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HGov. Greg Abbo ’s continued eff orts to reopen the Texas economy, the state reported 1,801 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday — the largest single-day jump in cases since the pandemic began. Much of the increase is the result of an outbreak in the Texas Panhandle, where testing at an Amarillo meat packing plant revealed 700 new cases. H Alamo Colleges District recently responded to the coronavirus pandemic by waiving summer tuition for all currently enrolled students, so long as they have a 2.0 GPA. Full-time students who took class during the spring are eligible for up to nine free credit hours, while part-timers are approved for up to six. H Texas has the 13th-lowest census response rate, with just 51.2% of the population fi lling their forms, according to study by the fi nancial site SmartAsset. Among the 50 most populous cities, San Antonio ranks 32nd, with a 53% total response rate. The 2020 U.S. Census will determine how many congressional seats each state gets and inform the distribution of $1.5 trillion
in federal funding.
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HThe Trump administration announced Friday that it is waiving several regulations in order to fast-track construction of nearly 70 miles of border wall and roads in Webb and Zapata counties. The order allows the Department of Homeland Security to circumvent numerous federal regulations that protect the environment and animal habitats. — Sanford
Nowlin That Rocks/That Sucks
ASSCLOWN ALERT
Reopening Militias
It’s reasonable for people to disagree about how to reopen the economy amid a deadly pandemic. Given the stakes for people’s individual health and incomes, it stands to reason some will exercise the right to protest enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Still, it’s hard to imagine a more assclownish display of our country’s partisan dysfunction than the gangs of heavily armed enforcers popping up around Texas to force business reopenings to occur at their preferred pace, public health be damned.
Media outlets have documented at least a half-dozen incidents around the state where militia-style protesters have “guarded” small business owners as they throw open their bars,
Tomas Gonzalez
gyms and ta oo parlors in violation of state orders — and at the risk of spreading COVID-19 infections.
Around the country, far-right anti-government protests have become synonymous with theatrical displays of fi repower. Ask the participants, and they’ll tell you that’s because gun rights are tied up with every other individual liberty they’re fi ghting to protect.
But that’s a smokescreen. Those individuals know what the rest of us do: a loaded weapon of war is a threat, a means to enforce your will when you’re not smart, articulate or brave enough to do so in the marketplace ideas.
“People are nervous enough as it is, and then to see people walking around with AR-15s in public places, gathered together like that, is unnerving and upse ing,” Ed Scruggs, president of fi rearms control group Texas Gun Sense told the New York Times. “The entire goal is intimidation and a ention.”
— Sanford Nowlin
Find more news coverage every day at sacurrent.com
YOU SAID IT!
— Gregorio Palomino,
CRE8AD8 owner explaining to the Express-News why his wedding planning company is qualifi ed for the controversial $39.1 million federal contract it won to distribute food to needy families
Despite the State of Texas’ unwillingness to reveal the names of nursing homes with COVID-19 infections, San Antonio health offi cials last week announced they will release daily data on testing at individual local care facilities. At press time, Metro Health had recorded 66 new cases in local nursing homes and three deaths. Last week, the total number of cases across the state jumped to more than 3,000.
San Antonio City Council last Thursday voted 6-5 to reject District 1 Councilman Roberto Treviño’s proposal to give tenants an extra 60 days to resolve overdue rent during the pandemic. That rejection came as the Texas Supreme Court ruled to end its moratorium on evictions and debt collections, clearing both to resume this week. The San Antonio Regional Alliance for the Homeless this week released the results of a new data analysis showing a year-over-year rise in the city’s homeless population. The total of 2,932 homeless people surveyed in January represents a 2% increase over the count conducted a year ago. This year’s numbers also refl ects a 7% increase in unsheltered homelessness.
All Quiet on the Southern Front
There are few reported cases of COVID-19 in Texas’ colonias, but also few testing and hospital resources
BY JAMES DOBBINS
Amid the pandemic, the Borderland is quiet. For now.
Off the unpaved Military Highway just north of the Rio Grande River, I drove into a rural village called Los Ebanos in search of the novel coronavirus in the colonias. On that recent Sunday, none of the 300-odd residents were outside to ask questions about the outbreak sweeping the planet.
Los Ebanos, however, was not silent.
