In the context of Gov. Brian Kemp's decision today to get most of Georgia--or anyway the tattoo parlors--up and running and back to normal, today's Dade County's livestreamed COVID-19 crisis briefing had an air of being an institution that was winding down. Instead of the usual lineup of officials with news to impart, no one spoke but Dade County Executive Chairman Ted Rumley, and he talked at greatest length about the cleanup after the Easter tornado that has upstaged COVID-19 here in a county the deadly virus has mostly spared.
Even about that the county boss didn't have much to say: Be patient about county trucks picking up scrap by the roadside, he advised, because this may be going on for months as homeowners clear out load after load. "Try to be understanding," he advised.
And he warned homeowners to require contractors offering help with their tornado damage to come by the county office and obtain certification first. The certification just verifies they're bonded and insured, said Rumley. "We don't want them to take your money and go," he said. The county instituted the permit after exactly that happened after the killer tornadoes here in 2011. Some contractors asked for half their fee up front, said Rumley. "Some people paid them and then they were gone," he said.
The boss said Georgia Power is still doing turn-ons after a week but he estimated 99 percent of Dade now has power restored. And he said the Georgia strike teams scheduled to leave Sunday were extending their stay until Wednesday, again expressing gratitude for their help.
On the COVID-19 front, Rumley said visitation at Cloudland Canyon, which had been so heavy and congested in the past month as to raise residents' fear of infection from tourists, had gone pretty smoothly over the weekend. On Saturday the park had been shut for several hours to new visitors twice after the car limit set by the governor was reached, but with the spotty weather things had been fairly dead at the park on Sunday.
Rumley read the daily state COVID-19 numbers--18947 cases up from 18301 Sunday, 733 deaths up from 687--without much comment though Gov. Kemp, in a speech an hour later in which he mentioned tattoo parlors no fewer than three times, referred to Georgia's numbers as encouraging. "Given the favorable data," said the governor, announcing a rollback at the end of this week of the state's lockdown. Preemptively answering the tacit question, "What favorable data?" Dr. Kathleen Toomey, the governor's medical advisor, told reporters after the speech: "We definitely have a plateau and what appears to be a decline."
If a plateau (and what appears to be a decline) seems an odd place on the graph to end the quarantine, the governor acknowledged that new cases will probably go up with the reopening but: "We're a lot better prepared for that than we were a month ago." He said more testing, more hospital space and more personnel and volunteers to "contact-trace" new infections should make the state better able to deal with any rash of fresh infections. He said Georgians would now be able, through the state's partnership with Augusta University, to download an app that will pre-screen them to get a COVID-19 test, then schedule one and get the results back in three days. There are still not enough tests to go around, he admitted, but: "I believe that if we run out out it'll be easier for us to get tests," said the governor.
Kemp is allowing establishments that offer elective surgeries, gyms, barbershops, beauty salons, massage therapists and, he stressed repeatedly, tattoo parlors, to open at the end of this week. Dine-in restaurants will have to wait until Monday, April 27. And big venues like concert halls, bars and nightclubs will have to wait at least until May 13.
Here's a link to the governor's "virtual screening" at Augusta University.
https://www.augustahealth.org/expresscare/covid-19-virtual-screening
Back to Dade County: Rumley said Dade's case count is still at the eight it went up to Friday night. That's exponentially higher than the two it was at last Monday but still small in the greater scheme of things. Rumley as he did last week, when the numbers began to go up, stressed that Georgia's "Unknown County" count seems to be going down as Dade's goes up, as public health officials sort out where the cases belong. And he pointed out that the individuals listed as Dade's may be living elsewhere and listing their addresses as Dade for reasons about which he did not speculate. "We're not sure really how many are truly here in Dade County," said Rumley.
Rumley also pointed county residents to President Trump's guidelines to reopening the nation, and The Planet obligingly concludes this synopsis with a link to same:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/openingamerica/
