(Click to enlarge.)
Special to El Rrun-RrunLet's see.
The COVID-19 curve in Cameron County is nowhere near flattening.
Cameron County has 412 confirmed cases of COVID-19, as of April 30 (the 401 was yesterday), and 18 reported deaths (one more than yesterday). Brownsville had 130 of the cases and Harlingen had 169.
Across he state, 50 people died last night.
In fact, in the Cameron County and the Rio Grande Valley, it's on a strong upward surge as we speak and new infections indicate that we have a strong two to three weeks coming. The cases have come from all sources - community and travelers - and we are now past the dawning of the realization that the bug has been out there and that we have surpassed the threshold of viral death, an incontrovertible manifestation of its omnipresence in our environs.
What we had never imagined - to be invaded and infected by a world plague - is a reality whose enormous consequences none of us could have predicted. But once the threat was realized, measures were taken to confront it with mixed results because no one knew -not here and not elsewhere in the country - that our global links and the sanctuaries of our elderly would become magnets and incubators of death.
Implementing social distancing and Stay at Home orders in tight-knit social communities like ours in South Texas hasn't been easy. It runs against our nature. But if most of us hadn't complied with those two single measures, the awful results we have endured (18 of our neighbors' deaths now) would be unimaginably worse.
Tomorrow the State of Texas is removing the Stay at Home and face-mask "recommendations" and urging a "soft-opening" of commerce across the state. The mall and restaurants will be open. It is urged all precautions to avoid contagion be taken. You will be on an honor system to comply.
That's all COVID-19 needs right now in Cameron County, a soft opening. Remember, the rule of thumb for a weakening contagion is two weeks of a flat and downward curve. We're nowhere near that.
Leave Trump and Abbott and Democrats and Republicans out of this. This is about our survival. The time is not right yet.