With less than half of Texans vaccinated and the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus spreading, the percentage of COVID-19 tests coming back positive in the state has climbed to a rate unseen since winter.
As of this weekend, Texas’ positivity rate is over 10% — a level that Gov. Greg Abbott and the Trump administration had identified as a red flag earlier in the pandemic. Meanwhile, daily confirmed new case totals and hospitalizations are climbing fast, but are far below their winter peaks.
On Saturday, the seven-day average for new confirmed cases in the state was 2,119. That’s nearly triple the average on the first day of the month, when it was 757. Meanwhile, the number of people hospitalized for the coronavirus in the state climbed from 1,591 on July 1 to 2,834 on Friday.
More than 14,200 people with COVID-19 were hospitalized on Jan. 11 — the highest number of pandemic hospitalizations in Texas so far.
But the positivity rate stands out among the rising numbers because experts view it as a leading indicator.
“The early signs are similar. They are all right there,” said Benjamin Neuman, a virologist and professor at Texas A&M University. “Epidemiologists read test positivity stats like the low tide, and it looks as though we are in for a big wave.”
In the last seven days, about 144,000 molecular tests, such as nasal or throat swab tests, were administered in Texas, and 10.2% of those came back positive, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. The last time the state’s positivity rate was above 10% was in February, and the rate hit an all-time low of 2.8% in mid-June.
The positivity rate does not clearly measure how prevalent the virus is spreading across the state since it depends on the number of administered tests, Neuman said, but “what it indicates is that we are missing a lot of cases.”
“Ten percent of the state is not infected right now,” he continued. “But 10% of the people with the sniffles have COVID, which means we are at the start of something like another wave. We have seen the numbers in the rest of the U.S. go up and Texas has been a little bit behind, but it looks as though we may be catching up fast.”
[…]
Public health experts have been raising alarm about the delta variant in recent weeks, especially in places like Texas where the vaccination rate is low. Around 43% of Texans are currently fully vaccinated.
The vaccines have been shown to be highly effective at preventing new coronavirus cases, though there have been some rare occurrences of breakthrough infections — which Dr. John Carlo, the CEO of Prism Health North Texas and president of AIDS Arms Physicians, explained is when someone who is completely vaccinated contracts the virus anyways.
“The reason that is happening more and more is because if we still have people that are unvaccinated circulating with those who are vaccinated, it still presents a risk for breakthrough infections, even though the risk is minimized,” Carlo said.
Evidence also suggests that the small numbers of people who are vaccinated but do get infected tend to face less severe versions of the illness.
“The good news is that though we are seeing breakthrough infections, these are only mild cases,” Carlo said. “The vaccines show great protections but we knew it was never going to be perfect, it’s not 100%. And the big thing to know is that the vaccine removes the high chance of severe symptoms if you do get the virus.”
In a statement, DSHS said the delta variant is “having a significant effect on unvaccinated people leading to increases in new cases and hospitalizations.” Texas officials have not said how many of the new cases are among vaccinated and unvaccinated people, but national and local health leaders say the most severe impacts appear to be happening overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated.
I mean, I know there are walls to be built, and voters to suppress, and trans kids to kick around. Greg Abbott has a busy schedule, you know? I’m sure he’ll get around to talking about the rising COVID rate and the need to get vaccinated and maybe the return to mask wearing any day now.
Dr. Hochman says there’s nothing to worry about.
Our leaders should talk about it because they are the ones spreading the Deadly Delta Variant. They should talk about how they are sorry and they should apologize to Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Pelosi for putting them at risk. I hope that my state rep is OK. I think that she was bullied and cajoled and duped into going on the Freedom Ride by more wicked, experienced reps such as Gene Val Jean Wu.
