Day 55

"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)." 

Last week, trying to be open-minded and as generous as possible, I said that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp may be a lot of things - a cheater (he suppressed the vote in his own election) and a bigot (he ran anti-immigrant campaign ads)  - but he's not necessarily a liar.  He's not very bright, but he doesn't seem to just make stuff up on the fly.  I hoped this his announcement of the low number of covid-19 patients was true, as we could use the good news.  I wanted it to be true.

Turns out it wasn't and it turns out I was wrong - Kemp is a liar.  The press is reporting that the Georgia Department of Public Health updates and estimates of infection and mortality rates was wrong, the bar graph showing progress was mangled and misleading, and Kemp had to apologize after the misinformation was discovered.  

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a bar chart on the DPH website appeared to show that new confirmed covid cases in the Georgia counties with the most infections had dropped every single day for the past two weeks.  However, there was in fact no clear downward trend. The data is still preliminary, but cases have either held steady or dropped only slightly in the past two weeks. Experts agree that cases in those counties were flat when Georgia began to reopen late last month.  The bar chart was revised shortly after discrepancies were found.  

The DPH has been confusing readers for a while, being inconsistent with data and in the case of the recent bar chart, having dates out of chronological order.

"Where does Sunday take place twice a week?," the AJC asked.  "And May 2 come before April 26?"

“It’s just cuckoo,” said state Rep. Scott Holcomb (D-Atlanta) who sent a letter outlining his concerns to the governor’s office. “I don’t know how anyone can defend this graph as not being misleading. I really don’t.”

Taking a page from the Trump playbook, Kemp, who's been facing scrutiny and criticism for a series of rash decisions to open Georgia businesses prematurely, appears to be faking the data to match his results.  Instead of analyzing good, accurate data and making the best, informed decisions, Kemp appears to be making the worst, uninformed decisions and then faking the data to make it look like its working.

Brian Kemp - cheater, bigot, and liar.

And idiot.