Texas is on a roll! First, Texas reported zero Covid deaths for May 15, despite having lifted all Covid restrictions on March 10. When Texas announced they were lifting their restrictions in March, our president called it “Neanderthal” and the media went into a frenzy about how this would lead to untold deaths. They were all wrong. Texas (and freedom) got the last laugh, and demonstrated (once again) that lockdowns are not effective.
And now, Texas has banned all abortions after a heartbeat can be detected. Surely it will be challenged, so we’ll see if it goes anywhere.
Thinking to Believe 
May 21, 2021 at 5:50 pm
Do not mess with Texas!!! (or Florida)
If it wasn’t for all of my family living here, this Silicon Valley California girl would move to Texas or Florida…Land of the GREAT & COURAGEOUS Governors Gregg Abbott & Ron DeSantis!
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August 16, 2021 at 3:52 pm
Oh yes, Texas (and Florida) are handling the pandemic just great:
Texas has seen nearly 9,000 COVID-19 deaths since February. All but 43 were unvaccinated people.: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07/21/coronavirus-texas-vaccinated-deaths/
Texas surpasses 53K COVID-19 deaths, DSHS data shows: https://abc13.com/texas-surpasses-53-000-covid19-deaths-harris-county-coronavirus/10951983/
Texas just passed New York in COVID-19 deaths, despite once trailing by 29,000: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/health/article/Texas-New-York-COVID-deaths-case-numbers-16352409.php
COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing in Texas nursing homes, and nearly half of workers are unvaccinated: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/13/coronavirus-texas-nursing-homes-staff/
Texas requests five mortuary trailers in anticipation of Covid deaths: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/texas-requests-five-mortuary-trailers-anticipation-covid-deaths-n1276924
Florida’s COVID-19 numbers aren’t ‘hype.’ Right now, they’re quite bad: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/27/erin-marie-olszewski/claim-rising-florida-covid-19-numbers-are-hype-pan/
Florida COVID deaths rise as delta spreads; infections hit 21,600 a day: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/08/13/florida-covid-deaths-rise-as-delta-spreads-infections-hit-21600-a-day/
Florida reports 1,071 COVID deaths, more than 151,000 cases in last week: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-print-florida-coronavirus-friday-aug-13-20210813-62mir7ta4rglxnfmgsbsmhywdm-story.html
3 Broward County, Florida, educators died within about 24 hours from Covid-19 complications: https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/13/us/broward-county-florida-covid-deaths/index.html
Florida’s COVID-19 deaths rise as it leads in hospital rates: https://www.fox13news.com/news/florida-covid-19-deaths-rise-as-it-leads-in-hospital-rates
This is what happens when people politicize vaccines and make it a freedom issue rather than a public health issue. Viruses don’t care about politics, they “care” about evolving to infect as many people as possible.
Again, all this tragedy could be eliminated completely with a 2-3 week full lockdown followed by responsible interaction behavior.
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August 16, 2021 at 10:20 pm
Yes, some have politicized vaccines, including the current administration. Biden, Harris, along with other Democrats like Cuomo and many more questioned the vaccines before they got into power. They said they didn’t trust them because they were rushed. Once in power, however, they pushed the vaccines and questioned why people weren’t listening to them.
But it would be wrong to think that the reason the unvaccinated are choosing to forego the vaccines is because of politics (e.g. blacks are the most resistant, and they vote 90% Democrat). If you think that, you are listening to the Democrat narrative and CNN instead of the actual unvaccinated people themselves. Sure, some people have weird and stupid reasons for being opposed to the vaccines. However, most people I know who choose not to get vaccinated have legitimate, non-political reasons for doing so. It’s based on prudence, not politics.
And why should you care if the unvaccinated are getting Covid? They chose to take that risk. They aren’t hurting you. The unvaccinated are not putting the vaccinated at risk.
If this could be eliminated with a 2-3 week lockdown, it would have been solved in March 2020 when we were told the same thing. It didn’t work, and for good reason. Any disease expert will tell you that’s not the way you overcome a virus. And most of the virology experts I’ve been reading are no longer saying we will overcome Covid. The idea that we will get to zero deaths and no future infections is most likely a pipe dream.
