When Brittany Bankhead-Kendall received the Covid-19 vaccine in a beautiful executive boardroom at University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas, the small sting finally gave her a dose of hope that she and her family would be safe.
But she still knew that patients at the bottom were fighting for their lives and dying every day, relying on surgical tubes and ventilators just to breathe.
“It’s a great combination, and it’s really a difficult situation to have so much hope and so much sadness, similar to the same walls,” said Bankhead-Kendall, a trauma surgeon and ICU doctor at Texas Tech University. Health Sciences, said. Centre.
A year into the pandemic, more than 13,500 Covid-19 patients are languishing in Texas hospitals. With only 586 ICU beds across the country and some regions already lacking space, “hospitals can not take much more”, said the Department of Public Health (DSHS) recently tweeted.
Yet Covid is still furious: about one in six molecular tests in Texas is currently returning positively, well above the 10% threshold, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of the state, who once used as a ‘warning flag’ for high proliferation of the community was considered.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is at its worst in Texas,” DSHS said written online earlier this month and “it has probably never been so easy to catch”.
In a perfect world, Bankhead-Kendall said, Texas would take a page from other states, where leaders are strategically closed to give health workers a break.
“If you are not going to be in our hospitals and will help care for your patients, you can at least be outside our walls and make your contribution to return in other ways,” she said.
But Abbott rejected another closure, a successful but blunt instrument that would undoubtedly cause him political sadness. And although he instituted the reduction of occupation businesses and the closure of the bar in regions with high hospitalizations, these restrictions proved half-baked and mostly ineffective.
Aside from therapeutic treatments and boasting of vaccinating the state, Abbott’s administration has made shockingly little effort in recent months to alleviate the carnage of the virus, even as a new, highly contagious variant threatens further devastation.
“Republican politicians act like they do business as usual,” said Abhi Rahman, communications director for the Democratic Party in Texas. “They are acting like the pandemic has never existed in the first place.”
Last March, Dan Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick sparked a widespread reaction when he campaigned for a speedy reopening, insinuates that the country’s elderly are willing to risk their lives to save the US economy. But despite the hasty appearance of Texas in May, the struggling workforce failed to bounce back, with the unemployment rate still at 7.2% in December, up from 3.5% the previous year.
Instead, Texas’ practical approach picked up the virus, killing more than 33,700 Texans, orphaning children and forcing doctors to make painful decisions about rationing. Now, after months of suffering, the pandemic has reached another hellish chapter, with hundreds dying daily.
“Elections have consequences, and they are the direct result of Republican leadership,” Rahman said.
In Fort Worth, criminal justice organizer Pamela Young stayed on to the city’s invitation to pile up in a room in January for seven hours of interview panels with the best candidates for chief of police.
After witnessing nearly constant, sensational cases of police brutality in Fort Worth, she knows how much the police chief works. Therefore, she asked the deputy city manager if he could facilitate a virtual option for the panels, similar to the meetings held by other local officials.
But the city insisted on personal interviews, which are apparently ambivalent about forcing Young to risk her life or to get out of high-profile conversations over an issue she has been advocating for years.
“It’s appalling to think that our city government and staff leadership – whatever it is – are so contemptuous of human life in the midst of a global pandemic,” Young said.
Other cities and counties in Texas – especially urban centers that lean more democratically – have deviated from the state’s example and are trying to implement policies to limit infections at the local level. But since last summer, Abbott and his colleagues have been undermining the authority of other officials and sabotaging efforts to save lives in hard-hit communities.
“The state is driving the car,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner explained. “We are passengers.”
In December, Abbott – backed by Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General – has gone so far as to encourage businesses in Austin to stop a local evening clock in the new year until late at night.
Reinforced crowds gathered outside open bars. Inside, dancers and hugs danced while bartenders became maskless, a deadly recipe for recovery from a surge that health experts warned would happen if Americans did not stay home for the holidays.
Meanwhile, Bankhead-Kendall looked at patients who even lift or asymptomatic Covid-19 cases have to do with collapsed lungs or blood clots, probably due to the virus.
Since the introduction of a vaccine, the general public in Texas has become sluggish, she said: “it feels like it’s almost over”. But so far, only about 5% of the state’s approximately 29 million residents have received at least a first dose, and the widespread availability is likely to be months away.
“They do not understand the immediate or potential consequences or long-term consequences of the disease,” Bankhead-Kendall said.
“Most people live, which is why many people hang up their hats.”