I have made an open records request to Harris Health to determine how many “cases” were obtained in their hospitals (nosocomial), both by number and percentage, I have requested the same from Methodist, but I doubt that it will answer. Methodist did finally post the sidewalk closure permit. The city investigator did tell me that if they didn’t post it, he would give them a citation. I could tell that they hastily put it up, because all of the other documents were laminated, and the permit was not–it was just taped onto the bottom of the other documents. Methodist is a greed based entity, I was just talking to someone who attempted suicide, and Methodist discharged her onto the corner of Fannin and Dryden, still depressed and homeless, but if you can’t pay Marc Boom and his life of easy White Privilege with his protectorate army surrounding him out you go. Selfish.
Meantime we need to get Trump back in there. If Trump was in office, the media would be giving us a scrolling up date of each new “case” and we could blame Drumpf for it all. As it is, Biden has failed, but we don’t hear about it, the cases increasing, the kids in cages, the mass shootings, the rising crime, it is all going on, but hey, don’t worry. YOU believed that just getting Trump out of there would fix it all. YOU believed that it was not a complex situation, and the only thing necessary was to get rid of Trump.
Jason, I think you left your tin foil hat at the bus stop over on Durham, but I got a good laugh out of the “Val Jean” reference, which by the way is a single surname name, Valjean.
I never had the false hope that Biden could cure this Country’s ills in four years, but I was reasonably secure in the belief that electing Trump to a second term could very well bring about a whole new litany of problems and/or exacerbate the existing ones.
Not sure what tin foil hat has to do with it, the hospitals are big money, the entire health care industry is big money, surgery, drugs, vaccines, all of it, big money for some. People die in hospitals. Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US.
I don’t wait for the bus. I ride a bicycle everywhere these days.
Les Miserables is a great novel. His first name is “Jean” not “Gene” and he didn’t steal a loaf of bread, but they bought a case of Miller Lite with the money from the donors.
I never thought that Trump was great, but looking back, he didn’t very well bring about new problems, he just maintained the existing ones, like they all do. I didn’t like some of his policies. He didn’t crash the economy, start WW 3, or anything else they predicted that he would do. He just twittered mean stuff. I supported the way that he dealt with China. Of course that was his undoing. Fauci and China cooked up a pandemic. I don’t know why Russia sponsored Trump and China sponsored Biden. In the old times, they were allies. My grandfather’s friend who went to the Korean War, recalled Soviet MiGs flying out of China supporting North Korea.
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Jason, likes to post here because both Twitter and Facebook would not allow many of his comments on the virus to remain posted. Maybe on Parlor, they do allow all kinds of weird, stupid stuff on there, so I have read.
Been raining almost daily, tends to get wet and muddy while riding a two-wheeler.
The Les Mis reference was very funny. Credit where credit is due to Jason. I imagined the real character posting a picture the loaf of bread he stole on the social media of the day.
Manny,
You love to accuse people of being fascists, but which administration is it that is using it’s power to squelch free speech? Circle Back Girl admitted they directed Facebook and the others as to which folks and posts to censor. Funny, I don’t recall Team Trump doing that. Can you imagine the outrage that would have occurred it Trump had attempted to silence his detractors? Team Biden proudly admits to doing just that and…..crickets.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9794015/Critics-slam-White-House-Psaki-reveals-consulting-Facebook-flag-misinformation.html
When you don’t think your ideas can win in the marketplace of ideas, you censor.
Bill, I will ask Liz Cheney how that works. I doubt much of what you post would be allowed to be posted on Facebook or Twitter, and it has to do with lies and the promotion of hate.
As to the orange buffoon, well you need to expand your reading beyond the crazies you love to read;
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/29/21273191/trump-twitter-social-media-censorship-executive-order-analysis-bias
Re: “Can you imagine the outrage that would have occurred if Trump had attempted to silence his detractors?”
Trump *did* silence his critics on his Twitter.
See Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Trump, 928 F.3d 226 (2d Cir. 2019)
Plaintiffs Buckwalter, Cohen, Figueroa, Gu, Neely, Papp, and Pappas (“Individual Plaintiffs”) are social media users who were blocked from accessing and interacting with the Twitter account of President Donald J. Trump because they expressed views he disliked. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University is an organization alleging a right to hear the speech that the Individual Plaintiffs would have expressed had they not been blocked. The Plaintiffs sued President Trump along with certain White House officials, contending that the blocking violated the First Amendment. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Buchwald, J.) found that the “interactive space” in the account is a public forum and that the exclusion from that space was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. We agree, and, accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the District Court.
