BG Reads | News You Need to Know (December 22, 2021)
Frost Bank tower, Downtown Austin
[BINGHAM GROUP]
The BG Podcast is back! EP. 148 features Jose "Chito" Vela III a candidate for Austin's Council District 4.
The immigration and defense attorney declared in early November, following Council Member Greg Casar announcing his candidacy for Congress (triggering an automatic resignation).
Bingham Group CEO A.J. and Associate Wendy Rodriguez discuss Chito's campaign and what he hopes to achieve if elected.
[MEETING/HEARINGS]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
'We are being very clear about this' | Everyone should be wearing a mask in indoor public settings, APH says (KVUE)
In addition to getting vaccinated and regularly testing for COVID-19, Austin Public Health (APH) leaders say one of our oldest defenses against coronavirus is still one of the best: wearing masks.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Dec. 21, APH leaders said that everyone needs to be masking while inside public spaces, no matter what their vaccination status is.
"We are being very clear about this. We are asking people, regardless of vaccination status, to wear a mask in indoor public settings. And that includes indoor dining, indoor shopping, indoors in public with people that you do not know and you do not know their vaccination status," said Dr. Desmar Walkes, Austin-Travis County's health authority. "This is the take-home message that we are saying, and it is also the message that our federal, CDC partners are saying and guiding the rest of the nation with."
While not much is known about the severity of the COVID-19 omicron variant, preliminary reports state that it is highly transmissible and health leaders confirmed Austin-Travis County does have community transmission of the variant at this time. That's why they say taking measures like getting the vaccine and wearing masks is as important as it's ever been.
"I feel like we know what works. Masking works and we've seen it work in our other surges and we've seen it, we've seen vaccination work in our other surges," said Dr. Janet Pichette, APH's chief epidemiologist. "I mean, I would say I thought we were done with [masking] in May because vaccination had such a positive impact on our number, the number of cases that we had. However, we are seeing upticks in cases. Just last week, we had a 34% increase in cases from the previous week. This week is not going to look much better. It may look worse, in fact."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Casar says 2021 was about helping people in crisis (Austin Monitor)
From community organizer to City Council member to congressional candidate, Greg Casar exudes the energy of someone eager to get things done.
Since taking office in January 2015, he has accomplished much of the social agenda he put forward as a Council member. Now he’s poised to make an early departure from Council once his successor is sworn into office sometime after a special election on Jan. 25.
Looking ahead, Casar is campaigning for U.S. Congressional District 35 in a Democratic primary race that includes Austin state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez and former San Antonio Council Member Rebecca Viagran.
Reflecting on 2021, Casar summed up his last 12 months on Council as a time of assisting others, especially during the February winter storm, which compounded the economic side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. “This year was about helping people and delivering results in crisis, whether it was bringing blankets and food to people when the power went out or blocking foreclosures and evictions throughout the year.”
Casar spoke to the Austin Monitor a few days before Council’s vote to buy hotel property for a new family violence shelter in partnership with the SAFE Alliance. “This is something I’ve been working on for years,” he said of his goal to close the loop on the new shelter before leaving Council. “This year we did get the funding we needed so that we could put survivors of family violence into hotel rooms, because there isn’t enough shelter space spread out across the city.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Kitchen: ‘We could write a whole book about the last year’ (Austin Monitor)
Ann Kitchen thrives from the many challenges of being a City Council member. “It’s a combination of being really proactive and trying to address the problems that we’re having as a city,” she told the Austin Monitor. “It’s always new, it’s always challenging and it really is an opportunity to help out people and the city as a whole.”
Though the city has had a particularly rough last two years, there are several areas where she thinks things have improved.
“We could write a whole book about the last year, but addressing homelessness was one of the key areas of change and it’s been an area that I have been leading on for the last few years,” she said, listing the passage of Austin City Council’s HEAL initiative as one effort she helped lead.
“It’s an innovative approach that connects people that are living on the streets to housing and social services and really helps them get on the path to permanent housing. We started it last February and it was successful, so we’re continuing it now into this next year.”
Along with Travis County, the city of Austin voted to put about $100 million of its American Rescue Plan Act funding toward the issue of homelessness. “It’s certainly not solved, by any means, but I do think we made some significant progress this year,” she said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Mackenzie Kelly: A collaborative conservative among Democrats (Austin Monitor)
Since the creation of the 10-1 City Council, the Council members who have represented District 6 in far Northwest Austin have stood out for one reason or another.
