As Chicago (actually the entire state of Illinois) has instituted stay-at-home orders city wide this evening, Houston is now the largest city that has not done so. It appears that there is some friction between the Democratic leadership of the city (lead by Mayor Sylvester Turner) and Harris County (which encompasses Houston and is lead by County Judge Lina Hidalgo). Hidalgo has taken a more aggressive stance, warning against complacency — given the pitiful amount of surveillance testing that has been conducted — and refusing to rule out a county-wide stay-at-home order while Turner has repeatedly insisted that “Houston is not shutting down” and has even threatened the bring criminal charges against individuals promoting false rumors to that effect. www.texastribune.org/….As coronavirus sparks rumors, Houston officials dispel social media myth of a citywide lockdown.
It is not at all clear to me why Turner is so resistant to what appears to be the only solution to the oncoming crisis but he has the support of Sheila Jackson Lee and other (mostly Republican) local political leaders. It has become apparent that the much younger/less experienced Hidalgo is the only one who seems to realize that the crisis is eminent. As recently explained by Dr. Fauci, in a pandemic, you are always way further along than is apparent. As stated by Hidalgo, “[i]f we do the exact same thing they’ve done in other places, where they’ve already overwhelmed the health care system, we know where we’re headed.” www.houstonchronicle.com/...Lina Hidalgo won't rule out shelter-in-place order for Harris County
I’m not sure what the mayor and Representative Jackson Lee are thinking. The greater Houston metropolitan area includes a population of well more than 7 million people (6,997,384 residents as of 2018 census estimates). Even the huge Texas Medical Center (located in Houston) will be quickly overwhelmed if even a tiny fraction of that number require hospitalization/intensive care. Just difficult to understand why the city’s Democratic leadership seems so insistent on “keeping the city running” in the face of all the warnings from China, Italy, Spain and, now, SF and New York City. Houston-area confirmed cases have jumped from around 30 to 120 over the past week (which are numbers similar to those reported by NYC as recently as 10 days ago) and that is with woefully inadequate testing. Nevertheless, the trend is obvious and it seems like we are not far behind.