We're all yearning for good news lately, any good news really, and on Saturday morning, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp posted a tweet touting lower COVID-19 hospitalization rates across the state.
"Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th," Kemp tweeted. "Today also marks the lowest total of ventilators in use (897 with 1,945 available)."
Kemp may be a cheater and a bigot (he suppressed the vote in his own election and ran anti-immigrant campaign ads) but he's not necessarily a liar, at least not in the pathological Donald Trump sense. He's not very bright, but he doesn't seem to just make stuff up on the fly. I hope this is indeed good news for my sake and the sake of the people of the state of Georgia. I want it to be true.
But I worry that Georgia is well situated to be ground zero for the next wave of covid-19 infections. It's well known that the virus is spreading fastest among communities of color, in nursing homes, and in meat-packing facilities, and there's little data available regarding the undocumented immigrant population. Georgia has a lot of all of the above.
Five of the nation’s top 10 counties with the highest deaths rates from coronavirus per 100,000 are in southwest Georgia. Black people were the largest racial group in all five of these counties, in and around Albany, Georgia.
Although not as plentiful as in adjacent Florida, Georgia has a thriving elderly care and nursing home industry. The vulnerable populations in these facilities account for a significant portion of the state’s overall coronavirus deaths.
Shockingly high infection rates and death rates have been documented at meat-processing plants in the midwest. Georgia has a similar and huge chicken-processing industry, particularly in the northeast part of the state, and a significant increase in infections has recently been reported in and around Gainesville, the epicenter of the poultry industry.
Georgia also employs a large number of undocumented immigrant workers in Atlanta's thriving construction (which by and large continued unabated through the lockdown), the south Georgia farming community, and the aforementioned poultry plants. For understandable reasons, undocumented workers are reluctant to get tested and treated for the virus, and the infection rate among that largely Hispanic population is largely unknown.
So on top of all that, with all of these vulnerable and increasingly impacted communities present, Kemp has thrown open the doors for business as usual. Based on my own limited observations and numerous reports that I've read in both the news and social media, people are not practicing social distancing and are not wearing face masks and other PPE.
So we've got the contagion present here, the covid-19 virus, we've got the vulnerable population (minorities, elderly, poultry workers, and undocumented immigrants), and we've got the means to spread the contagion - the lifting of shelter n place restrictions and a cavalier attitude toward protection by the general population. In epidemiological terms, we got the disease, the receptors, and a complete pathway for exposure.
I hope I'm wrong - I really, truly do - but it seems like the perfect formula for a "second wave" hotspot.
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