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Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms says Georgia reopened too soon: 'People are paying with their lives'
https://www.foxnews.com/media/atlanta-keisha-lance-bottoms-covid
The Mayor deserves our sympathy in regard to contracting Covid-19. I am sure that even when it is largely asymptomatic, Covid-19 isn't exactly a fun thing. But she is wrong to suggest that the recent surge in her state, as well as others, is related to a premature opening. She is ignoring the significant delay of the surge from the opening as well as the obvious relationship between the mass protests following the murder of George Floyd and the surge. In addition, she is wrong to suggest that people have paid for the early opening with their lives considering the recent drop in the mortality rate in Georgia as well as in other states.
The following is an attempt to put things in perspective:
The opening in Georgia began near the end of April when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp reopening hair salons, gyms and tattoo parlors. At that time, the seven day moving average for new cases was 761 as shown on the Worldometer graph for new cases in Georgia. (If you wish, you can find the graph and follow along to confirm my descriptions.) The following is a link to the website:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/georgia/
Two weeks after the initial opening steps, by mid-May, the seven day running average for new cases was 656. Two weeks after that, at the end of May, it was 595. (This was, by the way, about five days after the beginning of the George Floyd protests.) By mid-June, the state had experienced a moderate rise of the seven day average to 845 per day--probably related to some degree to the mass protests.
However, at that point (three weeks after the beginning of the protests), the number of new cases shot up to a seven day average of 1,944 by the end of June. And on July 2, there was a one day peak of 3,472 new cases. Since then, the number of new cases has dropped to the 1,548 new cases that Georgia experienced yesterday and the seven day average is finally turning downward at 2521. (Hopefully, this downward turn is an indication that the Georgia state health department has been able to catch up with the virus and has started putting out the fire.)
In regard to people paying for the premature opening with their lives, I would mention that the death totals in Georgia have continued a general descent from the end of April with the seven day running average at 35 to the current seven day average of 13 deaths per day. There was a modest peak of 41 on June 15 before the descent to 13 yesterday.
Again, all of the above data is obtainable from Worldometer graphs for the state of Georgia at:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/georgia/
My conclusion from the above is that the surge in Georgia had nothing to do with reopening. The number of new cases remained relatively constant for a month after its completion. What happened was mass protests that caused a surge in new cases.
In addition, the assertion that people paid for it with their lives is actually absurd. Indeed, it is remarkable that despite the mass protests that resulted in large numbers of new infections, the death rate has continued to drop.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/atlanta-keisha-lance-bottoms-covid
The Mayor deserves our sympathy in regard to contracting Covid-19. I am sure that even when it is largely asymptomatic, Covid-19 isn't exactly a fun thing. But she is wrong to suggest that the recent surge in her state, as well as others, is related to a premature opening. She is ignoring the significant delay of the surge from the opening as well as the obvious relationship between the mass protests following the murder of George Floyd and the surge. In addition, she is wrong to suggest that people have paid for the early opening with their lives considering the recent drop in the mortality rate in Georgia as well as in other states.
The following is an attempt to put things in perspective:
The opening in Georgia began near the end of April when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp reopening hair salons, gyms and tattoo parlors. At that time, the seven day moving average for new cases was 761 as shown on the Worldometer graph for new cases in Georgia. (If you wish, you can find the graph and follow along to confirm my descriptions.) The following is a link to the website:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/georgia/
Two weeks after the initial opening steps, by mid-May, the seven day running average for new cases was 656. Two weeks after that, at the end of May, it was 595. (This was, by the way, about five days after the beginning of the George Floyd protests.) By mid-June, the state had experienced a moderate rise of the seven day average to 845 per day--probably related to some degree to the mass protests.
However, at that point (three weeks after the beginning of the protests), the number of new cases shot up to a seven day average of 1,944 by the end of June. And on July 2, there was a one day peak of 3,472 new cases. Since then, the number of new cases has dropped to the 1,548 new cases that Georgia experienced yesterday and the seven day average is finally turning downward at 2521. (Hopefully, this downward turn is an indication that the Georgia state health department has been able to catch up with the virus and has started putting out the fire.)
In regard to people paying for the premature opening with their lives, I would mention that the death totals in Georgia have continued a general descent from the end of April with the seven day running average at 35 to the current seven day average of 13 deaths per day. There was a modest peak of 41 on June 15 before the descent to 13 yesterday.
Again, all of the above data is obtainable from Worldometer graphs for the state of Georgia at:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/georgia/
My conclusion from the above is that the surge in Georgia had nothing to do with reopening. The number of new cases remained relatively constant for a month after its completion. What happened was mass protests that caused a surge in new cases.
In addition, the assertion that people paid for it with their lives is actually absurd. Indeed, it is remarkable that despite the mass protests that resulted in large numbers of new infections, the death rate has continued to drop.
