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- Wise County/Courthouse Square Coronavirus Update:
- We have a second employee with the County Clerk's office confirmed to have the virus. The office was understandably shut down yesterday.
- That brings the Courthouse Square Outbreak of the past week to a total of 6 (three in a law office, a worker in the courthouse, and two in the County Clerk's Office.)
- So how many people in Wise County have it altogether? We have no idea. The numbers coming from DSHS were questionable at best and, as of yesterday, we learned we won't even get those any longer!
- As I understand it, Wise County had been keeping its own website updated with numbers received from DSHS from its regional office. We will no longer get those numbers (and the site hasn't been updated since last Thursday.) Instead the only numbers we have or from the DSHS "state" website which, amazingly, is only an "estimate" and was less reliable than the unreliable regional numbers. (The state site is showing 11 active cases this morning.) Why is the lack of information happening?
- Heck with the six people around the courthouse and the half dozen from a Decatur insurance agency, I know of 12 cases myself. How is it possible we don't have an official count? How can we have official statewide numbers without a county breakdown?
- We are headed into the heavily attended Wise County Reunion with statewide coronavirus numbers going through the roof and yet we no idea how it is impacting Wise County other than word of mouth and piecemeal information circulated through goofballs like me.
- Those Texas statewide numbers:
Hospitalizations (another record day)
Daily new cases - Greg Abbott continues to lead like a scared child. Yesterday he said that "COVID-19 is spreading at an unacceptable rate", and finally decided that "Wearing a mask will help us to keep Texas open." But he'll implement no changes to our current "let's open up Texas!" policy.
- Mask Confusion: How screwed up is Texas? At the very moment that Abbott was giving his "update", the Texas AG was posting the request for an official opinion he had he received from Harris County asking whether a county can require people to wear masks in county buildings. How insane it that?
- Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen has some harsh words for those who don't wear a mask:
- Just when his enablers tried to support him with the "he was just joking" defense, Trump continues to tell us why he hates testing because of his mentally-challenged reasoning.
- Trump is headed to Arizona today and will be in a church which has discovered a Coronavirus miracle cure.
- I'm sorry, but my famous Skepticism Alert is really going off on this Noose Story and NASCAR. No, I don't think it is a Jussie Smollett situation, and I don't think Bubba Wallace had anything to do with it. However, I'm not ruling out this being a money based NASCAR publicity stunt. NASCAR, which has been dying on the vine, is in dire straits. It desperately needed a Hail Mary with some good and free press. And, boy, did it get it yesterday. After NASCAR oddly revealed and promoted the noose story via a press release, it then orchestrated a made-for-TV moment on the track yesterday. There's something not right about all of this. (Not to mention, there's no photo of the noose. Bubba Wallace didn't even "see" it. I'm not sure who even "found" it in the secured area. And no arrests -- assuming there's even a crime here -- have been made.)
- I very rarely watch The Twilight Zone but stumbled on a very timely White Supremacy episode a couple of nights ago. I kept thinking the lead character looked familiar, and then it hit me: That's a young Dennis Hopper!
- I probably shouldn't have shut down my Expert Weather Lab a couple of weeks ago.
