Month: April 2020

A couple of weeks ago, Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell announced that he had found a source for Covid-19 test kits and bought 1,000 of them. At the same time, he said the county would get 500 more test kits each and every day going forward.

I write this on a Sunday morning about two weeks later and, by my count, and assuming his forecast was accurate, and that the county takes deliveries only on weekdays, that means that the WilCo health department should now have something like 5,500 test kits on hand.

What is the county doing with those test kits?

I ask that, not to put the Judge on the spot (though if it does, so be it) but to point out that we won’t get out of this lock down or whatever you want to call it with out aggressive and systematic public testing.

That’s what the experts say. The experts say that, until we have a better grasp of the true infection rate, we won’t have enough information to know if our decisions to relax the steps we’ve taken are safe or even advisable.

It’s also what our readers say. Each time we post the most recent count of positive tests and recoveries in WilCo, people note that we aren’t really testing so these numbers are meaningless.

I agree. We don’t know how many people in the county have been tested and, absent that number, we don’t really know much of anything. It’s a question I first posed to county officials on March 15 and I’ve re-upped it each and every time I’ve had the opportunity.

We do know about how many people have been tested in Texas. As of Saturday, that number was 176,239 in a state with a population of about 29.9 million. That’s about 6 people per 1,000 which is the lowest testing rate among the country’s large states. Hell, Oklahoma has a higher rate than that. Oklahoma! Sheesh!

That’s not testing! That’s a … a lick and a promise.

We’ve must have better data (more tests) before we can have a clear idea of when and what to re-open … unless we are willing to risk all of the claimed progress we’ve made this last month. Otherwise, it is a sterling example of waywardness and imbecility.

Some people are willing to roll the dice on that one, of course. They are stamping at the bit to ignore the guidelines the experts set up to slow the spread of the virus because freedom. And liberty. And, guns. And, I dunno, manliness, I guess.

I simply cannot understand why people want to turn a public health crisis into a partisan political battle over individual rights. Taking to the streets because they’re not allowed to infect fellow citizens with a deadly virus is a new kind of crazy. It is evident they consider Dr. Oz to be more of an expert on infectious diseases than Dr. Fauci.

It makes me tired, except when I’m extra-ragey, a condition that consumes far more of my waking, quarantined hours than I care to admit.

So, back to the Covid-19 tests kits.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday promised more testing capacity. A lot more capacity. By the end of the month. He’s made that promise before so, I take this statement with a grain or two of salt.

By the time this column hits the news stands in print, WilCo should add another 2,000 test kits to its arsenal but no plans, as yet, to commit those tests to any sort of strategic testing.

I do know that the vast majority of that new capacity will be through private, not state, resources. Unless you have good insurance, it is likely that you or I will pay on the order of $135, or more, to get tested. If we are among those selected for a test.

Unlike the citizens of the great state of Oklahoma where there are 80 drive-through testing sites. Anyone who has symptoms can get tested, without an appointment or a note from your doctor.

And they are free.

Oklahoma. The home of Tiger King. Sheesh!

Do you know what my grandson would love to see for his next birthday? His grandpa, dressed as a firefighter riding on a big old fire truck, delivering his birthday present!

No? I can’t use a fire truck? How about … let’s get a deputy sheriff to drive me to his house! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Let’s do that instead! How crazy would THAT be!?

Sounds pretty crazy, right? And cool. That too! What toddler wouldn’t love that? He’d talk about it for days. Months, even!

But, it’s not something that I, Mr. John Q. Public, could do without intense negotiations, a fist-full of money and, likely, an unusually close personal relationship with a fire chief and, perhaps, a county sheriff.

But that’s exactly what Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell did last week. Well, it is if media reports, a sworn affidavit which accompanied a criminal complaint, and his own tacit admission are to be believed.

There are problems with this. Oh, there are problems.

A few weeks back, Judge Gravell issued a county wide order to stay at home unless your business is essential. He did that in concert with leaders from other counties as a measure to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. He seemed serious about it. He even imposed a fine and jail sentence for those who violate that order: $1,000 and/or six months in jail (note: no one has been fined or sentenced to jail, nor do local law enforcement contemplate making any arrests for violating the order).

In fact, in nearly every single public appearance since, he has preached the necessity of social distancing and urged us to stay at home unless our travel was absolutely necessary. The order says “essential.”

Attending his grandson’s birthday — no matter how briefly, no matter how well protected, no matter how well intended — cannot be considered essential.

I get it. I really do. On the surface of it, it’s not that big a deal. But, the optics are very bad. If we are subject to a stay home order, shouldn’t the public official who issued that order do the same?

If a public official can break quarantine, why can’t we?

In my house, we haven’t seen our grandkids in a month. We haven’t seen many of our friends in about as long. If it weren’t for Face Time, we’d never see ’em. One of our staffers hasn’t seen his wife in about that long. Some of us are more than just a little inconvenienced by the stay-at-home order but we plug along, doing the best we can because we know — or have been convinced — that this is critical.

But, really, there’s worse. In my view, using public resources for this stunt was really … ill advised, to put it gently. Why? Well, conviction of even a misdemeanor count could cost him his job.

It’s right there in Chapter 87 of the Texas Local Government code … scroll down to 87.031:

“The conviction of a county officer by a petit jury for any felony or misdemeanor involving official misconduct operates as an immediate removal of that officer from office.”

Misuse of public resources — borrowing bunker gear from a fire department and directing a county employee (on county time?) to drive him somewhere not on official county business in the midst of a pandemic — is official misconduct.

I get why he did it, I just cannot fathom why elected officials in this county believe that they can do things the rest of us cannot.

Given the political affiliations of the county officials who would prosecute this (allegedly criminal) violation, it seems unlikely Judge Gravell will face any real consequences for this stunt. That’s my opinion based on six years’ observation of Williamson County and another 25 years experience reporting on county government in Texas.

That said, unless the judge issues a sincere apology for his poor judgement and, perhaps, voluntarily pays the fine for breaking quarantine, the commissioners court should censure him, and use pretty explicit terms. That would not be out of line and would serve the judge a well-deserved plate of humble pie.

If it’s good for us, it should be good for him.