I haven’t written one of my weekly Texas COVID-19 pieces in a while, largely because I’ve been trying to take some time to self-care — between COVID-19, five years of Donald Trump dominating our media, four years of kakistocracy, a coup attempt, and the continued disaster of climate change coupled with the continued refusal of anyone in power to take it seriously, I was the closest I’ve been to suicide since high school.
Of course, being able to take some time to breathe is a luxury and a sign of just how privileged I am, so it’s past time to get back to dealing with reality. The new wave in Texas has spiraled out of control, although that phrase might not fit given that the state’s official policy has been to make attempting to control it illegal. You’ve no doubt heard that it’s bad in Texas and Florida, and while for once something is bigger outside of Texas, it’s still pretty grim here in the Lone Star State. Pour yourself a cup of coffee (I take mine with Irish cream and whiskey these days), and let’s dive in to the stats. WARNING: The following diary is kind of long and heavy on things like graphs and numbers. If it helps, I’ll post a cute animal picture at the end, but you have to read the whole thing before you look at it. No cheating.
Each surge in Texas has been much worse than the one that came before it, and if that trend holds true now, we’re in for a very ugly fall. I live close enough to an elementary school to hear the bell ring each morning, and I shudder to think of what is in store for the kids based on the trendlines.
All graphs below are from worldometers.info, and the data used in this article was taken from that website and the Texas DHS. The 7-day moving average has been used to give a more accurate look at how things are moving.
One thing we’ve already learned from before: never trust low numbers on a Monday or after a holiday. These represent dips in testing and reporting, not transmission. If I continue to do this as a weekly update, it’ll be on Fridays for that reason. Alright, on to the numbers. First up, new cases:
graph courtesy worldometers.info
Right now, we’re on the cusp of 14,000 new cases in a single day. We’ve been over 10,000 cases per day for over 10 days now (that’s over 100k new cases in less than two weeks, for those who are bad at math).
In the first wave in Spring 2020, we had around 1,200 cases a day at the worst of it; in Summer 2020 the single worst day was about 11,300, with the other bad days hovering at about 10,000 per day; in Winter 2020/Early 2021 we rose to over 20,000 cases in a day. It’s worth noting that the “lull” in the outbreak that began in late Spring 2021 and went through early summer is actually slightly worse than the entire Spring 2020 wave. We’ve reached a point where the wave that prompted a lockdown is now treated as acceptable daily levels by our leaders and many of the population. That’s as good a summary of the insanity here as I can think of.
“Wait,” you may be thinking, “I thought you said this new wave was worse than all the others. If you’re not at 20k per day yet, how is this worse than the last one?”. Good question, hypothetical reader! The answer is because the peak for the last wave hit 20k, but it took over three months to get there, and it started from a much higher point.
In the 3rd Wave, we were at about 3.75k cases per day when it began (roughly 10/10/20), and it took 97 days to reach the peak (1/15/21). That’s a 624% increase over 97 days, with an average increase of 202 cases per day.
The current wave started from a baseline of about 1.25k cases per day, and started rising on about 7/5/21. We are currently at a high of 13,904 after 38 days (today makes 39, but we only have yesterday’s data currently). That’s a 1,112% INCREASE in over half as many days, with an average increase of 324 cases per day. We’re accelerating at a much faster rate than last time, which you’ll notice on the graph: the trendline is at a steeper angle now than it was at the beginning of the last wave. For a comparison, at 38 days in last time (11/17/20) we were at 11,217 cases per day: well under what we’re at now and that’s even with a 2,500 case per day head start.
graph courtesy worldometers.info
The total number of active cases is climbing rapidly, and we’re quickly making up for lost ground. While we’re not at the worst of the 3rd wave’s numbers yet, this graph paints a troubling picture all on its own. As you can see, the total caseload barely went down after the 2nd Wave; the 3rd Wave began with a substantial amount of people still actively sick from the summer. At this point in the 3rd Wave we had about 240k total cases in the state; we currently have about 222k total cases, but unlike before we’ve built those totals almost from scratch. The 3rd Wave started with about 142k cases throughout the state, and this wave began with only 64k, less than half as many.
