Between April 20 and May 1, a recurring trending “hashtag” on Twitter was “KempHasBloodOnHisHands.” Democrat politicians and others assailed Kemp, claiming people were going to die because of him. . . .
Ron Fournier, formerly of the Associated Press, was not alone in that sentiment. Stacey Abrams took to MSNBC to blast Brian Kemp. President Trump criticized him for reopening saying he “strongly disagreed” with Kemp. The Atlantic ran a hysterically themed article that Georgia was experimenting in human sacrifice. The subtitle of the piece was, “The state is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy.”
We are now not just into the fourth week since Brian Kemp said the state could reopen and fourteen days past the shelter-in-place order expired, we are now past the last major revision of the IHME model, which happened yesterday.
The IHME model is the most widely cited and relied upon model for COVID-19. The White House and Georgia’s Governor rely on it. On May 12, the IHME model predicted Georgia would still have hundreds of daily new cases into August and would have 1,783 daily new cases on June 12, 2020.
Yesterday, the model updated and the update was significant. Georgia is now expected to have no cases of the virus by August and only 367 new daily cases on June 12.
Where does Brian Kemp go to get his apology?
The media failed to note at the time that Kemp was not alone in reopening. Jared Polis of Colorado also put in place a process to reopen his state. Georgia actually is administering more tests per capita than Colorado and the number goes up daily. The media chose to ignore all of this, just as the media has willfully chosen to ignore problems with Andrew Cuomo’s leadership in New York.
The Ron Fournier tweet is pathetic. I remember when he was a respected journalist, generally considered pretty fair. And it’s all about a predetermined politically narrative, which the press slavishly follows because that’s what it sees as its job.
h/t GR