As for Texas and Florida, you need to do your research. I just wrote on this June 30 (https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2021/06/30/was-there-a-correlation-between-lockdown-severity-elderly-populations-and-lower-covid-19-death-rates/). At that time, Florida ranked #25 in death rate (deaths p/100K people). Texas ranked #26. New York was #28, and that was excluding the deaths in NYC (which would put it much further down the list). The idea that the policies of Florida and Texas are resulting in mass Covid death is nonsense.
It’s true that Florida is a hotbed for new cases right now. Texas is not as bad. But you are ignoring the fact that Arkansas, Louisiana (Democrat), and Mississippi are also hotbeds for Covid on par with Florida. Everyone wants to focus on Florida, however, because Florida has tried to balance freedom and safety. Florida actually proved the Left wrong. If the only way to stop the spread of Covid and slow the death rate was lockdowns and masks, Florida should have the worst Covid results, but they don’t.
Secondly, you are ignoring the real issue: deaths. Case counts by themselves are not the issue. No one cares how many people get pneumonia each year. We only care about how many die from it. The same should be true here. Infections don’t matter. Deaths matter. Those who are getting Covid now tend to be younger and healthier – the group least likely to die from Covid. So yes, cases are up, but deaths are not commensurate to the case count like it used to be earlier in the pandemic. How does Florida rank in terms of death? It’s not at the top of the list, by far. Their rolling 7 day death rate is 1/100K. Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina all have higher death rates. But, people only want to focus on Florida. What about Texas? Nevada, Kansas, and Mississippi have a higher death rate than Texas, but people only want to focus on Texas. Why? Data should matter more than narratives.
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August 16, 2021 at 10:47 pm
I should also add that Florida and Texas are not anti-vaccine. Based on https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/states-ranked-by-percentage-of-population-vaccinated-march-15.html, the #1 state for vaccination rate is Vermont, with 67% of the total population fully vaccinated. Florida ranks #23, with 50.35% vaccinated. Texas ranks #34, with 45.27% fully vaccinated. And what matters most is that Florida has one of the highest vaccination rates among those age 65+ (the most likely to die from Covid) at 93% of that population – ranking #16 in the nation (see https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html).
If Florida is middle of the pack for vaccinations, why pick on Florida for the outbreaks?
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August 19, 2021 at 6:57 pm
“Yes, some have politicized vaccines, including the current administration. Biden, Harris, along with other Democrats like Cuomo and many more questioned the vaccines before they got into power. They said they didn’t trust them because they were rushed. Once in power, however, they pushed the vaccines and questioned why people weren’t listening to them.”
Actually, that’s not true. Check the fact checkers: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/23/tiktok-posts/biden-harris-doubted-trump-covid-19-vaccines-not-v/ . They didn’t trust Trump, not the vaccines.
And the vaccines weren’t rushed. mRna vaccines have been under development and testing for literally decades, and they went through full phase 1-3 testing. The FDA approval usually takes longer, but that doesn’t mean they rushed anything. They couldn’t release the vaccine without the science fully supporting the safety: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/09/blog-posting/alternative-health-website-spreads-false-claim-abo/
“But it would be wrong to think that the reason the unvaccinated are choosing to forego the vaccines is because of politics (e.g. blacks are the most resistant, and they vote 90% Democrat). If you think that, you are listening to the Democrat narrative and CNN instead of the actual unvaccinated people themselves. Sure, some people have weird and stupid reasons for being opposed to the vaccines. However, most people I know who choose not to get vaccinated have legitimate, non-political reasons for doing so. It’s based on prudence, not politics.”
Yes, many blacks are reluctant to be vaccinated, given the racist history of experimentation performed against them. Anti-vaxxers are definitely on both sides of the spectrum, no question there. But very few have legitimate reasons for not being vaccinated. Sure, there are a few who have compromised immune systems or the like, and of course children haven’t been approved for the vaccine yet, but the rest have mostly fallen victim to misinformation and disinformation. Politically, it’s the Republicans who are most anti-vaccine, as shown in the vaccination rates between Trump voters vs. Biden voters: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covid-19-vaccination-rates-is-growing/ . And which politicians are most against vaccinations? Republicans. In fact, ALL the Democrats in Congress are vaccinated. Less than half of House Republicans are vaccinated: https://www.businessinsider.com/just-45-of-house-republicans-say-theyve-gotten-a-covid-19-vaccine-2021-5 . That certainly sounds political to me.