The first two – conservative Republican Don Zimmerman, followed by progressive Democrat Jimmy Flannigan – were miles apart on the political spectrum yet similar due to their outsized personalities, on and off the dais.
When the political pendulum swung again in 2020, conservative Mackenzie Kelly emerged the victor over Flannigan in a runoff election. City Hall staffers and observers wondered if they should brace themselves for a right-wing holdover from the Trump era, given the rumors of her affiliations with white supremacists who appeared with her in a photograph during her campaign.
Kelly quickly set about disabusing her colleagues and others of that notion. As she told the Austin Monitor last January, “Being labeled as a far-right extremist, that’s definitely not who I am as a person. I’m willing to work with everybody on everything.”
By most accounts, the Council member appears to have made good on her promise to work with others, even when she fundamentally disagrees on certain policy issues.
With Austin facing tough decisions on the looming Covid-19 omicron variant, Council recently voted to extend an ordinance allowing the city to enforce Covid-19 rules beyond Dec. 31, the date it was set to expire. Kelly cast the lone dissenting vote on grounds that the community did not have an opportunity to weigh in on how the ordinance “will significantly impact their lives for nearly another year.” Nonetheless, Kelly promotes Covid vaccination along with taking other health and safety measures… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin restaurants temporarily close due to a possible surge in COVID-19 Cases (Austin Eater)
As COVID-19 cases increase rapidly in the United States due in part to the new omicron variant, Austin restaurants and bars are temporarily closing down this week, much like other cities throughout the country.
Some restaurants have chosen to temporarily close down due to staffers testing positive for COVID-19, like Franklin Barbecue. Because there won’t be enough employees to operate the Central East Austin restaurant — which reopened for dine-in service for the first time during the pandemic earlier in November — co-owner and pitmaster Aaron Franklin opted to keep the business closed for this week as of Monday, December 20. He told Austin 360 that a third of the team tested positive, everyone was fully vaccinated and boosted, and are experienced mild symptoms. The plan is to reopen on Tuesday, December 28.
Likewise, North Loop Japanese restaurant Kome, which has been open for takeout services only, temporarily closed over the weekend because of staff being exposed to COVID-19. Co-owners Kayo and Take Asazu intended to reopen on Monday, December 20, after the staff went through testing. However, in an Instagram post, the owners confirmed the restaurant is still temporarily closed due to test availability and processing times. As of publication, the restaurant is still shut down.
On Tuesday, December 21, Kome’s sibling spot Sa-Ten shared that some of its staffers have tested positive for COVID-19, so both locations of the cafe are closed for the following three days, according to Instagram, coupled with its already-planned Christmas break. The plan is to reopen on Sunday, December 26… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
For Texas hospitals, a new COVID-19 surge looms over a burned-out, depleted workforce (Texas Tribune)
Although some Texas hospitals are better prepared than they were at the beginning of the pandemic — thanks in part to vaccines becoming more widely available and the gained experience treating COVID-19 patients — staff morale still stands on shaky ground, according to hospital officials in Texas’ largest metro areas and across the state. Hospitals are bracing for not only another surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, but also for a renewed burden on an already burned-out and depleted workforce.
“We know what (COVID-19) looks like. Certainly it may change a little bit, but we've got the script written in terms of how to provide care for COVID patients,” said Carrie Kroll, vice president of advocacy, quality and public health at the Texas Hospital Association. “The issue is just volume and what we'll see in terms of hospitalizations and whether or not we'll be able to provide the capacity needed.”
As COVID-19 hospitalizations in Texas have crept up this month to around 3,000, hospital officials say the numbers do not yet mirror the levels seen in the state’s last spike, which was spurred on by the highly contagious delta variant. Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, president and CEO of Harris Health System, a hospital system in Harris County, said about 40 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19 in his facilities — about double the amount from last week. (The system reached a high of 190 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the last surge.)… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas paid hundreds of millions for COVID tests later flagged by FDA (AXIOS)
Texas' lead emergency agency paid a small California firm more than $385 million for COVID tests that were subsequently flagged for potential false results by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. State of play: The Texas Department of Emergency Management has shelled out roughly $150 per PCR test kit to Gothams, an emergency management firm run by ex-military personnel, according to an Axios analysis of procurement data collected through open records requests. TDEM paid hundreds of millions of dollars to Gothams for the Curative PCR test kits, ordered between April and December 2020, which were then distributed to prisons and other facilities.
