"be a man and die for your economy."Governor blessing off but without the testing apparatus. I've got no problem with the idea and in general Abbot has done a pretty good job on the way in and out. But there's a lot of buck passing.
Abbot locks it down but doesn't provide state resources for testing on the open up. Just sets metrics and gets out of the way. That leaves Mayors having to be the bad guys if shit goes wrong in Houston etc. Acting like this is just a Houston problem or Austin problem if shit goes wrong misses the nature of infectious disease.
There's also some politics in the medicine laws. Hospitals can reopen to do elective procedures with certain conditions, but one of them is that you can't ask the state for PPE if you do so. Again, that's passing the buck. The state should be supporting the reopening, not making hospitals (who are strapped for cash with no elective procedures) look to take that risk and if they get it wrong they can't ask for help. All the hospitals that aren't overworked with COVID patients are going to do that and then if they get it wrong the state will blame the hospital for not having enough PPE on hand for a public health crisis and their daily operations.
This is the nature of the Texas governorship so it's not a surprise. It's playing inside the politics of what we usually have done but its probably not as efficient or effective as we could be with a more coordinated effort.
- Dan Patrick, probably.