COVID-19 Cases are Back on the Up and Up. With 376 new cases and 9 deaths, we’re no longer on the decline, says Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. Officials also said that more than two dozen possible new cases reported over the last 10 days were connected with local youth hockey teams. Meanwhile, Parkland’s temporary COVID-19 Tactical Care Unit has been closed, allowing the hospital to once again use the space for surgical services. “We didn’t know anything about COVID when all of this hit, so really the TCU was a response to some of that unknown concerning PPE and keeping people safe in sort of this ‘red box’ area that everyone affectionately started to call our TCU,” Dr. Joe Chang, the chief medical officer at Parkland, told NBC 5. “But now, as we know more and more about the disease, we have a much better supply of testing and PPE, it allows us to take care of patients in a more traditional way.”
If at First Mayor Eric Johnson Doesn’t Succeed, He’ll Continue to Beat a Dead Horse. At last week’s city council meeting, Johnson sought to “defund the bureaucracy” by getting council members behind across-the-board salary cuts for city staff making $60,000 a year or more. After the proposed cuts were rejected by a near unanimous council vote of 13-1, he disappeared for the rest of the rest of the meeting, which went on into the wee hours of the following morning. After some sulking, weekend emailing, and tweeting, Johnson again brought up the amendment at yesterday’s council meeting. This time the vote was 13-2 against the amendment, with the majority of council members supporting $7 million in cuts to police overtime instead.
Vegas No More, Baby. Wrangler National Finals Rodeo is moving to Arlington in December, making it the first major non-baseball event to be held in Globe Life Field. Concerns about managing crowds in Vegas during the pandemic led to the change in venue. Arlington and Fort Worth hope that the event, which has historically drawn more than 170,000 fans to Sin City, will help replace lost tourism revenue here. The plan is to sell seats in groups of four, with separations between groupings and mandatory masks.
