Is this real life?
July 6th, 2020
I enjoyed a nice and relaxing Fourth of July weekend with my family and friends, only to come back to work on Monday morning to read that the world is still falling apart.
Only online though it seems. Unless I am missing something...
I woke up to the media shouting on almost every platform that we had recorded spikes in the new Coronavirus over the weekend. Especially in Texas in Florida. The media is not going easy either. Using extreme language and calling on local officials and citizens to shut down everything. Talks of Governor Abbott shutting the schools down for the fall, no football season, no gatherings of 10 or more people and more talks of business shutdowns. Articles like this one https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/04/florida-reports-more-than-11000-new-coronavirus-cases-another-daily-record.html can really cause fear and even puts me on edge.
After spending the morning doing my own investigating I am left feeling defeated. I do not want to believe that the media and politicians are spreading fear and causing all this suffering unnecessarily. If you have actual facts that dispute my findings please send them to me. I am not closed minded on this at all. But the numbers I am seeing and the conversations I am having with local hospital and community leaders would suggest that we may be overreacting.
I watched Judge Lina Hidalgo (of Harris County) this morning on ABC news plead with the Governor of Texas to shut the state back down because we had a record breaking spike this past weekend. She also stated that our hospitals are overwhelmed and at capacity (up into surge capacity she said). The way she was speaking during the interview was of a very serious tune. She stressed how bad it was in her county (which had ZERO deaths yesterday, ZERO) and how overrun the Hospitals are. She urged all citizens to stay home and urged the Governor to shut the state down.
Watch the entire interview yourself here…
https://abc13.com/lina-hidalgo-harris-county-judge-coronavirus-this-week/6300332/
She seemed sincere and it really scared me. So I looked up all the stats myself. Cases did spike quite a bit, as did our testing capacity. But across the entire country ALL weekend we had 505 deaths. 254 on Saturday and 251 Sunday. RECORD low numbers for America but not ONE article over this. Obviously even one death is too many, but 505 over an entire weekend compared to the over 2k a day death rate we had back in March.
Then I moved in closer to home. 27 total deaths in Texas and guess how many in Harris county...0. But did Lina talk about that, not even a little.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/
And according to this website…
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/05/texas-coronavirus-hospitals-houston-san-antonio-austin/
the local hospitals have not yet passed 85% capacity. Speaking with local Hospital leaders 85-95% capacity is the normal business model for them. Everyone I have talked to suggested we are not running out of room. They all suggest that the numbers are not near as severe as politicians are making it out to be.
I will leave all of these articles here of Houston hospital CEO’s trying to let the people know they have plenty of room. That third one is very eye opening. Our hospitals had to change the way they were reporting capacity numbers because the media is using those numbers to drive fear, wow.
- https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2020/06/25/houston-hospital-leaders-discuss-capacity-has-coronavirus-cases-rise/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/26/houston-hospital-ceo-says-it-has-capacity-to-handle-texas-case-surge.html
- https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-hospitals-hit-100-base-ICU-capacity-15372256.php
Are politicians and the media overhyping the details and not giving us all the information, or is there a serious threat out there that warrants the destruction of our entire way of life and economy? I do not know, but I am questioning their motives. And I think we the people deserve real answers from our leaders. Lina Hidalgo owes us answers. How do we get these answers?
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4 年I could not have said this any better. Exactly what I have been observing and thinking.