Opinion

DECEMBER 1, 2021—The Blood Emergency Readiness Corps has activated, sending extra blood units in response to yesterday’s school shooting in Oxford Township, MI. The blood will be used to assist Versiti —the blood center that serves the area— meet the immediate medical needs for the eight remaining victims.

THE FIRST STORY I wrote about the Canadian Apartments more than a decade ago was headlined “Home Sweet Slum.” I’m sure it offended some of the residents who still lived there, though that wasn’t what I intended.

A study by the Texas Department of State Health Services during the Delta variant outbreak of COVID-19 indicates unvaccinated Texans were 20 times more likely to die from the virus than those who had received one of the vaccines. From the report: All authorized COVID-19 vaccines in the United States are highly effective at protecting people from getting sick or severely ill with COVID-19, including those infected with Delta and other known variants. Real-world data from Texas clearly shows these benefits. Meanwhile, the total number of new cases of COVID-19 in Texas in the past week rose slightly to 23,350, as did new deaths at 846, according to the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University. Since the pandemic began, 4.28 million Texans have been diagnosed with the virus—14.6 percent of the state’s entire population. COVID-19 has taken the lives of 72,760 Texans, roughly equivalent to the entire population of Harlingen. The good news is that at least for now, the number of hospitalized, lab-confirmed COVID-19 patients continues to drop, with 2,736 reported by DSHS as of Sunday. That is down 75 percent from mid-August levels. DSHS also reports the number of Texans who are fully vaccinated continues to inch upward, with 15.67 million reported, a number that now includes children ages 5-11 who are now eligible for the vaccine.

Young appointed to Texas Supreme Court Evan Young, a former clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has been appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Gov. Greg Abbott.

A FRIEND AND FREQUENT visitor to The Record office, Harry King, was admiring the result of a recent office reorganization project that we had done with the help of Kim McKinney. Harry had stopped by to drop off his weekly Wildcat Pick ‘Em prediction, and we chatted, as we always do. As he turned to leave, he wondered whether we had misplaced—or worse, disposed of—the rare collector’s item which has been on my desk for as long as I can remember: a bottle from the J.C. Born Bottling Company in Canadian, Texas.

Another look at impact of Winter Storm Uri More than eight months after an unprecedented snow and ice storm led to widespread power blackouts in Texas, the Texas Comptroller’s office took an in-depth look at the state’s response and the legislative actions that followed. Texas is the only state in the continental United States with its own electric power grid, which serves 90 percent of its population.