BTW, I don’t recommend CNN for one’s media source. They’re a lot more reliable and less biased than Fox News, but neither is consistently accurate. The Media Bias Chart is the only objectively-based tracker of media reliability and bias available, and the sources with the highest reliability and lowest bias are at the top center of the chart (scroll down to see it; mouse wheel to zoom in): https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
“And why should you care if the unvaccinated are getting Covid? They chose to take that risk. They aren’t hurting you. The unvaccinated are not putting the vaccinated at risk.”
That is absolutely not true. The unvaccinated are allowing the virus to perpetuate, moving from person to person in sufficiently large numbers to not die out. Thus, herd immunity becomes impossible. Worse, children and the elderly who can’t be vaccinated are put at risk. Worse still, the longer a virus circulates, the more it mutates and evolves into more virulent versions. The delta variant is a prime example. It went from just 1% of infections in the US a couple months ago to well over 90% of infections today. Infected people carry 1,000 times the viral load, and it can cause breakthrough infections even among the vaccinated: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/08/421171/how-dangerous-delta-variant-heres-what-science-says . If everyone were vaccinated, the virus would burn out. Instead, we’re looking at COVID becoming a constant threat in our lives. The unvaccinated are putting EVERYONE at risk.
“If this could be eliminated with a 2-3 week lockdown, it would have been solved in March 2020 when we were told the same thing. It didn’t work, and for good reason. Any disease expert will tell you that’s not the way you overcome a virus. And most of the virology experts I’ve been reading are no longer saying we will overcome Covid. The idea that we will get to zero deaths and no future infections is most likely a pipe dream.”
On the contrary. The coronavirus doesn’t survive in the body for long. Eventually the immune system kills it or the infected person dies. The ONLY way the virus can spread is before the immune system kills it. That means the virus MUST be constantly moving from victim to victim. That’s how it works, and EVERY epidemiologist and virologist agrees on this point.
The reason we will likely never overcome COVID is not because lockdowns don’t work, it’s because there are always people who disobey lockdowns and keep spreading the virus. In EVERY case where lockdowns have been implemented, infection rates have dropped precipitously…but then some people defy lockdowns and continue passing the virus on, and even those who comply get upset with lockdowns before too long, and politicians ease restrictions…and infection rates once again go up. Lockdowns only work when citizens are willing to work together to solve a public health issue.
The proof of this is New Zealand. They test and quarantine those coming into the country, and as soon as there was a local-only infection, they locked the country down: https://www.businessinsider.com/jacinda-arden-new-zealand-full-lockdown-one-unconfirmed-delta-covid-2021-8 . Lockdowns and other safety procedures have allowed them to be largely spared the pandemic, even with very low vaccination rates: https://www.businessinsider.com/jacinda-arden-new-zealand-full-lockdown-one-unconfirmed-delta-covid-2021-8
“As for Texas and Florida, you need to do your research. I just wrote on this June 30 (https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2021/06/30/was-there-a-correlation-between-lockdown-severity-elderly-populations-and-lower-covid-19-death-rates/). At that time, Florida ranked #25 in death rate (deaths p/100K people). Texas ranked #26. New York was #28, and that was excluding the deaths in NYC (which would put it much further down the list). The idea that the policies of Florida and Texas are resulting in mass Covid death is nonsense.”
Your article in this post stated that “the media went into a frenzy about how this would lead to untold deaths. They were all wrong. Texas (and freedom) got the last laugh, and demonstrated (once again) that lockdowns are not effective.” My comment provided you with the evidence that Texas (and Florida, since Elaine mentioned it) are NOT doing well, and it’s because they are ignoring safety protocols. Their current death rate is almost DOUBLE that of NY (and Louisiana, since you mentioned it): https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/01/816707182/map-tracking-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus-in-the-u-s#res816753519 . Every virologist and epidemiologist was warning that there would be a resurgence because of this lack of safety protocol, and that’s exactly what happened.
“If the only way to stop the spread of Covid and slow the death rate was lockdowns and masks, Florida should have the worst Covid results, but they don’t.”
Lockdowns only work if people follow the protocols. The states with the worst results are those doing the least to follow COVID safety protocols.
“Secondly, you are ignoring the real issue: deaths.”
Look at the articles I posted. They’re ALL about COVID deaths.
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