Covid-19 cases have jumped in 21 states since economic reopening began, at varying rates nationwide.
Nearly half of them saw infection spikes of 50% or more, with record rates of new cases in Texas, Florida and Arizona.
In a letter on Tuesday, the mayors of nine Texas cities, including Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio, implored Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to let them require that people wear masks in public to slow the spread of the virus.
Abbott says no. He’s standing by his April order barring any local requirements that “impose a civil or criminal penalty for failure to wear a face covering.”
Yet Abbott also encourages Texans to wear masks, practice social distancing and wash their hands frequently, saying such measures are what allow him to fast-track reopening the state’s economy.
This draws a big “Huh?” from other Texas officials.
“People are confused,” Austin mayor Steve Adler told NPR. “They just don’t know at this point if it’s really important to wear face coverings or not, because I think they’re feeling like they’re getting mixed messaging — not only from state leadership but from national leadership.”
One national leader, Vice President Mike Pence, blames the news media for confusing or misleading the public; he insists the Trump administration has done a great job.
“The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and … grim predictions of a second wave [of infections] are no different,” Pence wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column. “We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives. That’s a cause for celebration.”
Abbott and Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, are celebrating — with vows to continue reopening despite the steadily rising, record-high virus infection rates.
On Wednesday, the Orlando Sentinel reported on Twitter that Florida has more than 2,600 new cases and the state’s death toll has topped 3,000.
Nationwide, reports the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker, there have been more than 2 million positive coronavirus tests, with more than 117,000 Covid-19 deaths.
Abbott, DeSantis and others contend that the jump in positive tests for the virus is largely due to increased testing. DeSantis, for instance, reported that 500 tests of workers at “a central Florida airport” (apparently Orlando) turned up 260 positive results — a more than 50% infection rate.
But that’s disputed, with the Orlando airport authority saying DeSantis’s numbers are wrong:
Some Floridians are already paying the price for the state’s reopening — and they’re speaking out about it. They include 16 friends who all got sick after attending a birthday party in a crowded bar where no one was wearing a mask, reports CNN.
The cable news channel interviewed three members of the group on Tuesday; they said “they want to remind the public that the pandemic is not over yet.”
“Standing there in front of those people, we knew we were pushing it,” said one.
“Receiving the text messages that my friends were just boom, positive, boom, positive, boom, positive, back to back to back, it was overwhelming,” another said.
“I feel foolish, it’s too soon,” said the third.