But in January 2021, the FDA warned that COVID-19 tests made by Curative might tell patients they were free of the virus, even when they weren't. Why it matters: In retrospect, Texas may have been paying for tests with so-called false negatives — which could lead people to unknowingly spread the disease. Officials with TDEM defended the use of the tests. "False results are possible with all COVID-19 tests," Seth Christensen of TDEM told Axios. "That is one reason why public health officials have continuously encouraged people to not rely solely on one negative test, but to be tested multiple times." Officials at Gothams — which counts Curative as a client and was founded by a partner in a venture-capital firm that invested in Curative — didn't respond to interview requests. But Curative officials told Axios the validity of their tests was never called into question — they previously received a federal emergency use authorization — and the FDA warnings restated the need to use their tests in accordance with the label and instructions… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Despite omicron and high gas prices, holiday travel is almost back to pre-pandemic levels (Houston Chronicle)
While Juan Cardoza-Oquendo and his boyfriend Ivan Duent were in Houston last Christmas, their hearts were 2,000 miles away in Puerto Rico. Both have family on the island, including Duent’s parents. They longed to be with them and to scurry across their families’ neighborhoods in the Puerto Rican version of caroling known as parrandas. But without a vaccine, Cardoza-Oquendo and Duent worried it would be too risky to potentially expose their families to the virus. A year later, however, the couple and most of their family in Puerto Rico are fully vaccinated, including booster shots. So Cardoza-Oquendo and Duent will be among millions of U.S. holiday travelers returning to the skies and roads in near pre-pandemic levels despite a new surge in COVID infections and gasoline prices that are near the seasonal high.
“The whole point of being vaccinated is to see family and continue life as normal,” Cardoza-Oquendo said. “I don’t want to be insensitive with the case rise, but at this point we have a significant level of protection, and being together with family is just too important.” The American Automobile Association estimates that 109.5 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from Dec. 23 to Jan. 2, a 34 percent increase since last year — before the rollout of vaccines — but still 8 percent less than during the 2019 holidays, just before the pandemic. The numbers are similar in Texas, where the number of folks traveling is estimated to increase by about 32 percent over last year to 8.8 million. That’s also 8 percent shy of the record 9.3 million Texans who traveled at the end of 2019. “Americans who canceled their vacations in 2020 want to gather with family and friends for the holidays this year, although they will still be mindful of the pandemic and the new omicron variant,” said Paula Twidale, senior vice president of AAA Travel. “With vaccines widely available, conditions are much different and many people feel a greater level of comfort with travel.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[NATIONAL NEWS]
Cornyn texted Joe Manchin about joining GOP (The Hill)
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Tuesday said he reached out to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to encourage him to join the Republican Party amid backlash over his opposition to the House-passed Build Back Better legislation. Cornyn told KXAN — an Austin-based TV station that is part of Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill — that he texted Manchin, "Joe if they don’t want you we do," but hadn't heard back. “I don’t know what he will decide to do. But I do know West Virginia has gotten increasingly red. ... So, yeah, we’d love to have him. That would change the majority," Cornyn added. The Senate is split 50-50, with Democrats holding the majority because Vice President Harris can break a tie.
If Manchin left the Democratic Party and joined with Republicans, that would give the GOP a 51-49 majority and make Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) the majority leader. Speculation about Manchin's party affiliation has swirled around Washington, D.C., for years. Manchin said earlier this year that he did not intend to leave the Democratic Party but added that he had told his colleagues that if it was "embarrassing" for them that he was Democrat, he would switch his party affiliation to Independent. But under that scenario, according to Manchin, he would still formally caucus with Democrats, similar to Independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine). That would mean Democrats would maintain their narrow majority. Asked on Monday if there was a place for him in the Democratic Party, Manchin told WV MetroNews's Hoppy Kercheval, "I would like to hope that there are still Democrats that feel like I do. I say I'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate. Now if there are no Democrats like that, they'll have to push me wherever they want to." Republicans have tried for years to recruit Manchin to join them without success. "I enjoy our conversations. It would not surprise you to know that I've suggested for years that it would be a great idea representing a deep-red state like West Virginia for him to come over to our side. I don't think that's going to happen," McConnell told reporters last week. McConnell, during a Fox News radio interview this week, also questioned the public frustration with Manchin from Democrats, saying that he was "shocked at the vitriol and basically seemed to me that they were calling Senator Manchin a liar." "I think that was not smart. This is a 50-50 Senate," McConnell added… (LINK TO FULL STORY)