The End of the Mask Mandate in Texas Doesn ’t Mean We Should Let Our Guard Down

It has been 12 long months since we first asked the 5 million residents of Harris County to stay home. A year since we asked business owners to make incredible financial sacrifices. Nine months since our hospitals first exceeded their base capacity, and 1,200 people died in Harris County in a single month. There have been countless missed moments, canceled weddings, sparsely attended funerals and live-streamed graduations. Parents have juggled work with homeschooling their children. Days and nights are filled with never-ending compromises to protect our family and community. Leaders should be willing to make sacrifices too. As the chief executive and emergency manager of the nation’s third largest county, home to Houston and 33 smaller cities, I made a promise early on to my constituents: protecting human life would be our North Star, and if we erred, it would be on the side of action. So from the beginning, we held tightly to the advice of some of the world’s most knowledgeable infectious-disease specialists. We consulted regularly with colleagues across the nation and world in search of best practices. Together with our health department as well as researchers from esteemed medical institutions and Rice University, we based our decisions on the truth as represented by the rush of data we collected and the experts’ best analyses. Our decisions haven’t always been popular with everyone, but I can sleep at night knowing every one of them put safety and...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 feature Source Type: news