1,000 signatures reached
To: TEXAS GOP (Chairman James Dickey, Governor Greg Abbott) AND CITY OF HOUSTON (Sylvester Turner, Houston City Council, Houston First Board)
DEMAND TEXAS GOP AND CITY OF HOUSTON STOP PLAYING CHESS WITH OUR LIVES
Houston's COVID-19 case count surges, and yet a 6000 person indoor (until late last week, mask optional) gathering of the Texas GOP moves full steam ahead. The George R. Brown (GRB) Convention Center meeting on July 16-18 can easily shift to a virtual convening. Demand that the Texas GOP act in service to the health of all Houstonians. If they cannot govern themselves, the Mayor of Houston should restore his own authority to cancel the event with the support of Houston City Council, and the Houston First Corporation, contracted to manage GRB, should comply.
Why is this important?
The Texas GOP recklessly barrels forward with plans to meet in person, endangering not just their own lives but the lives of their families and communities *and* the lives of the service workers at the GRB, emergency responders with the Houston Fire Department and Houston Police Department, Texas Medical Center medical personnel, and Houstonians at large. Beds at Houston area hospitals are so full, we are transferring patients to Galveston and Conroe. We are heading into a staffing crisis and have not yet approached the apex of the current swell of COVID infections.
Last week, grassroots pressure by physicians convinced the Texas Medical Association (TMA) to withdraw its sponsorship of the Texas GOP Convention due to its refusal to go virtual in light of the alarming facts. That is now nearly 55,000 physicians - grassroots and in organized medicine - calling attention to the moral imperative to move this meeting online. There will unquestionably be collateral infections and deaths otherwise. And tremendous liability to the Texas GOP and City of Houston.
I am the physician who started the petition among my colleagues to demand that the TMA withdraw its support of this impending disaster. I myself had COVID almost 17 weeks ago and am STILL recovering. I read EEGs (brain wave studies) for intubated and altered ICU patients with COVID and am deeply concerned about the long term consequences of neuro-invasive disease and other end-organ damage.
Don't let this happen to your loved ones, Houston.
[Photo credit: Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer]
Last week, grassroots pressure by physicians convinced the Texas Medical Association (TMA) to withdraw its sponsorship of the Texas GOP Convention due to its refusal to go virtual in light of the alarming facts. That is now nearly 55,000 physicians - grassroots and in organized medicine - calling attention to the moral imperative to move this meeting online. There will unquestionably be collateral infections and deaths otherwise. And tremendous liability to the Texas GOP and City of Houston.
I am the physician who started the petition among my colleagues to demand that the TMA withdraw its support of this impending disaster. I myself had COVID almost 17 weeks ago and am STILL recovering. I read EEGs (brain wave studies) for intubated and altered ICU patients with COVID and am deeply concerned about the long term consequences of neuro-invasive disease and other end-organ damage.
Don't let this happen to your loved ones, Houston.
[Photo credit: Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer]