For about half of the counties in the country, which contain 70 percent of the U.S. population, the CDC advised people could unmask indoors. But it continued to recommend indoor masking for areas like Galveston County. “I am trying to study the metrics that CDC has provided. They don’t actually give the actual data that they’re extracting,” said Dr. Janak Patel, director of infection control and health care epidemiology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “I have a feeling that Galveston County got a worse rating than Harris County because we have a large health care system that serves multiple counties.”

In 2016, at the request of anti-violence coalitions in Texas, University of Texas Medical Branch associate professor Leila Wood undertook a study of job-related stress among advocates. The resulting survey of hundreds of movement workers in the state found that 30 percent reported experiencing or witnessing racial microaggressions at work. Those incidents were associated with high rates of “compassion fatigue”—the toxic mix of burnout and secondary traumatic stress that often drives people to quit their jobs. Black advocates, who reported experiencing or witnessing microaggressions at some of the highest rates, were also the most likely to be planning to leave their agencies.

Tsola Efejuku, a UTMB medical student, was raised by a family of health care professionals. His mom is a pharmacist, one of his uncles is a physician and another is a physical therapist. This early exposure piqued his interest in the field. But outside of his family, he found little reinforcement. “I didn’t see too many [other] Black physicians,” he said. In 2020, 6.3% of active physicians in Texas identified as Black or African American, compared with 13.4% of the state population.

According to podiatrist Chanel Perkins, DMP, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, what’s happening in the body when someone gets a toe cramp depends on the exact cause. One common reason according to Perkins is dehydration. Also, the lack of movement could be causing your toe cramping. “Lack of blood flow leads to low oxygenation and nutrition in the tissues, causing them to cramp,” she said.

The mumps cases in vaccinated individuals are mild. Therefore, most cases go unrecognized because few individuals have the classic chipmunk face or suffer complications like testicular swelling or brain inflammation that trigger diagnostic investigations.