To mask or not to mask in Texas

NY Times:

Red vs. Red in Texas, With Republicans Battling One Another After Mask Order

The virus has heightened long-simmering friction in the country’s largest Republican-led state, with Gov. Greg Abbott under attack from his own party.

Texans do not like to be told what to do on personal issues.  While I reluctantly wear a mask when out and about and not in my truck, I do find it extremely uncomfortable, especially outside in the Texas heat.  I look forward to the day when I can toss out the masks and breathe freely again.

I do think that the spread of the virus by protesters and bar patrons did create hot spots around Texas, especially in major cities.  The hot spot in the Rio Grande Valley appears to be caused by an influx of people from Mexico who were unable to get adequate treatment in that country.

...
“One of the factors is the border, we in McAllen Medical are receiving many patients from Mexico, they are coming in because their resources over there are also limited so they are coming into our area seeking medical attention and by law we have to provide it,” said Dr. Ivonne Lopez, medical director of McAllen Hospital Group at McAllen Medical Center. “The patients that cross the border say ‘we don’t have hospital space over there, the oxygen is gone, we don’t have medications so we cross the border,’ that’s the situation in the border.”

Hernandez also quotes a Hidalgo County health official attesting to the fact that hospitals in Texas’ sister cities in Mexico are overrun and dysfunctional. This is why we are getting the most vulnerable people and serious cases from Mexico. That is the only logical explanation for why these counties seem to have more deaths per capita than any place in the country, especially with comparable population densities.

It’s truly astounding that nobody in the state or federal government thought to either block medical tourism, issue mandatory quarantines for travel to and from Mexico, or at least set up field hospitals in Mexico at the border rather than burden our own hospitals and risk the danger of spread within hospitals of the most serious virus cases coming into our country. Americans were locked down under the premise of avoiding a strain on the hospitals, yet Mexican nationals were able to walk in.
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The mainstream media appears to be avoiding this aspect of the Valley hot spot.  I suspect it is because they do not want to expose migrant health care problems.