The devil went down to Georgia...

When the commander in chief (and chief proponent of loosening physical distancing measures) drastically reverses his position and puts a negative spotlight on a friendly state governor's plans to relax stay-at-home orders....it's time to look at the data. What we find in Johns Hopkins CSSE's data for Southwestern Georgia is disturbing. Covid-19 infection rates are dangerously high, testing rates are dangerously low, and the conditions are right for a virus with asymptomatic carriers to run wild.

When we look at active Covid-19 cases per 100 people in a county, Georgia has 8 counties in the top 50...more than any other state except New Jersey. Data from the Covid Tracking Project shows that Georgia ranks 12th among states in daily Covid-19 testing rates at 111.5 per 100,000 residents. This falls significantly short of the 152 daily tests per 100,000 population target for safely opening the economy calculated by Harvard's Global Health Institute.

A look at the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation's predictive model shows that Georgia has not yet reached the projected peak of infections and that even without relaxing the stay-at-home order the state is in danger of needing more ICU beds than it has. The wide light green confidence interval here shows that it's possible for Georgia to end up needing more than three times the total number of ICU beds in the state.

Given the virus's five to fourteen day incubation period, we won't see the full impact of Georgia's reduced physical distancing until a few weeks have passed. During that time, asymptomatic carriers will go untested a spread the disease at a rate that is difficult to predict. We know that the results will not be good.

The good news is that we have smart, driven scientists all over the country working around the clock to enhance our testing and contact tracing capabilities. Manufacturers around the globe are ramping up production of personal protective equipment and pushing toward getting our health care givers the gear they need to be safe while they protect us. We won't have to stay at home forever. Those of us who are lucky enough to be able to stay at home now can help buy Americans everywhere the time we need to get to a safe and sustainable re-opening of the country.