So the governor here in Texas just announced that he’s rescinding all his executive orders for mask mandates, capacity restrictions, or pretty much everything else related to COVID-19, and is also preventing any enforcement of anything like that on a local level.
Apparently the fact that the cases have been declining, vaccines exist (but aren’t administered to a significant percentage of Texans), and people have PPE to wear if they so choose is reason enough to just blow away all COVID related restrictions, and that basically it’s our responsibility to protect ourselves, and that all businessses of all sorts should be allowed to open fully with no restrictions- bars, restaurants, etc…
WTF is wrong with him? Does he have brain damage or something? This is just one in many moronic things he’s done or said in the past couple of weeks.
I’m thinking I agree with Lina Hidalgo (Democratic Harris County (Houston) Judge) when she said that at worst, this is a cynical attempt to draw attention away from the ERCOT/PUC business.
Republicans have been ignoring scientists who tell them things they don’t want to hear for decades now. This is just yet another example. Fuck Abbott and the people who voted for him.
Republicans trip over each other in their frantic race to out-stupid the next one. And you know, people support them. Don’t ask me. The stupid required is baffling. Sorry to hear it, Texas. Maybe stop electing so many Republicans.
Republican policies are literally killing people, but some people (voters) seem to enjoy punching themselves in the balls and stabbing their eyes with pencils.
I’d love to see the stats (if they exist) on the 500K deaths from covid. How many are science denying mask ignoring superspreader evenet attending idiot repubs? Is it 50%, meaning it’s not a factor at all? More? 90%?
My sense of schadenfreudic karma needs to know how to feel about it.
Why is he trying to murder the people who voted for him? It will be a wholesale slaughter… and right when it was announced that with J&J adding vaccines at full capacity also that we’d have enough to vaccinate everyone in the US by May.
I do not understand this. Why is he so bloodthirsty?
And even if you’re going to relax the restrictions, why all of them at once? I mean, I can understand why one might want to relax the rules on, say, business capacity, ASAP: That’s hurting the economy, and hurting the economy will directly or indirectly hurt people. But mask-wearing is a minor annoyance at worst, and doesn’t significantly hurt anyone. So a rational plan for returning to normal would drop the capacity limits first, and only then some time later, probably many months later, drop the mask mandates.
And in reality, it’d be much more nuanced than that: Not all businesses are equally important, for instance.
At the same time, Houston was the first city in the country to report all the new strains of the virus are in the city’s population. And until very recently, Texas has one of the lowest vaccination records.
For those, like me, not aware of what a County Judge is in Texas, apparently it is a non-judicial position equivalent to the county chief executive. I was wondering why a “judge” was identified by party and was making political pronouncements, so I looked it up. OP must not be aware that this usage (“County Judge”) is pretty uncommon outside of Texas.
At least he’s waiting until March 31, and gives some numerical goal. Sure, he’s still ignoring that cases are going up–not down–after the big drop. And that would still be before anyone under 65 with preexisting conditions can get their first shot.
Nah. He’s still pretty bad. It makes no sense. There’s nothing to cover up. Arkansas had a small amount of rolling blackouts that lasted a couple hours at most, but we handled the storm fine.
Still, I wonder if Abbot is so extreme it provides cover to make Hutchinson seem reasonable by comparison. It’s still stupid. Neither Arkansans or Texans are so weak we can’t handle wearing a cloth on our face.
And, if I know human nature, more people will drop the masks than wore them before the mandates.
Oh, and thanks for reminding me, @Heffalump_and_Roo. We just got evidence of the UK variant in Arkansas, too. And the asshole said he would have done what he did anyways, as he “assumed it was here.”
Did I mention he already converted most of the requirements to guidelines? He’s saying numbers are going down when raw cases are going up and have been since the start of February.
As I posted in the Republican Stupid Idea thread, Abbott and the other governors are doing this to sabotage the good COVID recovery progress that has happened during the first month of the Biden presidency. The Pubs need things to screw up so they can blame Biden for dropping the ball. Seems pretty simple to me.