What’s really important to drive home is that all this is happening POST-VACCINE. Half the state is vaccinated, meaning that these numbers are actually much, much worse than they look because there’s far fewer Texans vulnerable to infection than there were in previous waves, yet the numbers are already looking far worse. This is a testament to the Delta variant’s virulence: if the state had not received vaccines yet, we’d be facing some truly terrifying levels of death and devastation.
graph courtesy worldometers.info
Daily deaths is the one graph that, at first glance, appears to show a less severe situation than in previous waves. However, one must bear in mind that deaths lag about 2-3 weeks behind new cases (or at least they did with pre-Delta cases). Going by that approximation, the 3rd Wave’s first daily deaths were about 64 per day, ultimately rising to 345 per day (exactly 12 days after peak cases/day). Deaths from the current wave began at around 27 per day, and are now at 77 per day, an increase of 285%. By this point in the last pandemic, deaths were at 236 per day, an increase of 368%. Deaths are not increasing as rapidly (likely due to a combination of less severe breakthrough cases and better knowledge of how to treat the infected helping save more net patients), but the hard fact is that the Delta variant is more deadly to the unvaccinated, who are the primary drivers of this wave. If the number of cases continues to rise, the number of deaths will as well and could eclipse previous peaks as a result of that increased lethality.
Hospital Capacity in Texas
Our hospitals are already rapidly getting overworked. We’re at fewer than 350 total ICU beds available in the entire state of Texas. We have less than 7,500 hospital beds available in the entire state. Those numbers are some of the worst in the pandemic; I didn’t track that data during the 3rd Wave’s peak (as it came during my mental health break), so I don’t know exactly how bad it got during the worst of it. I do know that by the start of December 2020 we had almost twice as many ICU beds open, over 4,000 more hospital beds available, and around 1,700 fewer patients with COVID-19 in hospitals. So, further into the 3rd Wave and things were much better in Texas hospitals, which does NOT bode well for the strain on our hospital system this time.
However, this time there is a new, grim fact that shows how much the game has changed: as of yesterday, there were ZERO pediatric ICU beds available in all of North Texas (which includes the DFW metroplex, home to over 6.39 million people). Unlike the previous waves, children are very much in danger from the Delta variant, and their vaccinated numbers are abysmally low since the vaccine still has not been approved for children 12 and under.
Let that sink in: a deadlier variant is on the rise, exactly as the school year is beginning, with a huge chunk of children unvaccinated and unable to be vaccinated, with ICU space for them already gone (and ICU space in other hospitals vanishing quickly, only 88 ICU beds are open in the DFW area), and the governor having expressly forbidden mask mandates to protect them.
I have a very bad feeling about where this is going. I’m one of the more callous people on this site when it comes to Red America: these people are killing themselves, and I do not have a tear to shed for those anti-vaxxers who die as a result of their stupidity. I’m the first to dismiss it as “good riddance!” when I hear about them, but this is very different. These children didn’t get a say in the decision, and a huge chunk of them come from homes where their parents very much want to vaccinate them but cannot yet. A lot of truly innocent people are going to die, a lot of otherwise responsible parents are going to suffer due to the selfish recklessness of others. Even of those that survive, we don’t know how bad the long-term effects are. We know COVID-19 has long-haul symptoms, we know it affects the nervous system in strange and seemingly permanent ways. It’s likely many Texas parents will have children that are impacted for life by this, like children who survived old diseases but were left blind or paralyzed.
If there were any justice, Greg Abbott would be facing charges for crimes against humanity for this atrocity. At the very least, he’d be on trial for criminally negligent homicide. Instead, he has a decent chance of winning re-election. God help us, because our governor certainly won’t.
Alright, here’s your cute animal picture, as promised:
It’s a sleepy hedgehog, taking a nap on my chest. We just bought him a month and a half ago, and he is the best.
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Friday, Aug 13, 2021 · 8:18:51 PM +00:00 · Toro Blanco
Just got an update from a source in the Texas hospital system: there are, in fact, no pediatric ICU beds open at this time in the entire state, not just North Texas.
It appears that the Delta variant is not causing a higher mortality rate, but rather a higher morbidity rate. In a nutshell, it isn’t more lethal in each individual case, but the higher rate of transmission and infection is causing more cases than the original strain and more infections that require hospitalization.
There’s a lot of concern about the Lambda variant, because the mutation it has is with the protein spikes that the vaccines use. It is still apparently affected by the vaccine, but this mutation means that the unvaccinated will have an even harder time fighting it off. With over 99.5% of Texas cases involving the unvaccinated, the need to vaccinate people is more important than ever.
Apparently, statewide we’re at about 44% vaccinated, and there has been a sharp uptick in shots over the past three weeks. Ideally, that trend will continue before Lambda spreads further and causes a new wave (or exacerbates this one).
