Covid on Record Crashing Texas Tear
with No Fight from Abbott and the GOP

Capitol Inside
September 9, 2021

The Texas rate of new COVID-19 cases and deaths have skyrocketed to record levels in the past two days as Governor Greg Abbott and his GOP allies in Austin ramp up a fight to make it harder to protect the children in public schools where the disease is out of control and spreading rapidly.

The coronavirus fatality count soared to an all-time high in Texas on Thursday with 403 more covid casualties added to the toll based on the Department of State Health Services daily update. The state agency reported a record-shattering 34,425 confirmed and probable new cases on Wedesday before logging 29,607 more this afternoon. Texas health officials have recorded 64,032 new cases that were confirmed or listed as probable in the past two days.

That could be low - however - according to New York Times data that showed Texas with 42,057 new covid cases on Wednesday alone.

Abbott has offered an optimistic forecast last week for the contagion - saying that things were looking good for Texas based on the testing positive rate - a metric that had been his guiding metric for restrictions last spring and summer before he abandoned it last fall in favor of hospitalizations.

The governor has responded to the acceleration of the delta variant rampage with a new special session call that he announced on Tuesday with a measure that will give Republican lawmakers who march to his orders an opportunity to ban vaccine mandates for schools, hospital staff, private employees and others in a state with a dismal vaccination rate.

Several GOP lawmakers wasted no time filing a bevy of bills on Wednesday and Thursday that would accomplish the governor's goal.

The governor has consistently failed to assess the level of the virus threat after promising Texans last year that he would base his emergency orders on science and medical expertise. Abbott assured his constituents in December that Texas was in the 9th inning of the pandemic.

But the governor abandoned the fight this spring after the coronavirus proved him wrong again after Democratic President Joe Biden characterized Abbott as neanderthal for giving up. Abbott, a former judge and attorney general who had a reputation as a legal scholar until now, has demonstrated a surprising lack of fundamental knowledge on science in the failed fight with covid and the comments that he made on Tuesday on the new Texas abortion ban.

more to come ...