This could be yours.

Austin and Travis County public health leaders recently announced they would continue to require masks, even though Abbott forbade local authorities from superseding his order. [...]

"I listen to doctors, not to politicians like our attorney general," Travis County Judge Andy Brown said in an interview, explaining that that is the message he hopes his residents receive. "It's not the time to take our masks off."

Brown said the continued mask mandate comes from the county's public health authority -- not from his emergency powers due to the pandemic. Under that interpretation, he says the county should be legally able to require masks. The discussion to remove a mask mandate shouldn't begin until 80% of the county is vaccinated, Brown said. It's currently at 9%, he said.

"We will fight Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Paxton's assault against doctors and data for as long as we possibly can," Adler said in a statement.

If the U.S. Is Getting Vaccinated, When Do We Get Concerts Back?

Health experts say guessing at a reopening timeline is no easier now than it was a year ago -- especially with newer variants of the virus floating around.

"If the variants don't circulate widely, we can do okay. But the second condition is what percentage of the population will ultimately get vaccinated," says Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "If we see up to a third of the population refusing to get vaccinated, that could still cause enough individuals to get infected and transmit the virus to make ongoing occurrence of cases something that would happen with some regularity throughout the country." [...]

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said music venues can begin to reopen at 33 percent capacity on April 2nd -- but with a maximum cap of 100 people indoors, making it financially pointless for many venues to even try. [...]

Zach Ernst, a talent buyer for Antone's Nightclub in Austin, Texas, says he's felt hopeful from the dropping cases and heightened vaccine rates. But even though Texas is "opening," he doesn't foresee jumping immediately back into shows. "You've got to put shows on sale anywhere between a couple of weeks [beforehand], a month, six weeks or longer -- typically much longer. We've all had the rug pulled out from under us so many times and moved shows so many times and all of that, that all of us are a bit calloused."

Violet Blue:

The UK variant has overrun a Northern Italian hospital. "With the U.K. variant prevalent in Italy and racing from school age children and adolescents through families, Lombardy has again put all schools on distance learning, as have several regions in the south," reports Mercury News.

Brazil's variant is utterly devastating its origin country. BBC News reports: "Health systems in most of Brazil's largest cities are close to collapse due to Covid-19 cases," with "80% of intensive care unit (ICU) beds are occupied in the capitals of 25 of Brazil's 27 states." Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro opposes quarantine measures and this week told Brazilians to "stop whining" about Covid-19. [...]

Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday: "Four weeks ago, the B.1.1.7 variant made up about 1 to 4% of the virus that we were seeing in communities across the [United States]. Today it's up to 30 to 40%." Osterholm predicts another deadly spike (a fourth surge) from the variants "over the next six to 14 weeks."

Previously, previously.