COVID19 Update - Day 47

US Tests: 5,441,079
US Cases: 959,056
US Deaths: 49,164
Worldwide Cases: 2,970,705
Worldwide Deaths: 206,495

Are you ready for the second wave?  GOP governors throughout the south are re-opening their states far too soon.  So in a week or so, we can expect the rate of cases and deaths in the U.S. to start climbing again.  Take Georgia, for example:

Of the 20 counties in the nation with the most deaths per capita from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, five are in southwest Georgia, including Early, where Means lives. In the state’s hardest-hit places, African Americans make up most of the population, and about 30 percent of residents live in poverty. They’ve struggled for years with a severe lack of access to health care. Some counties have no doctors, no hospitals and a high percentage of uninsured residents. The facilities and physicians already were stretched thin.

Then came the coronavirus, fast-moving and super-infectious, preying on the elderly and those with underlying health problems — perfectly primed to devastate a vulnerable population.

When Gov. Brian Kemp (R) announced he was lifting restrictions on businesses, some residents in this region felt cast off, like the state was telling them to fend for themselves once again.

“To open up businesses where it’s impossible to practice social distancing — hair salons, nail salons, theaters — people are like, what? You want to put everybody in a closed room, and that’s supposed to be okay?” said Demetrius Young, a city commissioner in Albany, the center of the state’s epidemic. “For black folks, it’s like a setup: Are you trying to kill us?”

Without a widespread testing infrastructure and local health departments able to do meticulous contact tracing, Young said, his region will continue to suffer. Georgia ranks 40th in tests per resident, well behind states that have pledged to maintain their shelter-in-place orders, according to an analysis of Covid Tracking Project data. Some models say the state has not yet reached its peak number of daily deaths, suggesting the worst is still to come.

Thanks, GOP.