AFFIRMED.
***
President Donald J. Trump appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Buchwald, J.) concluding that he engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by utilizing Twitter’s “blocking” function to limit certain users’ access to his social media account, which is otherwise open to the public at large, because he disagrees with their speech. We hold that he engaged in such discrimination and, consequently, affirm the judgment below.
—
Trump’s Lone Star Alcolyte Ken Paxton also blocked critics from his Twitter account, until some time after he, too, was sued.
Megan Menchaca, Attorney General Ken Paxton unblocks nine Texans on Twitter after lawsuit claiming he violated First Amendment rights. TEXAS TRIBUNE (May 6, 2021)
There is definitely a double standard in the big news outlets. If a Trump rally had several positive corona tests, there would be people going crazy on CNN. If “cases” were rising and Trump was president, we would be blaming him with a constant scrolling case update on the screen. The kids in cages would be getting attention, and the mass shootings would be blamed on a bad orange man.
My existence in the new administration has taken a step down, with the inflation and without a corresponding increase in income, my actual income has decreased, in terms of buying power.
Manny, I don’t have a Twitter or Facebook, but, you are correct, they are very one sided, and they want to control everything, but not, for example, when they get sued by trafficking victims who were bought and sold on their platforms. Then, suddenly, they are saying that they are just a platform and not responsible for nothin’ that people post. Of course, there are many serious and respected scientists that have been censored by them. And of course, some of the things they labeled Big Lies now have some credibility (see: Lab leak theory).
It has been rainy a lot, I will ride in the rain, but I prefer not to do so if possible. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been able to dodge a lot of the downpours. My chain got all squeakity though, because the grease got washed off. I had to put some new oil.
I I remember correctly, Trump silenced his ‘detractors’ by paying them under-the-table hush money.
Wolf,
APPLES AND ORANGES
Trump and Paxton tried to ban people from their own accounts. That’s not the same thing as banning people site wide. Think about it thusly:
I don’t like you, so I ban you from my home. You’re still free to visit all the other homes in my neighborhood, you just can’t come into mine.
In the Circle Back Girl example, she doesn’t like you, so she not only bans you from her house, she bans you from the whole neighborhood.
QUESTION OF FAIRNESS
Courts found that Trump was not able to block people from his own account. Will they use the same reasoning to find that Trump and other pro-America folks shouldn’t be blocked from not only their own accounts, but from the whole neighborhood?
WHY EVEN BOTHER WITH SECTION 230?
No need for the social media companies to even pretend they aren’t publishers, when it’s clear they are a de facto arm of the leftist controlled government.
Further comment on Trump’s social media gadflies:
Did anyone notice that the force of government was NOT used against Trump’s Twitter trolls? They weren’t harassed by the IRS, Lois Lerner style. Their family and friends weren’t persecuted with Lavrenty Beria style investigations and persecutions. They weren’t attacked by Trump supporters. They weren’t forced to flee their homes and go into hiding.
Compare and contrast to the left’s treatment of political enemies.
Example, from leftist friendly source:
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/ny-ags-words-about-going-after-trump-family-coming-back-to-haunt-her/
Bill, how much do they pay to come to ply their lies?
Same as you, Manny…..nada, cero, zilch, bupkis.
We’re just putting forward our ideas into the marketplace. You point out that Trump had mean tweets (absolutely true, some of them were cringe inducing), I point out that the Biden regime squelches dissent by coordinating with Facebook and the others to ban speech (they admitted to it, it’s on video). Wolf points out that Trump tried to squelch speech by blocking trolls from his Facebook account (absolutely true).
No one has lied here, Manny. Inconvenient truths? Maybe. Lies? No.