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Fortunately for him, many Texans will be praying for his recovery.
I’m a little tired of people making light of prayer. It’s an important part of religious dedication. Does it represent a lack of desire or will to do anything at all outside of the act of praying? For some, yes. But, I would argue, correct use of prayer is supplicating for help, inspiration, or expression of deep desires *in addition to all efforts that have been made by the supplicant*. The key here is action with prayer. In some cases it could be compared to getting a doctors consultation, it’s pretty useless if you don’t pair it with action.

That model may not work with all the different types of prayers that may be offered, but it is generally the case and all I’m saying is that in most cases serious prayer is only *part* of the supplicants story. Using a variation of “thoughts and prayers” as a sarcastic derision to ostensibly religious individuals such as Gov. Abbot, lumps all genuine religious devotees with those that go spewing these superficial platitudes. It’s not really fair. There are plenty of people that say “I hope you get well soon” and put just as much effort as those that use prayer to signal well wishing (sometimes it’s just a colloquialism), and they aren’t made fun of because of the secular nature of the sentiment. Why make fun of religion by making fun of one of the basic commonalities shared by most, if not all, religions?

There’s no need to lump religion with Abbot’s recent decisions. They are politically driven. He is a politician at the end if the day.

That said, I pray the Texas governor learns from his predicament and takes the delta variant and prevention procedures in general more seriously.

Amongst his political group, that is the standard thing to say when someone gets COVID. If that works for them, then he’s fortunate to have a lot of people praying for him. And that’s fine if they believe in it and want to do it.
Them. Us. Politics. How I wish politicians lost all affiliation with a party after they were sworn in (and of course that lobbying groups took a long dive off a short cliff).

Of course I also wish people wouldn’t conflate political parties with religion. Both sides are a gradient of believers, non-believers, agnostics, etc. There’s even gradients within those who claim to be religious. People will do stupid things because of religion and in spite of all religion tries to do to prevent its followers from being stupid. Religion is just a scapegoat and a pretty useless one in conversations like these. It doesn’t help anyone understand Abbot. Abbot’s actions are probably simpler stated as those of his party have chosen a position and he’s doing his part to dig in even while surrounded by bad omens. This last one striking home.

Will he change positions? Seems like his party has been teetering on a “maybe”. I’ve noticed more people caving to vaccination. Most because they, now, can no longer drown out the noise of reality. That’s my hope for him because as a leader he could be a force for good in a rather populous US state, instead of just another sheep towing the party line of the flock of his party.

People being rational. Leaders leading. Wishes.

It didn't change the mind of the former President, who apparently had a fairly hard case of COVID. He was never anti-vaccine (in fact, he deserves credit for helping it be created), but he never ceased to minimize the importance of COVID and was inconsistent (at best) about mask wearing.

Abbott is asymptomatic, and I only see this as bolstering his belief that COVID is a personal issue. His party may be wavering on that, but he himself gains nothing by walking back his previous statements, and this experience isn't going to cause the kind of suffering that would force him into a different mindset.

We're all going to test positive at some point.