It's 'looking pretty dire - pretty apocalyptic': Doctor says Texas COVID-19 spike is so bad he doesn't 'see what brings us back'

Things are looking bad in Texas. In fact, things are looking so bad in Texas that one doctor called it outright "apocalyptic."

The shutdown order expired in the middle of May and like many states, Texas was up and running in time for citizens to celebrate Memorial Day weekend. Weeks later, cases have exploded with more than 5,000 cases Tuesday and another 5,000 cases on Wednesday. Houston will reach its limit of ICU beds by Thursday.

June 16, Texas Gov. Greg Abbot claimed, "we are now in a situation we are co-existing with COVID-19 and we do not have to choose between either returning to jobs or protecting health care. We do have the tools and the strategies in place where we can achieve both of those ends."

In less than ten days, the governor was forced to admit that the state is under attack.

MSNBC host Chuck Todd called on Dr. Peter Hotez, who predicted that this is what would happen to Texas, but he and others were ignored.

Dr. Hotez described the surge as "both predicted and predictable."

"It's really worrisome," he said. "We're looking now at almost a vertical slope in terms of the number of cases. This very rapid acceleration, if you've ever seen one, what's called an exponential curve what it looks like -- it stays flat a while and goes up almost, almost vertically, and that's what's happening here in Houston. We're seeing similar numbers in San Antonio, in Austin, in Dallas, and it's not just the numbers, because some are certain this is just due to increased testing. We're actually seeing a big surge in the hospitals and ICUs."

"I don't see what brings us back," Dr. Hatez confessed. "Today we just got new modeling estimates from the University of Pennsylvania and their policy lab. They're looking pretty dire. Pretty apocalyptic. I think we'll have to take aggressive action. We did a good job initially, a good peak, and the governor made a good decision to shut things down. He didn't want to reproduce what we saw in New York, and we never saw a big surge back in March and April, but then the modelers told us we had to keep it shut down throughout the month of May and nobody was prepared to do that. And we didn't put in all of the belts and suspenders for public health we needed to and now we have a situation we're facing currently."

Watch his comments below: