stay at home and go to South Padre Island and rent a condo to keep to themselves," she said. "But here some of our parents and grandparents live with our families and some of us have to leave the house and go to work. Most of the people who are dying aren't the well-to-do. It's the people from the barrios. The county judge and the medical people have to come up with a better approach to get the message home to these people on how to protect themselves and their loved ones. The last thing we need is for them to be in charge of whether to open the schools or not."

In the same vein, while cities like Edinburg make grants and financial assistance available to people, the city of Brownsville – sitting on a pile of money from increased utility rates which they were going to use to build a plant – has done nothing to provide assistance to the city dwellers. Mayor Trey Hernandez has refused to attend meetings with Gov. Greg Abbott and as a result assistance from the state to set up medical personnel and facilities have gone to McAllen and now Harlingen instead of to the largest city in the valley.

And the Brownsville Independent School District has stopped providing fee meals to hungry children because it cannot handle infection in its Food and Nutrition Service Dept. and toyed with the idea of face-to-face instruction until the state ordered distance learning.

The virus has shown that Treviño and his counterparts at the city and the school district have failed the residents of the county, city and school district. They should remember that all the people who have gotten sick or have died have relatives who vote and will remember their performance come November.