1. People don't pay attention.
Currently the mask mandate is against local governments from imposing the penalties on people. Why have masks if you can't enforce it? It's a recommendation--which is what the state has. A strongly worded recommendation. There's no authority for local governments to unilaterally impose fines. Moreover, the areas that wanted to had this funny idea that they wouldn't actually enforce it on the wrong sorts of people--those of color, those who are poor. I.e., the groups with the highest incidence of COVID and the some of the worst outcomes.
Current the mask mandate says businesses are subject to fines, $1000 per person per incident, for not making customers/clients/patrons wear masks, with some exceptions (like when eating and drinking ... duh). This *is* without local government's authority.
So much for blocking mask mandates. In fact, they checked with Abbott and he approved the idea. Because it didn't involve local government imposing fines ... for which they have no authority. The mask mandated just kicked in yesterday. It'll take a while before there's any possible effect to be seen from it.
I'd point out that in some areas, masks are still silly and/or would be resisted. NPR pointed out appropriately and disapprovingly that there's a racial skew in how we view agitators and how we view protestors. (I don't think it goes just the way they wanted to disapprove of, to be honest, but it's still an accurate observation for each hand of the body politic.)
2. Houston/Harris is responsible for about 1300 of those cases.
After that, Dallas/Fort Worth.
Bexar County's up and coming (locals can pronounce that, the pronunciation's a bear). Austin, not so bad.
Down near the border's heating up. Hidalgo and Hay's counties. One wonder's what's happening on the trans side of the border.
I haven't named an area that isn't blue. Partly because those are the population centers, and it's spreading from there. Just like much of the country's case load spread from the NY metroplex. So it's spreading, but still not as bad a NYC. People wanted compassion for NYC. They all but chortle when it's Texas dems being whacked. Solidarity. (?)
In Harris County, the distribution of cases by race/ethnicity is about as bad as you'd think. Harder to actually get numbers for this, but comparing https://harriscounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/9280d2e195b440d5ac29dfc819048550 with https://statisticalatlas.com/county/Texas/Harris-County/Race-and-Ethnicity says about the same thing without quibbling over whether it's 34.5 or 35.1%. (Plus the sites are good for a number of other things.)
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