Thoughts and Prayers

 

"It strikes me that some of the same people currently expressing concern over the fate of Afghanistan’s women and girls work quite happily with Saudi Arabia, which has its own repressive government, and have voted against reauthorizing our own Violence Against Women Act. Some of the same people worrying about the slowness of our evacuation of our Afghan allies voted just last month against providing more visas for them, and others seemed to worry very little about our utter abandonment of our Kurdish allies when we withdrew from northern Syria in 2019. And those worrying about democracy in Afghanistan seem to be largely unconcerned about protecting voting rights here at home. 

Most notably to me, some of the same people who are now focusing on keeping troops in Afghanistan to protect Americans seem uninterested in stopping the spread of a disease that has already killed more than 620,000 of us and that is, once again, raging."

~ Heather Cox Richardson

Today is August 17, the 229th day of the year 2021.  On this date in 2019, an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up at a wedding in Kabul, killing 63 people and injuring 182.  Today is also Robert De Niro's birthday.

After a largely sleepless night, I woke up this morning at 5:45, 15 minutes before my alarm clock was set to go off, to the pounding sound of intense rain on my roof.  Tropical Storm Fred (it never achieved hurricane status) was directly overhead. Despite some projections from last week that had it tracking over Alabama, I always knew it has headed directly for Atlanta, and sure enough, the center of the storm passed right over my fair city this morning.

Photo by @everydaydroneguy

It was, as forecast, an asymmetrical storm, not a perfectly spiraled hurricane, and the most intense damage was on the east side of the storm.  The one advantage of having the storm pass directly overhead was that Atlanta was at least spared the worst of the damage.  However, numerous tornados were reported in eastern Georgia, and more than 17,000 homes are without power across the state, including 3,6000 here in metro Atlanta. 

The hard, driving rain continued for at least five hours, and it was only around noon that it started to let up.  It's still drizzly outside as of 3:30 pm, but fortunately no trees came down on my house (yet) or in the neighborhood (yet), and I didn't lose power (yet).  Trees still manage to fall after a storm passes due to soft, saturated soil and from poor drivers skidding on rain-soaked streets, so there's still opportunities for power outages.  

But the news here is that I survived Fred.  No trees down, onto my house or elsewhere on my property, and the lights stayed on.  And with Fred now passed, Grace apparently heading to Mexico, and Henri turning circles in the mid-Atlantic around the island of Bermuda, there are no hurricanes or tropical storms currently on the radar to worry about, so we can now return our focus back onto the covids.

Yesterday, August 16, there were an astonishing 19,069 new covid cases reported in Georgia.  Other than an October 5, 2020 data anomaly, when suspect cases (symptoms, but no confirming laboratory test) were added to the total, that's the single-highest number since the pandemic began.  It's probably something of an anomaly itself and likely represents two days, not one - "zero" new cases were reported the previous Sunday (August 15).  But even if that figure represent the sum of two days, that's around 9,500 new cases each day, which would still put the two days among the 10 worst in state history. And this after we were down to less than 200 cases per day as recently as late last June.

Dozens of children have been hospitalized during this surge, a demographic change from he previous waves of infections.  According to the local Fox News affiliate, the hospitalized children including two new-born infants.

Counties in the metro Atlanta region have the most new cases per day, but largely because they're by far the most populated.  However, in terms of cases per capita, Atlanta's Fulton County has only 41 cases per 100,000 residents, well below the statewide level of 62 per 100,000. The  worst-hit county is Tift in the southwest part of the state with 210 new cases per 100,000 residents (0.2% of the entire county infected).

This dramatic increase - with no end in sight - is due to the combined effect of vaccine hesitancy and the delta variant, and the spread of the latter is a direct result of the former. The City of Atlanta has a mask mandate for indoor public spaces, but it's not enforced and is widely violated.  Schools are open, except for some of Georgia's worst-ravaged counties in the southeastern part of the state.  Republican Governor Brian Kemp is strangely quiet and out of the public eye, as he clearly has no idea what to do about the problem other than ignore it and hope that he wins the election based on "culture war" issues (and voter suppression, which worked for him against Stacy Abrams last time around).

But what can Kemp do? For the health - if not the very life - of us Georgians, what should Kemp do? Three things come to mind:

1. Follow President Biden's leadership regarding Federal employees and require vaccination for all State employees, from the DMV on up to the Governor's mansion itself.  Exceptions can be granted to those with documented underlying medical conditions that prohibit vaccination or those with legitimate and documented religious or ethical objections (but they should be tested at least weekly to come to work).
2. Promote a campaign to encourage vaccination of non-State employees, including television commercials, social media, speaking tours, celebrity endorsements, and incentives (tax credits, lottery tickets, cash prizes, Georgia produce, etc.).
3. Mandate masks in indoor public spaces for those counties with new cases above the statewide average, and close the schools (remote learning) in, say, the worst-hit 10% of counties. The mandate can be lifted as soon as they reach their statistical goals, giving them incentives to comply.

I'm tempted to add a fourth suggestion - don't be a dickhead - but didn't want to mar the list above with partisan opinions.  But for Christ's sake, Kemp, stop limiting Medicare eligibility and unemployment benefits, and don't outlaw mandates like Florida and Texas did.  Pretend to be a doctor and pledge to first do no harm, and then put your ass to work and start actually making things better.