Last week, the governor of Texas lifted all COVID restrictions, to be effective March 10, in the middle of Spring Break for most of Texas. He acknowledged COVID hasn’t disappeared, but is confident we have enough vaccine to get ahead of this pandemic. The current 7-day average is between 4000–5000…

But maybe not in April 2021 Edit: definitely not in April and maybe not in June, definitely not indoor events in June. For those not in San Antonio, Texas, Fiesta is an annual, officially 10 day but unofficially nearly month long celebration of the life and culture of San Antonio…

As COVID continues to rear its ugly head, in San Antonio we’ve seen cases inching up for the last few weeks. Yes we’re testing more. An increasing positivity rate means we’re finding cases, which is the only way to stop it spreading undetected. In March, I wrote about what we’d…

Confession. One of my favorite parts of applied epidemiology is trying to find the source of an outbreak. It is, after all, what the Father of Epi, John Snow, did to stop the cholera outbreak. Identifying the *source* of an outbreak of a respiratory disease is more difficult. On an…

Quickie summary of flu in Texas for those who asked. The 2008–2009 flu season was relatively mild, with a small peak in late January/early February (blue line). But in April of 2009, the first cases of H1N1, later to be a pandemic, were identified in Guadalupe County. Cases dropped over…

Six plus months into this pandemic, my spouse has overheard many calls. So when recently he listened to me answer the same question — if different ways — 10 times, he asked “How can you stand answering over and over again?” I hadn’t even noticed. I once had a professor…

In the Spring and well into the summer, reliance upon the gold standard RT-PCR tests meant a delay in results across the country. At times, results might take up to two weeks, long past the time the individual was contagious. There has been much talk of rapid COVID-19 tests to…

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Spurs and victory being snatched from us at the last moments. Here’s an update: we’re holding steady, but still above the threshold recommended by Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director (back when we could trust the CDC) and lead of Resolve…

How many of us San Antonio Spurs fans know the heartbreak of being so close to the victory, only to have it snatched from our grasp at the final buzzer? San Antonio’s COVID-19 situation feels a bit like a 3rd Quarter rain of threes, pulling out ahead of the Lakers…