Politics Is Viral

The virus is political. It does exist. It does not discriminate based on political party. But the response to it has been totally politicized.

Yesterday, Houston’s Democrat Mayor Sylvester Turner decided to cancel the State GOP convention, which was rescheduled from May to July at the George R. Brown Convention Center. The main business starts on Thursday, July 16th, but the committees begin meeting Monday, July 13^th, just 5 days after Turner’s breaking of the contract. All parts of the state are represented on the committees. People have to get here from Brownsville and El Paso, not just Austin or Dallas or San Antonio. They need to set out for their week-long commitment early enough to be in place Monday morning.

As of today, State RPT (Republican Party of Texas) Chair James Dickey is seeking immediate legal redress, including forcing the city to keep its contractual agreement.

That's us, and the grandkids, at the 2018 State GOP Convention

Timing is urgent. Earlier today a district judge ruled against the RPT, so tomorrow an appellate court judge will rule. If that judge rules in favor of RPT being able to hold the convention, I am told it will happen in person on Monday. If not, it gets appealed to the Texas Supreme Court; it may be appealed either way. A ruling there would have to happen on Saturday in order for plans to go forward. I don’t know whether a ruling that quick is possible.

About 9 days ago the Mayor amended the contract to remove his ability to shut down the convention at the last moment. He had previously listed a number of requirements that would have to be met to make the meeting “safe.” All of those were met. Based on the Mayor’s removal of his own authority over the decision, the State Republican Executive Committee met last Thursday to decide whether to go ahead with an in-person convention or change to an online distant convention. There was debate both ways, but the vote went strongly in favor of in-person: 40-20.

There are several factors involved in the decision, beyond that it’s nice to see one another in person. We have business we’re required to do, no matter what. And in Texas we do it the grassroots way. Individual involvement is necessary.

For example, the platform—which I help work on. It starts at precinct conventions, where each precinct has the opportunity to meet and put forth resolutions. There is more input at the senatorial district level, including personal testimonies. Then that happens again at the state convention, in the subcommittees, in the committee-as-a-whole, and then when the platform is brought to the whole body. With thousands of people there, individuals have a voice.

Similar work, and similar floor discussions, happen for Rules and Legislative Priorities committees.

Is it possible (i.e., something other than impossible) to do this through Zoom meeting? Sort of. Floor discussion can use the “raise your hand” feature. But there’s no way to separate out points of order from points of information, or arguments in favor from arguments against whatever is being discussed. And, if there’s a vote, and you use “raise your hand” as a way to indicate, you no longer have a place in line for discussion.

In other words, it’s a lot harder to get grassroots input. I’m not sure yet how they’ll handle taking testimony in committee meetings.

There has been a plan B in the works for weeks, in case the Mayor or the County Judge tried to pull the rug out at the last minute. Ten thousand people can’t turn on a dime, so we had to have ways lined up. The convention will happen. Either in person, or online.

But, was this about safety, to keep the medical services in the state from being overwhelmed? No.

Consider this: we held our senatorial district conventions June 13th. Ours had a very high turnout, in one of the largest districts in the state. It was held in a large church, but with that many people it was fairly close quarters. I spent much of the day in a conference room. We had about 3 feet of separation, chair to chair, and were facing our computer screens, not the person next to us for the most part. It was a situation where I wouldn’t normally feel at risk of getting a cold, unless someone sneezed directly on me. But in a Covid-19 world, it was somewhat risky. So, I was looking for word that anyone got sick in the weeks following. Never heard. Then our SREC Chair verified that, out of that convention of some 600+ people (whose names we have a list of), we had zero cases of Covid-19. Zero.

And it turns out, the other SD conventions had the same outcome—no uptick in cases among those who attended the conventions.

A week or two earlier, the protests (and some riots) happened downtown. In fact, Mayor Turner got out there and marched with them—no social distancing.

One news story interviewed a woman who attended and then got Covid-19. This Houston resident told KRIV News that she took part in a march to Houston City Hall attended by an estimated 60,000 people around the beginning of June. She later tested positive, as did several friends who attended with her:

Despite the illness, she said she has no regrets about her decision to march.

“I actually got sick the day after the march… I could not move out of the bed. I was in the bed just sighing,” [she] said. “I definitely don’t regret getting the COVID, because I was out there doing the right thing for the right cause.” 

The story goes on to imply that maybe the disease wasn’t spread at the protests, because incubation periods are usually 2-14 days.

So, they’re saying, as ought to be obvious, this individual didn’t get the illness at the protest; but they fail to note, she spread it there.

She wasn’t risking getting the disease there, because she already had it. But she had bravely gone out there, risking getting it, “because I was out there doing the right thing for the right cause.” Spreading the illness. Not getting it there; spreading it there. The story includes her name, but I am not, because I don’t think I want to blame the subsequent uptick in cases that followed the protests on one person not bright enough to know the difference between 1 day and 2-14 days when she’s proclaiming her virtuous bravery to the media. She was certainly not the only one.

Despite our lack of cases coming out of the SD conventions, the RPT had arranged an amazing array of precautions at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

·         Limited entry points—and fever scanners at each one.

·         Touchless hand sanitizer convenient to everywhere.

·         Larger that usual rooms to allow social distancing.

·         Additional cleaning—deep cleaning of each room between uses.

·         Masks encouraged (not mandated by RPT, but by the county, and not disputed).

·         SWAT teams to protect attendees from protesters.

What we had the opportunity to do was show that a large gathering could happen safely in the time of the pandemic. All it takes is people being individually responsible.

But, as I said, Mayor Turner, among many others, has made this disease political. And he timed it to inflict the highest amount of damage. There’s a pandemic clause in the contract, but he will have to prove that the conditions were so much worse this week than last week that there was no way to provide the services. If he fails to do so, he has not only deprived the city of needed income and tax revenue that the convention would have brought, he has cost city taxpayers around half a million for broken contracts—for which the city and taxpayers gain nothing. But he doesn’t care about taxpayer money.

In case you’ve been hearing that Houston is the country’s new hot spot, note that new cases have been going down, now that the spike caused by the protests has run its course.

 

Data from Harris County Public Health July 9, 2020

Death rates, which lag one to three weeks behind a spike in cases, are up, but only slightly. We had 7-day rolling averages this high in mid-May. And the trend is moving back down, as the trend in new cases is doing.

What about hospital beds? That’s the important thing, right? The reason for any shutdown whatsoever? Despite what you’ve heard, no, our hospitals are not on the verge of running out of space or ICU beds.  They’re operating at about 97% capacity—which is their goal, and what they were at last year at this time. Hospitals are businesses. They try to fully use facilities. That does not mean we have suddenly filled them up with coronavirus cases. In fact, coronavirus cases are between 12-17% in the various hospitals. Most other beds are taken up by people in for a day or two because of a surgery or other issue and are likely to open up a bed soon. If things start looking dire, hospitals have ways of adjusting—postponing less urgent care, transferring to hospitals with more openings, opening up a mobile center if needed. There’s no cause for alarm—and the hospitals have apologized for not making that clear.

And more good news on the disease in general: recoveries are increasing and deaths rates are going down. 

Death rates are going down for a couple of reasons. One is that those getting it lately are younger; the average age of those contracting the disease this past month is 31. It is extremely rare for a healthy person in that age range to die of Covid-19. Another reason is that we have better treatments. Less ventilator; more hydroxychloroquine with z-pac and zinc, for example. 

Dr. Jeffrey Barke, left, and Will Will
screenshot from here

In a PragerU interview, Will Witt talks with Dr. Jeffrey Barke, about Covid-19. It’s about 22 minutes, and I suggest watching the whole thing. But one of the things they did was give Will a finger prick test that tests for memory antibodies, IGG, which means you have immunity; and also for antibodies showing your body is fighting off a current infection, IGM. He did it on camera, and showed us the results later in the interview. No sending it off to a lab. It takes ten minutes or less. (Witt tested negative for both, by the way.) I hope these become widespread soon—and I hope they’re accurate.

Dr. Barke said the risk for young people is so low, it’s hard to even put a number on it. I saw on a teacher’s thread this week a great deal of hand-wringing about starting school in the fall. “Think of how many children will die!” one teacher lamented. I have the answer. Zero. The odds of a single child falling to this virus by going to school is immeasurably low. Dr. Barke suggested their odds of getting hit by a car on the way to school are much much higher. And yet no one would consider stopping a child from attending school because of the risk of an accident on the way. (Should people this uninformed and risk averse be teaching young people anything? Yet another reason to homeschool.) Teachers who are of an age or health status to be at risk, he suggests could have their needs handled individually.

Another good piece of news is that the herd immunity threshold (HIT, the point at which enough people have immunity that the virus no longer has a new host to jump to) for this virus is much lower than previously thought. We were told that somewhere between 60-80% of the population needed to contract it before herd immunity was reached. Not so. Because we all have had so many coronaviruses—common colds—in our lifetimes, many of us have developed antibodies that make us immune to this one. So, you add in the already immune to those who develop antibodies by contracting the virus, and it turns out you only need about 20% of the population to contract the disease before HIT is reached.

An example of why we should have seen this was the Diamond cruise ship, early on. The enclosed population, facing this new virus, in an environment in which spreading was inevitable—only 17% got it. That means 83% already had enough immunity to protect them. Later studies show the number in the population as a whole is probably 81%.

Sweden has given us an example; they reached about 20% of the population, and now their death rates are plummeting. So, yes, for now their death numbers are higher than other countries that shut down to prevent the spread. But that just means it will take longer for those countries—whose death tolls aren’t that far behind—to reach the HIT of 20%. By the time they do, then you can compare death rates. In the meantime, Sweden did it with some personal responsibility and without economic devastation.

South Dakota has been doing that too. So, while they have higher rates for now than some other states (they’re 35^th), they’ve done it without suspending individual rights and without economic devastation. Please take note, Governor Abbott.

J. B. Handley, in a blog post on HIT—and full of data—shares this CDC chart of Covid-19 deaths in the US: 

CDC Official US Weekly COVID Deaths
from here

Even if we have slight rises here and there, the overall US trend is down.

Further into the article he recommends this video, particularly noting a part starting just before 11 minutes in. A scientist from Stanford, Dr. Michael Levitt, discusses the failures of science in this whole situation. It’s because scientists, who are not used to dealing with things in real time, were too scared of non-scientists breaking protocols to make informed decisions. They failed utterly to give adequate, accurate information on which policy could be based.

A vacuum will be filled. In a political climate such as we’ve been in, power mongers use the vacuum in good knowledge to exert their coercive powers.

We might all have been better off if our governments had simply provided information and protected our rights, instead of pretending they could protect us from a virus by taking away our liberty and property. Funny how just following the Constitution would have led to much better outcomes.