Fayette Not Immune
To the Editor:
In last Friday’s Record, a gentleman from Schulenburg apparently believes that Fayette County lives in a bubble that protects the people of Fayette County (other than the elderly) from this pandemic. His opinion is based upon his comparison of last year’s death rate for flu cases to this year’s death rate for corona virus cases as of July 3, 2020, which made him curious about the “level of hysteria of this narrative versus the surrender of civil liberties and the cost to livelihoods and mental health.”
Unfortunately since Tuesday, the Texas Tribune reported: that a record 3,851 people were hospitalized for the coronavirus in the Houston region alone, exceeding normal intensive care capacity; that in Houston, as coronavirus cases surge, inundating hospitals and leading to testing shortages, a rapidly growing number of Houston-area residents are dying at home, according to a review of Houston Fire Department data; and that an increasing number of these at-home deaths have been confirmed to be the result of COVID-19, Harris County medical examiner data shows.
In Corpus Christi, the New York Times reported this week that “as early as June, days went by with hardly anyone testing positive for the coronavirus. A single case one day. Three the next. Then zero. Zero. Zero. Word spread that Corpus Christi, always a popular beachfront vacation spot for Texans from around the state, was a safe place to go. They didn’t even require masks indoors. It was an oasis from the virus. It turned out that no place was safe. Now the city of 325,000 has one of the fastest growing outbreaks in Texas where records for positive cases were set for four straight days last week, with nearly 11,000 recorded on Thursday. Corpus Christi has seen more cases per capita than Houston and a rapidly mounting death toll: of the 38 deaths recorded from the pandemic, 30 have come in July, including a baby less than 6 months old.”
Also, this corona virus is not any ordinary flu. People infected with the corona virus are of all ages and they often endure extreme pain and suffering as if they were repeatedly drowning and those who survive, including some children, often have long term debilitating physical and mental health effects that are far more serious than the common flu. Does the gentleman from Schulenburg recall any of the above events occurring during last year’s flu season?
During last year’s flu season, were Houston and Dallas and other big city hospitals ordering refrigerated trucks for lack of morgue space? Yes, as the number of cases increase the death rates tend to go down and hopefully primarily because our brave doctors and nurses now have more resources and have developed better methods of treating this corona virus that is far more contagious and deadly than the typical flu. Does the gentleman from Schulenburg understand that the initial shelter in place helped avoid our hospitals from being overwhelmed and that the ongoing failure of far too many Texans to wear masks is filling up those ICU beds again and making it difficult for our brave doctors and nurses to save lives while risking their own.
The need to wear a mask in public and in close quarters and to maintain social distance all of which will be impossible to do on school campuses this Fall is more dire than ever. Failure to do so will result in another shelter in place order that will wreak further havoc on our economy. That is not “hysteria”. That is just common sense and good business sense and Christian Respect for Life and Respect for the Law that our government and business and educational leaders should be enforcing throughout Fayette County to keep that perceived and fragile “bubble”as safe and secure as possible.
John W. Mikus Fayetteville