New Orleans columnist slams Kemp over coronavirus response, calls him an ‘idiot’
A popular columnist and opinion writer in Louisiana had some choice words to say about Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s coronavirus response.
Stephanie Grace, who writes for The Advocate in Baton Rouge and The Advocate | The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, called Kemp an “idiot” in her latest column published on Nola.com.
Grace criticized Kemp, a Republican, for admitting on camera last that he didn’t know people who weren’t showing coronavirus symptoms could transmit the virus.
Kemp made the comments Wednesday as he ordered a shelter-in-place strategy in Georgia after initially resisting the move, the L-E and Telegraph reported.
“Yes, this past Wednesday, many weeks since this basic but vitally important fact had been part of the conversation,” Grace said in her column.
By Saturday, Georgia had reported more than 6,300 cases of COVID-19 with 208 deaths. Grace mentioned a specific Georgia county in her column.
By Friday, she said, “Dougherty County alone had seen 560 cases and 30 deaths, after two funerals in the city of Albany turned out to have been superspreading events.”
Grace also made note that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based in Atlanta.
“And is not as if he didn’t have plenty of expertise to call on. ... Kemp may not know much, but he sure knows how to bury his head in the sand,” she wrote.
Grace also slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in her column, accusing him of only acting on a shelter-in-place order after he saw President Donald Trump’s “demeanor” change.
In an earlier column, Grace praised Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Edwards, a Democrat, has experience with handling crises, Grace wrote, including the 2016 Louisiana floods.
“He fell right back into this familiar mode when the extent of the coronavirus’s spread in Louisiana became apparent, combining aggressive actions to mitigate community spread with appeals to Louisianans’ better angels by urging them to be good neighbors,” Grace said.
Louisiana has been hard-hit by the novel coronavirus.
Data shows that New Orleans has the highest COVID-19 death rate of all hard-hit areas in the U.S., the Sun Herald reported.
As of Saturday, there were nearly 12,500 cases of COVID-19 in Louisiana with 409 deaths, according to Nola.com.
