Are tougher COVID restrictions needed? Other cities think so, but not Fort Worth area
To curb record-breaking cases of the novel coronavirus, local officials in Texas’ largest metro areas have urged Gov. Greg Abbott to restore their ability to issue stay-at-home orders.
But in Fort Worth and Tarrant County, the calls are much more subdued.
While Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price signed a letter urging Abbott to allow local mask decrees, she hasn’t been involved with recent pleas for stay-at-home orders.
The mayor’s office this week said Price hasn’t considered a stay-at-home order since it is not within her powers. Asked if the city would re-evaluate the situation if Abbott allowed locals to issue those orders, a spokesperson said “we are not speculating on policy that doesn’t exist.”
Meanwhile, officials from Texas’ largest metro areas have asked for greater local control, with Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins requesting a statewide mask mandate, a stay-at-home order for 30 days and the closure of all businesses and venues where wearing masks and staying six feet apart isn’t feasible.
Since enacting what was essentially a statewide stay-at-home order in late March, Abbott’s subsequent executive orders have superseded local ones.
When asked why he has resisted giving local officials more leeway amid the recent spike in cases, Abbott pointed to Shelley Luther, a Dallas salon owner who was jailed and fined for defying court orders. Texas’ top leaders came to her defense, with Abbott removing jail time as a punishment for violating his executive orders.
“Let’s say we give them the power, how are they going to enforce it?” Abbott told WOAI-TV in San Antonio Monday night, noting that a citation “almost inevitably leads to arrest.”
Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said Tuesday that because of the size and diversity of Texas, it is critical that decisions are made at the local level. But shutting businesses down again is a last resort for him.
“I would just about do anything — as evidenced by the mask policy — before I would want to do any kind of closing of businesses,” Whitley said.
After initially saying they wouldn’t mandate face masks, Tarrant County leaders reversed course and joined Texas’ largest metro areas in requiring masks be worn by employees and customers in businesses.
Whitley said he understands some residents see wearing a mask as an inconvenience, but it’s one that will help businesses stay afloat.
“We have so many people unemployed, that to me any inconvenience is worth having if it means we don’t have to shut down the economy again,” Whitley said.
Dr. Gary Floyd, chairman of the Texas Medical Association and a member of the Tarrant County Medical Society board, spoke with Whitley a day before the mask mandate was announced, Floyd said. The call focused on what the Medical Society has advocated for: masks, social distancing and staying home as much as possible.
Judging the need for stricter mandates to curb coronavirus is a complicated issue. Floyd said that involves not only new cases numbers, but also hospital capacity and emergency room visits. Right now, Fort Worth area hospitals are doing OK, he said, but if people don’t do their part to slow coronavirus, that may change.
“I’m convinced when Texans understand that this really is what can help, most people want to do the right thing,” he said. “And if they’ll do that, and we can slow down the spread or flatten the curve, as everybody has heard, then it won’t be needed to go into a shelter-at-home or stay-at-home.”
Staying at home is the most effective way to stop the spread of coronavirus, said Benjamin Neuman, the head of Texas A&M University-Texarkana’s biology department and a virologist who has worked with coronaviruses for over two decades. And he cautioned that stay-at-home orders were “the nuclear option,” a last tool if mask compliance fails.
Tarrant County reported a single-day high of 606 new cases on Wednesday. And if the new cases continue to grow at the current pace, Tarrant County hospitals could reach their base capacity in about three weeks, said Rajesh Nandy, an associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology in the UNT Health Science Center’s School of Public Health.
The data in the next week or so will indicate if Tarrant County’s mask mandate and Abbott’s shutdown of bars are helping to slow the virus’ spread, Nandy said. But experts have cautioned that gatherings for the Fourth of July weekend could also lead to a spike in cases.
A model from the UT Southwestern Medical Center showed “if we return to our behaviors from mid-May, we can flatten the curve again, and hospitalizations will start to go back down.” The model analyzed data from the Dallas-Fort Worth area from June 19-26.
It may be unnecessary to enact a new stay-at-home order, Neuman said, if mask usage becomes widespread. Last week, Nandy released a study of nearly 150 counties across the country focused on the effectiveness of mask regulations. He found that in counties with mandates, viral transmission decreased to a point where the coronavirus would eventually stop spreading, but counties without mandates saw exponential growth of new cases.
A hodgepodge of mask orders have been put in place in Texas’s largest metros, but Neuman said without a state or nationwide mandate not enough people will wear them.
“I think there’s enough gray area in the way it’s being implemented, that it’s going to be difficult for people to follow precisely,” he said. “Something like ‘always wear a mask, if you’re not in your house’ is pretty easy to follow, but we’ve gone and built a much more complex version of that.”
When asked if he would consider mandating masks statewide, Abbott has said during television interviews that a majority of Texans are already required to wear one under local orders.
“Could there be the need to expand that more? The answer to that could be yes. It just depends,” Abbott told KXII-TV in Sherman Monday night, noting that mandates may be less practical in counties with few cases.
Whitley said that putting the onus on businesses to mandate masks puts them in a difficult position.
“I think that on those things that are statewide, the governor needs to do it. He doesn’t need to be vague about it, he just needs to spell it out and do it — and masks would be one of those things,” Whitley said.
Had mask mandates been enforced when the state first began to reopen, Neuman said a reasonable case could be made that Texas would not have seen such rapid increases in positive patients.
And even without mandates in place, Nandy said masks are the number one thing Texans can’t choose to neglect.
“This is the single most low-cost intervention that we have in our arsenal to fight it,” Nandy said.
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
