Wednesday, March 3, 2021

A Message to Texas Governor Greg Abbott

I was very concerned with the announcement by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on March 2, 2021, lifting all COVID-19 mandates. I wrote to him through his website today, March 3, 2021, and the text of my message is below. The picture is courtesy of The Hill publication.

Governor Abbott,

I was very dismayed with your decision to take away the mask mandate and allow all businesses to fully open up in the state of Texas. My youngest son is finishing up college in Texas and I have other friends that are just getting over the power and water issues caused by the very cold weather you recently had.

We are still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and are just now finally ramping up vaccine production. There are also variants of the COVID-19 virus that are active across the country and in Texas that are even more virulent. By opening up this will only lead to a further spread of the virus across Texas and through people traveling into and out of the state it will also spread to other states. Spring break will become a super spreader event.

Being a public health graduate, I do hope that you are closely listening to the public health and medical professionals in your state that I am sure are expressing the same concerns. Please reverse this decision and help save the lives of Texans and all Americans. We will beat this virus, but we all need to be working together. Right now, that means continuing the mask mandates and limiting the opening of businesses. We all want to open things up but doing it prematurely will only prolong the pandemic and allow even more mutant strains.

I apologize but did not know much about you until I heard your announcement yesterday. I saw that you were in a wheelchair and looked it up thinking that it was something temporary. Furthermore, I read about what happened which is a very inspirational story of real perseverance. We need that same perseverance with the COVID-19 virus. Please don’t give up the fight when we are so close.

Thank you for listening and you’re understanding.

Take care and be safe.

Edward R. Eroe