A small church in Statesboro may be testing Gov. Brian Kemp's resolve.
We’ve told you about the governor’s decision not to ban in-person, indoor religious services. Instead, Kemp strongly encouraged clergy to practice social distancing.
The broad majority of houses of worship complied with Kemp’s request on Easter Sunday, mindful that outbreaks in Albany and Cartersville, two of Georgia’s worst hotspots, have been linked to religious gatherings.
One of the only holdouts on Sunday was an African-American congregation in Statesboro where Georgia State Patrol officers last week issued reckless conduct citations to the pastor and four congregants who held worship services in close quarters despite several warnings.
A few dozen congregants were back on Sunday, and a live-stream of the service showed them huddled close to one another. From today's dead-tree edition:
A pastor identified as Eli Porter told the congregants they were "making a stand" against a government that he accused of trying to block their First Amendment rights.
"I believe in a God who can heal. I have faith." Porter told cheering worshipers. Though there was some separation between members, the video showed most seated close together.
"We have four people going to be baptized today, that's because we didn't close our church doors," said the pastor.
"They had every cop here trying to shut down this service last week, and you won't find that today. …We have to stand strong and believe," he said. "Faith cannot complete its job unless it's tested."
A paragraph on the service from Coastal News Service:
According to a church member, social distancing was being adhered to by placing families on the right with space between the various families and non-family members on the left side of the small church.
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There's transparent, and then there's translucent. From a Sunday piece by the AJC's Carrie Teegardin and Brad Schrade:
Giant healthcare systems based in Atlanta refuse to say how many coronavirus patients they're treating at their dozens of Georgia hospitals. They won't reveal how many of their front-line workers have gotten sick or even died from the virus.
Nursing homes and assisted living facilities aren't required to post information about outbreaks, and until Friday the state had not been revealing which homes have the most cases, leaving families and advocates in the dark about the conditions inside homes they're now barred from visiting.
While the governors of New York and Ohio are giving detailed, daily briefings broadcast live, Georgia's governor has only given periodic updates to the public. And while Louisiana details the race and underlying health conditions of victims, Georgia is in the dark about the extent of the coronavirus and who may be most affected, given a massive shortage of tests and limited information it receives on victims.
It's incumbent on public officials to provide clear, consistent messaging from credible sources and to explain what they know and don't know, said Matthew Seeger, a public health communication expert who is a professor and dean at Wayne State University in Detroit. If not, the public will seek answers from unofficial sources, which can fuel rumors and undercut the ability of elected officials to persuade the public to take necessary steps to stop the spread of the virus.
"It's really hard to overstate how important regular, open, honest, transparent, credible communication is in these circumstances," Seeger said.
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A New York Times piece credits a Georgia Tech researcher with helping to sound the coronavirus alarm with the nation's public health officials – specifically, Dr. Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:
If Dr. [Robert] Kadlec had any doubts, they were erased two days later, when he stumbled upon an email from a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was among the group of academics, government physicians and infectious diseases doctors who had spent weeks tracking the outbreak in the Red Dawn email chain.
A 20-year-old Chinese woman had infected five relatives with the virus even though she never displayed any symptoms herself. The implication was grave — apparently healthy people could be unknowingly spreading the virus — and supported the need to move quickly to mitigation.
"Is this true?!" Dr. Kadlec wrote back to the researcher. "If so we have a huge whole on our screening and quarantine effort," including a typo where he meant hole. Her response was blunt: "People are carrying the virus everywhere."
That NYT piece doesn't specifically mention Tech researcher Eva Lee, but this one does. One possible reason can be found in this piece by the AJC's Bill Rankin:
Eva Lee's work on modeling mass disease outbreaks is so well-known that the United States, China and Singapore have sought her help in fighting COVID-19. At the same time, her employer, Georgia Tech, has banished her from campus and locked her out of her university email account.
Lee is a brilliant computer modeler. When Grady Memorial Hospital called on her a decade ago for help with an alarming rate of infections related to open-heart surgeries, she built a program that cut the rate to zero within 12 months.
Lee, 55, is also an admitted felon, although her attorney questions the prosecution of her. In December she pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to falsifying the membership certificate behind a $40,000 National Science Foundation grant and then lying about it to investigators.
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U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson today endorsed fellow Congressman Doug Collins' bid for the U.S. Senate, making him the most prominent Republican in Georgia to break ranks with Gov. Brian Kemp and Kelly Loeffler, his hand-picked selection for the seat.
There’s a connection there. One of Ferguson’s political advisors is Dan McLagan, the veteran GOP strategist. He’s onboard with Collins, too.
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One of the more fascinating aspects of U.S. Senate race No. 2 in Georgia is how the Republican side of the battle is being fought on Fox News.
Ed Rollins, a regular on the network, is the chairman of the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Rollins also managed President Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign.
He's got a piece in the Augusta Chronicle, slamming Senator Loeffler's stock trades -- and backing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville.
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Already posted: Gov. Brian Kemp has set a special election for June 9 -- which is also the new date for the state primaries -- to replace longtime Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Hill, a Reidsville Republican who died earlier this month.
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Martin Cowen is a Jonesboro attorney and a Libertarian candidate in the 13th District congressional race. He is not a physician, but nonetheless is prescribing for the immediate distribution and use of "Trump pills" – i.e., hydroxychloroquine, an unproven treatment touted by President Donald Trump.
The Washington Post is out this morning with a piece on the drug, which has become a favorite in right-wing circles. The 13th District seat is currently held by U.S. Rep. David Scott, D-Atlanta.
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A Georgia gun owner has sued Gov. Brian Kemp and the probate judge in Fulton County after the coronavirus pandemic caused a logjam in obtaining a license to carry, the AJC's Maya T. Prabhu reports.
“You’ve got one state law saying you can’t carry a weapon without a license,” an attorney for the plaintiff said. “And then we’ve got essentially a law created by the probate judges saying ‘we’re not going to issue licenses.’ And then you’ve got the Second Amendment saying you have the right to carry a weapon. So it’s hard to jibe all that.”
The same attorney, John Monroe, also sent a letter to Kemp last month requesting he use his emergency powers to suspend enforcement of Georgia’s gun law. That would have allowed owners of firearms to carry weapons even if they don’t have a license.
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We've told you before of the havoc that the coronavirus pandemic was creating for Georgia farmers reliant on migrant, foreign labor with H2-A visas. Here's one contemplated solution, reported by NPR:
New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms, in order to help U.S. farmers struggling during the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials and sources familiar with the plans.
Opponents of the plan argue it will hurt vulnerable workers and depress domestic wages.
The measure is the latest effort being pushed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help U.S farmers who say they are struggling amid disruptions in the agricultural supply chain compounded by the outbreak; the industry was already hurting because of President Trump's tariff war with China.
