COLUMN: Where does Brian Kemp go for an apology?
On April 20, 2020, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp became one of the first governors in America to announce plans to reopen his state. He had been one of the last to impose a shelter-in-place order. Critics had blasted him for waiting so long. He did not impose shelter-in-place until the beginning of April.
On April 20, 2020, Kemp announced he would begin letting certain small businesses that were mostly sole proprietors with direct, personal relationships with customers reopen on April 25, 2020. Those included barber shops, nail salons, tattoo parlors, and, curiously, bowling alleys. What the media ignored was that Kemp put such stringent criteria in place for reopening that most of those businesses still could not open.
Bowling alleys, for example, typically met the technical criteria for a business that could reopen, but practically could not reopen because of the stringent health and safety protocols the governor put in place. Kemp also refused to end the shelter-in-place order early, necessitating that businesses could begin reopening, but customers could not actually get out and about. Again, the media failed to note that.
On May 1, 2020, the shelter-in-place order expired for most people. Restaurants and barbershops reopened, but under new protocols for to-go orders, face masks for barbers, etc. In a revision to his order last week, Kemp required that bars, night clubs, and live music venues must remain closed until June along with overnight summer camps.
Between April 20 and May 1, a recurring trending “hashtag” on Twitter was “KempHasBloodOnHisHands.” Democrat politicians and others assailed Kemp, claiming people were going to die because of him. On April 20, former Washington bureau chief at the Associated Press Ron Fournier tweeted, “Mark this day. Because two and three weeks from now, the Georgia death toll is blood on his hands. And as Georgians move around the country, they’ll spread more death and economic destruction.” We are well past four weeks from his tweet.
Fournier was not alone in that sentiment. Stacey Abrams took to MSNBC to blast Kemp. President Trump criticized him for reopening saying he “strongly disagreed” with Kemp. The Atlantic ran a hysterically themed article that Georgia was experimenting in human sacrifice. The subtitle of the piece was, “The state is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy.”
It is now about a month since Kemp said the state could reopen and more than fourteen days past the shelter-in-place order expired. The IHME model is the most widely cited and relied upon model for COVID-19. The White House and every state rely on it. On May 12, the IHME model predicted Georgia would have hundreds of daily new cases into August and would have 1,783 daily new cases on June 12, 2020. After Kemp reopened the state, the IHME model jumped from predicting cumulatively around 2,000 deaths by August to over 5,000.
Reporters flooded Kemp’s office demanding comment. Pundits predicted overflowing hospitals and morgues. On Wednesday, the IHME revised its model. It now predicts Georgia will have just 367 cases on June 12 and only 19 on August 1, with deaths back around 2,000. The media has gone quiet. The Governor’s office tells me few reporters have asked for comment.
Progressives who said Kemp would have blood on his hands now say just wait. They want more time to be proven right. But the IHME modeling and the real data have washed the metaphorical blood off Kemp’s hands. Where does he go for an apology?
Erick Erickson is host of the Erick Erickson Show on News-Talk 940 WMAC