How Fort Worth dodged a COVID-19 nightmare: With no Stock Show, cases declined
In a year of fumbled decisions and feeble city and county leadership, we can thank some tough Fort Worth cowboys for making a smart call..
Back in October, the leaders of the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo caught holy Hades for calling off the $110 million annual livestock show and fair.
Now that we see COVID-19’s curve, they are heroes.
On Saturday, the day the Stock Show would have drawn 100,000 visitors and given out its gold rodeo buckles, the number of residents hospitalized in Tarrant County with COVID-19 continued to decline.
That number peaked on Jan. 15, the day the Stock Show would have started.
Just imagine the danger of more than 1 million people, many of them teenage exhibitors, visiting Fort Worth from all over Texas at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
If they brought the same infection rate as those tested at the more limited National Finals Rodeo in December, that would have been 130,000 people with COVID-19 mingling in cattle barns, exhibit halls, restaurants and bars, then going home to small towns.
Our case count would be going up. Not down.
A few businesses might have made more money. But only at a tremendous loss in human life, not to mention stress and strain on both DFW and rural Texas healthcare systems.
“I definitely agree the best move was to cancel the rodeo,” epidemiologist Diana Cervantes of the University of North Texas Health Science Center wrote by email.
The timing was critical. The Stock Show would have started just after the round of cases from Christmas and New Year’s get-togethers.
“We all saw the incredible increase,” Cervantes wrote.
Any large gathering is a problem, because those people may go somewhere else beforehand or afterward where 6-foot distancing and mask orders are not so carefully enforced.
Then there’s the problem of the new COVID-19 variants that are causing health officials to recommend double-masking, better ventilation and high-efficiency air filtration with ultraviolet-C lighting.
“The best way [to stay safe] .... is still to avoid any events like this where transmission could occur,” Cervantes wrote.
Stock Show General Manager Brad Barnes, bashed relentlessly on social media Oct. 9 when the cancellation was announced, emailed prepared comments.
“Without a doubt, our executive committee made the correct decision,” he wrote.
The rodeo directors looked at the projections and how cases would spike at the holidays.
The young people thronging the cattle barns can’t stay 6 feet apart. Then they’d go out together after the show, and go home to some small town where the ICU is already full and the cemetery staff is overwhelmed.
Directors saw the Texas hospitalization rate and ICU rate, “and it became more clear each day that the correct decision was made,” Barnes wrote.
Houston’s giant rodeo was canceled last week after officials originally moved it to May, which was way too soon. (If vaccines stay ahead of variants, July is more realistic.)
The San Antonio rodeo and junior livestock show starts a slimmed-down run Thursday, with a brave Bexar County judge begging San Antonio rodeo officials to postpone it.
Fort Worth officials could have gone ahead with a rodeo and no livestock show, but decided against that because “each feature of our show is just as important as the other,” Barnes wrote.
They’ll try again Jan. 14, 2022.
This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 12:00 AM.
