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Austin's most visible health authorities—Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers and Dr. Mark Escott—appeared in front of both Austin City Council and Travis County Commissioners Court on Tuesday to present data that shows reducing social distancing right now will come "at a substantial cost."
Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday that he will allow movie theaters, restaurants and retail shops to reopen at limited capacity on Friday with an executive order that overrides the authority of local jurisdictions.
Dr. Meyers presented updated modeling from UT-Austin's COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at a council work session, during which she said it looks like the state is "on the verge of really relaxing social distancing."
The consortium found that, if the region reopens fully—even with social distancing maintained at 50%—there will be a surge of COVID-19 cases in June that will quickly overwhelm local hospital capacity and lead to, conservatively, 2,900 deaths from the virus alone. Thousands of other people would likely die from other causes as a result of not being able to get treatment at overwhelmed hospitals.
In this scenario, the peak would pass quickly—by early summer—and could possibly lead to herd immunity, because so many residents would likely contract the virus, Dr. Escott told commissioners later.
Alternatively, if the region continues under local "stay home-work safe" orders through fall 2021, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations will never rise above the current rate and deaths will likely be capped at 80. Right now, Travis County is reporting 77 hospitalized patients and 42 deaths from the coronavirus.
"That would require lockdown for 555 days, which we know is not going to be a plausible or probable public health strategy," Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said earlier today.
The consortium modeled two other scenarios, both of which account for the reissuing of local stay home-work safe orders if hospitalizations exceed 100 new cases in a given day. The difference between them is the level of "cocooning," or the isolation of populations at high risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19 or dying from it.
These scenarios show an oscillating caseload, rising and falling as public policy responds to the threat level. If cocooning is maintained at 95%, the total death toll by fall 2021 is estimated to be 2,900. COVID-19 fatalities would not change in this scenario, but the option to reinstate stay home-work safe orders could significantly reduce deaths from other causes that would result if hospitals are overwhelmed.
Dr. Meyers invoked a metaphor that has lately become associated with the pandemic response: the hammer and the dance. The hammer is a fast, aggressive response, such as stay-home orders, intended to control the outbreak. The dance—a longer-term containment strategy—follows.
"This is a hammer," Dr. Meyers said of the oscillating scenarios, which rely on the option of reinstating stay home-work safe orders if hospitalizations begin to rise once businesses reopen. "The only thing we can do is lock down. Maybe in the months ahead, as we learn more about people's behavior and consequences, we can take a more nuanced approach, but that will require much more data and much more time to plan."
At 80% cocooning, however, the model predicts a much higher death toll, in excess of 6,500.
In response to the updated modeling, local officials stressed the need to achieve effective cocooning rates as a result of the governor's reopening plan, which both the mayor and county judge worry is too much too soon. "There's so many things we can do to protect vulnerable populations," Dr. Meyers said. "We can't do all those things by May 1st."
All graphs from The University of Texas at Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium
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(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.
(Tesla)
Giga Texas, the massive Tesla factory in southeast Travis County is getting even bigger.
The company filed with the city of Austin this week to expand its headquarters with a new 500,000-square-foot building. The permit application notes “GA 2 and 3 expansion,” which indicates the company will make two general assembly lines in the building.
More details about the plans for the building are unclear. The gigafactory has been focused on Model Y production since it opened in April, but the company is also aiming for Cybertruck production to kick off in mid-2023.
While there is room for expansion on the 3.3 square miles of land Tesla has, this move comes after CEO Elon Musk’s recent comments about the state of the economy and its impact on Tesla.
In a May interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Musk said the gigafactories in Berlin and Austin are “gigantic money furnaces” and said Giga Texas had manufactured only a small number of cars.
And in June, Musk sent a company wide email saying Tesla will be reducing salaried headcount by 10%, then later tweeted salaried headcount should be fairly flat.
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