COVID-19 Bulletin (04/29/21)
Dallas herd immunity is pushed back due to lagging vaccinations. The Texas House looks to extend online learning options.
By
Chance Townsend
Published in
Healthcare Business
April 28, 2021
11:00 pm
350 new COVID-19 cases and 9 deaths on Wednesday.
Texas House lawmakers have pushed forward
a bill to expand online learning options post COVID-19. The
Dallas Morning Newsreported that the bill would empower school districts and charters to establish their own, full-time remote learning programs.
Texas House lawmakers look to exclude places of worship from emergency closures after COVID-19 shut down their doors. The required shutdown of places of worship also didn’t sit well with many Texas lawmakers who are now trying to ensure such closures by government officials don’t happen. Texas Tribune has more here.
State and County Data Told Different Stories About Total Deaths from COVID-19
There was always a small difference between what we heard from the state and the county. But when October came, that difference became a gulf. Let s talk about why.
By
Steven Monacelli
Published in
FrontBurner
April 29, 2021
12:35 pm
Each weekday, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins reports a number of local deaths attributed to COVID-19. It’s a grim reminder of the toll the pandemic continues to take on our community.
But in terms of understanding the current state of the virus, it’s an unclear data point that isn’t a snapshot so much as it is an accumulation of the prior days and sometimes weeks. Like so much in this pandemic, it’s confusing, a blurry image of the severity of the coronavirus in the county that doesn’t always match the counts from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
A tornado watch is in effect this morning, policing a hot topic in council elections, a Mrs. Dallas pageant winner is missing, and the Mavs are on a roll.
Invisible Man: A Hard Look at Mayor Eric Johnson
Eric Johnson’s escape from poverty reads like a fairy tale. But his story took a turn when he became mayor. Why has he disappeared from so many of his old friends lives?
By Peter Simek
Published in
D Magazine
May
2021
Photo Illustration by Natalie Goff, Photography by Bret Redman, and Courtesy
It was more than four hours into the June 5, 2020, special meeting of the Dallas City Council called to discuss the George Floyd demonstrations, and Mayor Eric Johnson had no more patience for bullshit. Johnson had sat quietly listening to one resident after another lecture him about Dallas’ endemic racism and struggles with over-policing. When it was finally his turn to speak, he wanted answers about what had happened on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge the previous Sunday. Dallas police officers had fired so-called nonlethal rounds of ammunition and tear gas canisters at a peaceful crowd that included many children. Who was ultimate