Loyalty and Viruses

First, a matter of housekeeping. A lot of people want to know where I got my data on Georgia’s daily COVID-19 cases. The state’s Department of Public Health does not make it easy. But go to this link. If you scroll down, you will arrive at a bar chart. If you scroll across the bar chart, you’ll find each day’s individual total of new COVID-19 cases. As new tests come in from a particular day, that particular day’s data will change. But that is my source. The daily total count consists of all positive cases, even if the case is based on a test conducted a month ago, but only just arrived. That bar chart breaks down the days individually. I hope that helps. Now, on with the show.

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A lot of small businesses in Georgia are in desperate straits.  The business owners, many of them sole proprietors, make too much to get stimulus checks.  They do not qualify for unemployment.  They either got denied payroll protection program money or the fund ran out.  

These businesses, e.g. barber shops, tattoo parlors, massage therapists, are services.  They cannot mail haircuts or tattoos.  They depend on customers.  Many of them have long time clientele.  Those businesses are on the verge of going bankrupt waiting for their customers to come back.

Concurrently, hospitals in Georgia are asking for permission to reopen for elective surgery.  The massive wave of COVID-19 patients came in parts of the state, but never at the scale expected or modeled.  Field hospitals have been set up, but they remain empty across the state.  ICU capacity, hospital capacity, and ventilator capacity never maxed out.  The number of daily cases has dropped for a week except for one expected spike.  That spike was expected and came because of a nursing home outbreak.  The spread of the virus in the community has stopped.

For more than a month, people demanded Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp listen to the experts.  He did.  When they said to close the state, he closed.  Now the very same experts have told him he can begin a slow reopening of the state.  Governor Kemp got the President’s blessing and proceeded.

Those struggling sole proprietors and small businesses could open if they met certain criteria regarding safety and sanitation.  The practical effect of the regulations, i.e. mask requirements, temperature checks, and regular wipe downs, make it almost impossible for any but the most desperate to comply.  Bowling alleys, for example, can technically open, but practically cannot open given the sanitation requirements they will have to certify.

The barber in the small town with the loyal patrons who all know each other will be able to open without getting arrested, ticketed, fined, or otherwise punished.  The tattoo artist who knows his customers will be able to work if he and his customers are comfortable and masked.  Desperate small businessmen who cannot get federal money and do not qualify for other benefits will have a lifeline with their destinies in their own hands.

Unfortunately, a national media that has long resented Governor Kemp for having the audacity to beat Stacey Abrams in 2018, decided to attack the governor without any appreciable understanding of what all his requirements for opening entailed.  The media blowback made its way to the White House where the President who privately supported Governor Kemp then publicly threw Kemp under the bus.  The President who has been tweeting out in support of liberating states seems to only want Democrat states liberated and the states controlled by his own party are to stay in lockdown.

The Governor of Georgia is trying to help small businesses in hard times.  The virus is not going away.  We will have to chart a path forward with the virus in society. The governor decided to try with the President’s blessing only to then be attacked.  We are in a crisis none of us have dealt with in our lifetime.  It would be helpful for governors to know they can have a trusting relationship with the President and the President’s team.

President Trump throwing Governor Kemp under the bus is not helpful and will undermine other governors attempting to reopen their states.  Governor Polis in Colorado is also trying to reopen his state.  The media has largely avoided Polis.  One must wonder what the media reaction would be if Polis were a Republican.

Polis’s actions should have given President Trump an opportunity to deflect from criticizing Kemp.  Instead, Trump’s attack on Kemp will only embolden Democrats who want to take back Georgia.

I think Governor Kemp should have waited another week or two and worked to get everyone educated and clear on the data.  The data is, however, on his side and the experts most familiar with Georgia agree.  We need a path forward around a virus that is not going away and Kemp should be encouraged, not condemned, for trying to find that path.

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From the Mail Bag

I got this from a listener of my radio show:

As I acknowledge that you are not a Trump fan, but yet stay objectively fair. I am a supporter of Trump, but I don’t give him a pass on all of his actions. That being said and looking at the MSM, let’s do a little introspective look into the so called journalists that you count as friends and/or nice people. Joe and Mika are rank left wing hacks who apparently subscribe to the idea that if you can’t say anything derogatory about Trump, keep your mouth shut. Throw in the insane ravings of Don Lemon and the obvious left wing slant of Jake Tapper and one has to wonder is where exactly is your core?

My answer is this: Jesus. Scripture says to love your neighbor, not just the one you always agree with. I’d be a lesser person if all my friends and I saw eye to eye on everything and never challenged each other. I am perfectly willing to disagree with any of those mentioned and more. But I see no reason to not be friends with them. If anything, they have pushed me to be better at what I do and refine my reasoning better to push back on points. Also, I remember when liberals were attacking Jake Tapper on a daily basis for being one of the few reporters to ask the Obama Administration tough questions.

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The Stupidest Story of the Week

The New York Times and other media outlets are pushing the idea that a shadowy conspiracy of conservative elites are organizing these “liberate the states” protests. I can assure you as a card-carrying member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, I would like to assure everyone that these may have organized on Facebook and a few lawyers who know how to help may have gotten involved, but this is not some big operation.

In fact, if anything, this stuff took off organically and the conservative groups came on board to help. But otherwise, the individual organizers are the ones leading the way, not groups like FreedomWorks.

How can you tell this stuff is more organic than organized? The Koch Network is not involved. They tend to be a major player on the right in terms of organizational heft and clout. But consider this report from the New York Times.

One force in conservative politics that has kept its distance from the stay-at-home protests is the network of groups backed by the billionaire Mr. Koch. The largest Koch-backed group, Americans for Prosperity, which played a leading role in facilitating the Tea Party movement, has remained on the sidelines of the coronavirus protests.

GoDaddy records show that a public relations firm tied to the Koch network, In Pursuit Of LLC, registered the domain name “reopenmississippi.com.” An official said the group had planned to use the site to highlight a nuanced approach being developed by the network to reopen the economy while balancing health concerns.

“The question is — what is the best way to get people back to work?” said Emily Seidel, the chief executive of Americans for Prosperity. “We don’t see protests as the best way to do that,” she said, adding that “the choice between full shutdown and immediately opening everything is a false choice.”

Nonetheless, the very next day following the New York Times’ own reporters reporting this, the Times let an anti-Koch conspiracy theorist into their pages to pen this screed. It really reads more like a cry for help, or at least string to connect all the dots to the galactic brain spiders. It begins:

I first became aware of the political influence of Charles and David Koch in 2009 when I started looking into who was behind the protests at health care town halls.

From there it paints an elaborate conspiracy theory akin to aliens crash landing in Roswell leading to the Kennedy assassination. Seriously, this nutter believes that because the Koch groups organized protests in 2009, they simply must be behind these.

Notice how the media has never really wanted to explore the financial backers or PR machine behind Greta Thunberg, the Women’s March, etc. All that is just organic. But the Kochtapus controls the levers on the right.