All eyes on Georgia as ‘guinea pig’ state rushes to reopen

Trump warns Georgia governor he is jumping the gun by failing to wait for 14-day fall in new infections.

Naomi Bartolacci gets ready to reopen for business at the Like Butterflies Salon in Avondale Estates, Georgia, after Governor Brian Kemp declared the state open for business. Picture: AP

Georgia was very much on Donald Trump’s mind when he called the state’s Governor Brian Kemp to discuss Mr Kemp’s decision to reopen major parts of Georgia’s economy while coronavirus infections in his state are still rising.

The US President says he told Kemp that he disagreed with what he was doing. “It’s just too soon … I told the Governor that I disagree with his decision but he has to do what he thinks is right,” Mr Trump said.

It is unclear how strongly Mr Trump voiced his disapproval given that he has loudly encouraged US states to safely reopen their economy as soon as they can.

But Georgia now looms as a test case for the US after it jumped the gun by reopening key parts of its economy without waiting for the 14 day fall in infections, as stipulated by Mr Trump’s own guidelines.

Instead Mr Kemp, a Republican and close Trump ally, has alarmed America’s health experts and even the mayors in the state’s big cities of Atlanta and Savannah by approving the reopening of a raft of social activities.

These include dine-in restaurants, movie theatres, hair and nail salons, gyms, social clubs, massage centres and even tattoo parlours.

Mr Kemp has defended his decision, saying too many people were in danger of losing everything in his state of 10 million people because of the economic shutdown.

“We are talking about a few businesses that I closed down to help flatten the curve, which we have done in our state. But for us to continue to ask them to do that while they lose everything, quite honestly there are a lot of civil repercussions of that,” he said.

But unlike some other states which have taken tentative steps to start to reopen their economy, Georgia has done so when the impact of coronavirus in that state is pervasive.

On the day that Kemp made his announcement, Georgia recorded 574 new cases of the virus and 18 more deaths, taking total infections to more than 20,000 with 836 deaths.

According to the new federal guidelines released by Mr Trump last week, Georgia was supposed to wait for a 14-day fall in new infections before starting the tentative phase one of reopening its economy.

The model often cited by the White House, by the Institute for Health and Metrics and Evaluation, projected that Georgia hit its peak for daily deaths on April 7 but projected that the state should not relax social distancing until after June 15.

“I have searched my head and my heart on this and I am at a loss as to what the governor is basing this decision on,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, said.

The mayor of the mayor of Savannah Van Johnson described the move as “reckless, premature and dangerous”.

Mr Kemp concedes that his state is likely to see virus cases continue to rise although he believes the reopening is being done in a “measured” way.

But he said it was a tough balance between public health and the economy. Atlanta is a poor state and has processed more than 1.1 million new unemployment claims since mid-March. The economic pressure on Kemp to reopen the economy is substantial.

Governors in other states, including South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee and Colorado are also planning to relax some virus-related restrictions.

But none has taken a step as large and as early as Georgia. The state is now poised to become America’s guinea pig — a real-life experiment which will help determine whether relaxation of social distancing leads to the second wave of infections that health officials fear.

–

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia