You pulled that out of your ass.
You have absolutely no way of knowing what percentage of Texans are currently wearing masks
You, Phil C. McNasty, have absolutely no way of knowing what percentage of Texans are currently wearing masks. Or if the numbers of people wearing masks has changed significantly since masks were no longer required. For all you know, even more Texans are wearing masks due to recent news re VOC circulating nearby in the USA. BTW the chart at this link shows a decrease in infections following the mask mandate in Texas. How do you explain that.
Daily new cases and the positivity rate have leveled off over the past month, while deaths and hospitalization have gone down substantially.
www.texastribune.org
"More than a month has passed since Gov.
Greg Abbott ended virtually all statewide restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic.
"...experts caution that a major increase in cases could still come and it may still be too early to tell whether Abbott’s decisions to lift the statewide mask mandate and allow businesses to fully reopen could prompt a new wave of infections. Still, daily new cases and the positivity rate have leveled off over the past month
"... Experts point out that vaccination is ramping up, many businesses are still requiring masks and there are unique factors impacting individual metrics — like a drop in demand for testing that is driving down raw case numbers.
"... vaccinations have climbed steadily as the state has expanded eligibility, o
pening up to everyone age 16 and older on March 29. The percentage of fully vaccinated Texans more than doubled from March 10 to Monday, when it was 1 in 5 Texans.
"... “Clearly the massive investment in vaccines and the improved distribution of vaccines across the country since President Biden came into office is having a tremendously positive impact on protecting people from COVID-19,” Turner added.
" Despite the numbers in Texas, it has been an open question as to how long it takes after the lifting of restrictions to see a spike in the data. The incubation period for the virus — the time between when someone is exposed to it and when they start showing symptoms — is believed to be two to 14 days, and not everyone immediately stopped wearing masks and visiting fully reopened businesses on March 10.
"...The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was asked in a TV interview last week about Texas’ numbers and gave an uncertain response about what was driving them at the moment. Speaking with MSNBC, he said “it can be confusing because you may see a lag and a delay because often you have to wait a few weeks before you see the effect of what you’re doing right now.”
“We’ve been fooled before by situations where people begin to open up, nothing happens and then all of a sudden, several weeks later, things start exploding on you,” Fauci said. “So we’ve got to be careful we don’t prematurely judge that.”
"...“We absolutely are not declaring victory at this time,” Abbott told Fox News on Sunday. “We remain very vigilant and guarded and proactive in our response, but there’s simple math behind the reason why we continue to have success,” he added, citing the combination of increasing vaccinations and the “acquired immunity” among Texans who have already had the virus and recovered from it.
However, Abbott went on to make a dubious claim: that the state is “very close” to herd immunity, or the point at which enough people have been vaccinated or have already become infected — and recovered — to protect the rest of the population. Abbott said that despite acknowledging in the same response that he does not know what the herd immunity threshold is for the virus, an uncertainty echoed by the public health community.
Fauci
has said herd immunity against the coronavirus could require as much as 90% of the population to be vaccinated. Ostrosky said “classically in epidemiology, we talk about herd immunity in the 60 to 80% range.”
...In any case, experts agree that Texas is not anywhere near herd immunity. As of Monday, just 20.1% of Texans had been fully vaccinated and 9.72% had tested positive for the virus.
...In the meantime, though, public health officials are keeping a close eye on the core metrics and whether they creep up as more Texans take advantage of the end of the mask mandate and businesses reopening at full capacity. Ostrosky acknowledged that so far, the numbers are “not what we were expecting.”
“The question is how come and the answer in my mind is vaccines,” Ostrosky said. “I think we’re making really good headway with the vaccination program. We were sort of aggressive moving through the stages [of eligibility].”
“I think our saving grace was the vaccines despite the not-so-good choices that some of our fellow Texans are making” with regard to practices like masking, Ostrosky added.
"...Jaquelin Dudley, the associate director of the LaMontagne Center for Infectious Disease at the University of Texas at Austin, said the underreporting of previous cases could be masking the extent to which the state’s population is already immune. Combined with the vaccination effort, “we’re definitely impairing the ability of the virus to spread” at this juncture in the pandemic, she said.
"She and other experts also cited anecdotal evidence that most businesses, especially in the state’s major metropolitan centers, are still requiring masks despite the lack of statewide mandate.
" “I think it’s too early to drop mask mandates, and that’s really been left up to the individual businesses,” Dudley said. “Certainly the places that I know of are still requiring masks, and I’m sure that’s helping.”
"One of the strongest arguments to keep wearing masks is the rise of variants, Dudley said. There are currently five "variants of concern" in the United States,
according to the CDC, which is studying how effectively current vaccines address them.
...Experts also point out that the changing of seasons could be keeping the numbers relatively low. As the weather gets warmer, people are gathering more outside — and not inside, where the virus is more likely to spread.
The experts, though, are pleading with the public to still take the pandemic seriously, even as the numbers look good and the statewide restrictions fall further in to the rearview.
“If we don’t focus — and all we’re asking for is two more months … — we’re really gonna lose all that ground we gained,” Ostrosky said.
Daily new cases and the positivity rate have leveled off over the past month, while deaths and hospitalization have gone down substantially.
www.texastribune.org
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