Day 79

This post is about other things but this has to first be mentioned, although I don't want to talk much about it because it gets me so angry and upset. You've probably already seen all over the news how Georgia's primary election yesterday was run so miserably, with voters in some precincts having to wait in line for up to five hours to cast a ballot and how some people finally walked away without voting after waiting in line for hours.   The weather yesterday was miserable - it rained for parts of the day, and when it wasn't raining the sun came out and warmed everything up to a particularly humid 85⁰, only to have it start raining again.  Enough to discourage anyone.  And to no one's surprise, the problems were most frequent in minority districts - it seems the blacker the precinct, the worse the problems were.

Mail-in ballots that were never received by the voters who requested them. Machines that mysteriously refused to work once they were at the polling places, or required passwords that no one seemed to have.  It's almost as if someone didn't want people of color to vote. It was gross incompetence by the Republican Secretary of State and by Governor Brian Kemp, the former Secretary of State.  It was voter suppression, the very thing that the Voting Rights Act was supposed to have eliminated, at least before key provisions were struck down by the Roberts Supreme Court in 2013. The only solace I can take is the nation seems to have noticed, and Georgia may be forced to get its act together before the November general election.

I was lucky - my mail-in ballot arrived a couple weeks ago and I was able to mail it in with plenty of time left.  The Secretary of State web site confirms that my ballot was received and accepted.

But what I want to talk about isn't the primary election but, once again, coronavirus.  The 24-hour news cycle may have gone on to other things, but the virus is still here.  In fact, sadly, tragically, yesterday 74 people died in Georgia alone, the fourth deadliest day in Georgia history since the pandemic first began.

The chart of daily reported deaths for Georgia has an odd, "spikey" pattern.  About every week, there's a noticeable increase in the number of deaths, followed by brief interludes of relatively few deaths.  I honestly don't know if this is due to deaths not being reported over weekends or on holidays, followed by several days' worth of morbidity data being submitted on a weekday.  I don't know.  But I do know that despite the interference by the spikes, it's clear that there is no decreasing trend in the number of deaths - our fellow Georgians are dying at the same rate now as as the height of the pandemic in late April.  

The biggest spike, by the words "New deaths," was on April 20 when 85 people died.  Governor Brian Kemp, who apparently can't even run a primary election in this state, opened Georgia back up for business and lifted the shelter-in-place orders on April 27.  Since then, the number of deaths have remained steady, and 74 people died just yesterday.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Here is the graph for Massachusetts:

Even though 55 people died there yesterday, and even though there's some "spikes" in the Massachusetts data, there's clearly a downward trend since the late-April peak in the pandemic.  

New York was hit particularly hard by the pandemic and suffered immensely.  But even New York, for all of its challenges, clearly has a downward trend to the number of deaths.

Yesterday, 70 deaths were reported in New York state, fewer than Georgia's 74 despite the fact that New York has 1.8 times the number of people and despite the fact that New York was at one point the global epicenter of covid-19 infections.

So what was different in New York and Massachusetts than Georgia?  For starters, New York had shelter-in-place restrictions imposed by March 23, Massachusetts by March 30; Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp famously didn't shut down Georgia until April 7 when it was "just learned" that the coronavirus could be spread by people without symptoms.  Models have repeatedly demonstrated how even earlier shutdowns might have saved tens of thousands of more lives nationwide.

Kemp also went toe-to-toe with the White House and local mayors over his decision to reopen large parts of Georgia’s economy ahead of other states, starting April 24. Gov. Cuomo only allowed limited reopenings by region starting May 15; New York City, the hardest hit part of the state, didn't move into the first phase of reopening until June 8.  And in Massachusetts, Gov. Baker announced the first reopenings on May 18 for houses of worship and expanded reopenings for salons, offices, and retail stores for curbside pickup on May 25.

So, New York and Massachusetts - early shutdowns and late reopenings, and a demonstrable decline in covid-19 mortality.  Georgia - late shutdown and early reopening, and the pandemic is just as bad  now as at its height.  We can debate the relative merits of shut down orders, but the coronavirus is doing the talking.

To my surprise, with only 70 New York deaths in a population of 19.5 million versus Georgia's 74 deaths in a population of 10.5 million, its statistically safer to be in Brooklyn right now than Atlanta.

Botched elections, a dying population, no end in sight to the pandemic.  Governor Kemp - you're doing a helluva job there, Brownie!