A federal helicopter hovered overhead deterring river crossers. Numerous Customs and Border Patrol vehicles drove in haste over the streets, officers going about their business of detaining foreigners.
“I don’t know about the people here, but the virus reduced the smuggling,” an agent told me as we chaed a while from the safe distance of our vehicles as we parked next to a cemetery.
We talked about the weather and our hometowns back east. After suggesting I contact public affairs for comment on the virus, the agent left.
It seemed more powerful forces than a pandemic besieged Los Ebanos, one of the impoverished unincorporated selements along the Mexican-American border.
Here, the residents often lack functional services, such as sewer systems, trash removal and electricity. Some neighborhoods don’t have access to clean drinking water. In Texas, an estimated 500,000 people, mostly Hispanic, people live in colonias. Many do not have health insurance or money to buy primary preventative care. Before the current economic downturn, the median household income in the selements was less than $30,000 a year.
“Twenty-eight percent of our population has diabetes,” Dr. Brian Wickwire said of the individuals he treats at Nuestra Clinica de la Valle in the town of San Juan.
The clinic, with its 11 locations, serves a population of 27,000 in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Most of the Wickwire’s patients live in colonias.
“And of that population, 2,000 have some form of kidney disease,” he said. “The rates of pre-existing conditions are similar to inner-city New Orleans or Detroit.”
COVID-19 is most fatal to patients with pre-existing conditions. And some many not even realize they have an underlying disease until its too late.
LabCorp, a S&P 500 medical testing business, has supplied only 120 kits for Wickwire’s staff to use to detect COVID-19. The company replaces the used swabs one for one. Because Wickwire must ration the tests carefully, he worries the lab may be missing asymptomatic carriers.
LabCorp did not respond to a request for comment.
“We have been testing patients who are over 65 or less than 65 with medical conditions and symptoms,” he said. “This follows the CDC guidelines.”
Wickwire and his staff have confirmed three COVID-19 cases at the San Juan clinic. None required hospitalization. To reduce the chance of community spread, he’s encouraged patients to avoid the clinic if possible.
“Most of our patients do not have health insurance,” he said. “So, they would have to go through the ER and be treated as uninsured.”
John-Michael Torres, a representative of La Unión del Pueblo Entro (LUPE), said his community organizing group has contacted more than 5,000 individuals living in colonias to learn what they need as they ride out the crisis.
“Our members are not seeking a way to get tested,” Torres said. “This is a population that doesn’t have the same sense of agency to find out what is going on. If they find out they have a condition, they know they won’t have money to pay for healthcare. So, they don’t seek regular checkups.”
Foremost, members of LUPE are concerned about their economic lives. Worry over an invisible virus isn’t as pressing a reality when one is already financially struggling — and now losing paid work under shutdown orders.
Undocumented residents and their U.S.-born children have been left out of the mainstream economic system for so long, Torres said he’d be surprised if they expected help from the government.
James Dobbins
“The colonias have such poor infrastructure,” he said. “There is limited, if any, access to the internet. People don’t have computers or upgraded mobile devices. The parents struggle to try to help their kids do [remote] schoolwork, and telemedicine doesn’t reach colonias.”
While COVID-19 cases surge in other parts of the state, the emergency room at Starr County Memorial Hospital in Rio Grande City has seen few diagnoses, said Dr. Jose Vazquez, the hospital’s administrator.
“We have been very fortunate,” he said. “We had only 14 COVID cases in our community. The last five were all members of the same family in the same household. Zero mortality.”
The hospital has 48 staffed beds available, no ICU beds and eight ventilators to serve a population of 60,000 people. It’s easy to imagine a spike in severe COVID-19 cases overwhelming the facility’s meager resources.
Even so, Vazquez brushed off skepticism, saying his hospital was well prepared.
“We have activation agreements with hospitals in the Valley,” he said. “And if required, they take a lot of our patients. We transfer serious cases to McAllen, which is only 45 minutes away.”
Yet burden-sharing agreements between hospitals don’t necessarily increase the capacity for the region as a whole. If the worse was to happen and Starr County became overwhelmed with novel coronavirus cases, could other Rio Grande Valley hospitals handle the overflow?
The other emergency rooms contacted for this story didn’t return calls for comment.
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
You Supported the SA Current Press Club Because Free, Local Coverage Matters
A P R 8 — A P R 2 1 , 2 0 2 0
BY SANFORD NOWLIN
Editor’s Note: The following is City Scrapes, a column of opinion and analysis F aced with unprecedented economic challenges, the Current asked for your help. And, as San Antonians always do, you delivered.
Six weeks ago, we launched the SA Current Press Club to encourage readers to fi nancially support our mission of providing free, independent and locally focused news coverage. Since then, contributions have steadily rolled in, allowing us to rebuild our budget for freelance writers and rehire one of the full-time staff ers we made the painful decision to furlough.
Even while much of the city was in virtual lockdown, we continued to print and distribute our bi-weekly publication and post online updates almost hourly. We documented the monumental changes facing our community, providing updates on the spread of the coronavirus and gauging the response by local, state and national leaders. We also provided unfl inching coverage of the crisis’ impact on the restaurants, bars, artists and musicians that make our city a unique place to live.
Your contributions helped make that happen, and we cannot thank you enough for being a partner during this challenging time.
It’s been encouraging to know so many in San Antonio share our view ed economic challenges,
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that independent local journalism is vital to building an equitable and forward-thinking community. And it’s clear many of you also understand why it’s important for our coverage to remain free and accessible by all.
Clearly, you saw an investment in the Current’s work as an investment in our city, and that’s both humbling and encouraging. It’s one of the things that inspires us as we put in the long hours needed to keep the coverage fl owing.
Of course, more challenges lie ahead as the Alamo City fi gures out how to safely reopen. Those steps will determine how quickly advertisers begin spending again and when we return to producing events — the Current’s two biggest sources of income.
In the meantime, we’ll continue to ask for your support to keep our reporting free, local and fi ercely
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independent. Expect to see more familiar members of the San Antonio community posting on our site to remind you why those remain essential goals.
If you value our mission and haven’t already made a secure contribution, please consider visiting us online at sacurrent.com/SupportLocalJournalism to read more and learn about some of the perks we’re off ering. If you’ve already made a contribution, we appreciate it and encourage you to consider doing so again if you have the means.
Thanks again for the fi nancial vote of confi dence in our mission. It has meant everything to us, and we understand it comes at a time that’s diffi cult for so many — not just news organizations. We will come through the other side of this, and we’ll get there together.
Obamacare Opponent John Cornyn Now Tells People Who Lost Health Coverage to Sign Up for the Program Coverage to Sign Up
Sen. John Cornyn, once called dubbed “Obamacare repeal’s top salesman” by Politico, dispensed some surprising advice to constituents this week.
During a TV interview, the Texas Republican encouraged Americans who have lost health care coverage during the pandemic to sign up for the Aff ordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, a law he’s long fought to dismantle.
“The good news is that if you lose your employer-provided coverage, which covers about 180 million Americans, then that is a signifi cant life event, which makes you then eligible to sign up for the Aff ordable Care Act — and as you know, it has a sliding scale of subsidies up to 400 percent of poverty,” Cornyn told PBS Austin.
In a press statement, the Texas Democratic Party pointed out that Cornyn has voted 20 times to block, repeal or defund the ACA. If the senator is sincere in telling people to sign up for the program, they add, he should come out in opposition to Texas A orney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn the law.
top salesman” by Politico, dispensed some surprising advice to constituents this week.
— Sanford Nowlin
During a TV interview, the Texas Republican encouraged Americans who have lost health care coverage during the pandemic to sign up for the Aff ordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, a law he’s long fought to dismantle.
“Cornyn can’t have it both ways,” said Abhi Rahman, spokesman for the Texas Dems. “The question now becomes, where does Cornyn stand on the Paxton lawsuit to repeal Aff ordable Care for Texans who have recently lost their job?”
“The good news is that if you lose your employer-provided coverage, which covers about 180 million Americans, then that is a signifi cant life event, which makes you then eligible to sign up for the Aff ordable Care Act — and as you know, it has a sliding scale of subsidies up to 400 percent of poverty,” Cornyn told PBS Austin.
In a press statement, the Texas Democratic Party pointed out that Cornyn has voted 20 times to block, repeal or defund the ACA. If the senator is sincere in telling people to sign up for the program, they add,
