Surprise: Texas Governor Who Insists COVID Is No Big Deal Tests Positive for COVID

When he hasn’t been working to disenfranchise millions of people, effectively outlaw abortion, or ensuring people can carry a gun without background checks, licenses, or training, Texas governor Greg Abbott has spent the last year and a half insisting that COVID-19 is not a big deal and not only refusing to do anything to protect his constituents but banning others from doing his job for him. That’s included blocking local officials from enforcing their own mandates, signing a bill that punishes businesses for requiring proof of vaccination, and, most insanely, announcing that schools are not required to conduct contact tracing or tell parents if a student has tested positive for the virus. That kind of leadership has unsurprisingly led to a surge of new cases in Texas, a run on ICU beds, and a situation wherein Texas has been forced to ask the federal government for a fleet of mortuary trucks to store the dead bodies they‘re expecting. Oh, and the governor has tested positive for COVID, because of course he has.

Abbott…tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, his office announced. The governor’s office said it got the positive result after Abbott, who is fully vaccinated, underwent his routine daily testing. He is currently asymptomatic, but is receiving Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment, which is the same regimen former President Trump was given when he tested positive COVID-19 in October.

“Governor Greg Abbott today tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. The Governor has been testing daily, and today was the first positive test result,” the governor’s office said in a statement.

If you’re wondering if Abbott had been taking precautions to ensure he didn’t get infected—as he’s told Texans, “now is the time for personal responsibility”—well…

Will Abbott have some kind of come-to-Jesus moment after realizing just how contagious the delta variant is, and how dangerous his mask-less free-for-all is for people who can’t get vaccinated due to age or other health issues? If we know the governor—and we think we do!—the answer is a resounding no, followed by a hell no, followed by a no with a zap of a cattle prod. Just two days ago, Abbott was celebrating a Texas Supreme Court ruling upholding his ban on mask mandates. And despite the fact that getting vaccinated is almost certainly why he is asymptomatic, he’s proudly declared that vaccinations will “always remain voluntary—never forced—in the state of Texas.”

If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

Also, there’s this

Meanwhile, in New Zealand…

A slight different approach:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put the nation into a three-day lockdown after the discovery of the first community case of COVID-19 since February. The snap lockdown will begin at midnight tonight as authorities rush to identify the source of a single infection in the largest city Auckland, Ardern said at a news conference Tuesday in Wellington. While genome sequencing has yet to be completed, the case is assumed to be the highly infectious delta variant, she said.

The case is an unvaccinated man in his 50s from Auckland who is deemed to have been infectious since Aug. 12, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield told the news conference. He and his fully vaccinated wife were in the nearby Coromandel region over the weekend, where they visited a crowded pub on Saturday night to watch an All Blacks rugby game, he said. Because of those movements and the probability of it being delta, officials advised an immediate nationwide response.

“Going hard and early has worked for us before,” Ardern told reporters. “We want to be short and hard, rather than light and long.”

Meanwhile, on Fox News…

Elsewhere!

U.S. Is Reviewing the Deaths of People Who May Have Fallen From a Plane Leaving Kabul (NPR)

The Taliban have been in charge of Kabul for 48 hours. Women have already disappeared from the streets (CNN)

Nearly two thirds of Americans support state or local mask mandates, poll shows (The Washington Post)

Troubling CDC vaccine data convinced Biden team to back booster shots (Politico)

NRA Must Be Dissolved After Failing to Clean Up Misconduct, New York Says (Bloomberg)

Pete Buttigieg and Husband Chasten Announce They Are Now Parents (NPR)

The World’s Largest Crypto Exchange Keeps Losing CEOs (Intelligencer)

I was a Hamptons squatter: How I lived in luxury for free (NYP)

Helicopter Pilot Ticketed for Landing at a Dairy Queen for Dessert (Jalopnik)

— Inside the Feverish Mind of Postpresidential Donald Trump
— Joe Manchin Ghosts Workers Whose Jobs His Daughter Helped Outsource
— Fauci Tells Anti-Vaxxers to Sit Down and STFU as COVID Cases Surge
— What If Jeff Bezos’s Big Space Adventure Saves Us All?
— Report: Trump Allegedly Implicated in Company Crimes
— Venture Capital’s Most Contentious Breakup Just Added a Messy New Chapter
— The 2022 Candidate Slate: Send In the Clowns!
— Of Course Trump Has Scammed Millions From His Supporters
— From the Archive: The Star-Crossed, Politicized, Complexified Romance of Jeff Bezos
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.