Some Georgia Businesses Can Reopen. But Will They?

As Atlanta's mayor speaks out against the governor's plan, some business owners will stay closed out of caution and other concerns.

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After President Trump revealed the coronavirus task force’s road map for states to reopen their economies earlier this month, Gov. Brian Kemp—the Republican from Georgia—was among the first to announce a plan. “In the same way that we carefully closed businesses and urged operations to end to mitigate the virus’ spread, today, we are announcing plans to incrementally—and safely—reopen sectors of our economy,” he declared at a press conference on Monday. Gyms, bowling alleys, tattoo parlors, hairdressers, and the like will be permitted to open their doors starting tomorrow. Theaters and dine-in restaurants can follow suit on Monday.

Kemp was not alone in pushing his state along the path toward normalcy. Republicans Henry McMaster in South Carolina and Bill Lee in Tennessee also announced plans this week to begin reopening segments of their states’ economies; Democratic Gov. Jared Polis did the same in Colorado. 

But Georgia—with its 21,214 confirmed COVID-19 cases—is outpacing Colorado by a factor of two, Tennessee by a factor of three, and South Carolina by a factor of four and a half. The Peach State has tested only 94,072 people for the virus—about 0.9 percent of the state’s population.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has spent the last several days on a media blitz opposing Kemp’s decision, conceding that while the governor’s order “supersedes” her own authority, that won’t stop her from speaking up. “What I will continue to ask Atlantans, is to please stay at home,” she told ABC News’ Linsey Davis. “It is extremely concerning when people don’t know how they will eat and how they will pay their bills. But these are concerns that you have when you are amongst the living.”

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  3. Todd

    What Kemp is doing is fine. No one is being forced to do anything he doesn't want to, and anyone who doesn't want to re-open is welcome to continue hiding at home. I can't even see why his actions should be controversial.

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  4. Nathan Shiba

    Declan, I'm a little disappointed in a fairly substantial quotation in your article. Specifically, you cited the following:

    "A recent Harvard report suggested the country will need to ramp up to 20 million tests per day to “fully remobilize the economy.”

    That was it. No context given, just the sentence above.

    I mean, anyone could be forgiven for assuming that Harvard experts in the field of infectious diseases, pandemics or healthcare had actually suggested 20 million tests a day would be required before we could return to normal. That's simply mind-blowing. We would be testing the equivalent of the entire US population every 18 days!

    But I do appreciate your providing a link to the Harvard Report, which I read.

    Quick question for you. How many of the 23 authors had the word epidemiologist, infectious disease, or even MD in their title?

    Zero.

    How many of the authors had the term economist, politics, lawyer or some version of ethics in their title? Why 13 of the 23, thank you very much.

    And the other 10? Here's a sampling.

    PETER ECKERSLEY
    Convener, stop-covid.tech

    M EIFLER
    Senior Design Researcher, Microsoft

    DARSHAN GOUX
    Program Director, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

    DAKOTA GRUENER
    Executive Director, ID2020

    VI HART
    Senior Research Project Manager, Microsoft

    JULIUS KREIN
    Editor, American Affairs

    JOHN LANGFORD
    Partner Researcher, Microsoft Research New York City

    TED NORDHAUS
    Founder and Executive Director, Breakthrough Institute

    Goodness gracious, Declan.

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    A Citizen

    His communication may have poor, but I see little problem with Kemp's actual proposal, including the conditions under which the previously closed facilities can re-open. If the owners don't want to follow those procedures, they can stay shut. If patrons don't want to come under those conditions, it's their right.

    Indeed, other than promulgating guidelines, what's the point here? The Lyman Stone interview on The Remnant makes the point well: governmental ukases have very little impact here; there certainly isn't any evidence that they do, although I grant that reliable evidence (and modeling) is thin on the ground.

    Here's a solution for everywhere: print guidelines on what a particular venue must do to slow down transmission, and have business owners attest to following those guidelines, and then let people decide what they want to do. Isn't that sort of what Kemp has done?

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      A Citizen

      Or, in other words, what Nick Gillespie just said here: https://reason.com/2020/04/23/georgia-is-right-to-reopen-but-will-that-actually-restart-its-economy/?utm_medium=email

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    Paul Montagu

    That graph of new cases is already out of date. Yesterday, there were 936 new cases, a record.
    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
    The link also shows how bad they are at testing; their tests per million are ranked in the bottom half compared to the other states, so they don't have a clue about the spread of the virus. . Their relatively high mortality rate at 4.1% is also a sign. Kemp is reopening the Georgia economy based on negative or no evidence, and he will likely pay for his foolishness.

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    1. tla

      One caveat with worldmeters data is that it reports I believe by when data comes in rather than attribute to the actual date of diagnosis. Same things with deaths, so if you look at the actual GA data it doesn't look that bad because many of the cases are for the past. That said given the the data lag issues, I would think Kemp would want to exercise a bit more caution. The recent sharp downtrend in the GA is more a function of data than actual trend (even though the overall trend is good).

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        Paul Montagu

        You may be right, tla, but they're good about updating the figures as they come in, across states and countries.

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  7. tla

    It's very unclear what's driving Kemp's rush to reopen. It seems fairly evident customers are not ready to come rushing back (or for that matter the business themselves). As we both enter and exit this crisis, the role of leadership is abundantly clear. As we entered the crisis, leaders needed to get ahead of what was coming and make policy decisions to avert or at least minimize lives lost. We can disagree on what that looks like, it could be the S. Korean model or the Swedish model, and the respective trade off to each approach. Kemp may have wanted to be Sweden, but he doesn't operate in a vacuum, so he was late to that as well. However once we've gone to a shutdown approach, leaders can't expect that changing the policy is enough. They need to sell it, and get majority of people on board. People need to feel like abundance of caution has been taken. I don't get a sense that most people feel that way. People don't want to be an experiment.

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  8. linda

    What if some rando politician announced the economy was open and no one came? That's what is going to happen. When people feel safe in a business establishment they will return and not until then. If they open the schools this coming fall and there is still no treatment how many parents are going to send their kids back for recess and gym and a germ swap? Doesn't really matter what the pols say. It's the body bags and infection rate that hold the winning hand here.

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      Dave S.

      My wife is a teacher and is convinced that all the good kids will be kept home and all the discipline problems will be gleefully sent back to school. It has been interesting to see the parents of those kids that are discipline problems are much more open to admitting there is an issue now that they have been trapped with their progeny.

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      1. linda

        My daughter leads a team who are all working from home and she is constantly hearing from them that they can't wait to get back to work because their kids are driving them crazy. Some of these are young people who only have one kid but that kid has been to daycare and then to school so they really haven't spent much day to day time with them. People better to used to this, though, because in my grandkids school district they are talking about taking the kids back in shifts. Some will go in the morning and some in the afternoon because of distancing concerns with the desks and the daughter doesn't think they will be going back to their office for quite some time.

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    Julie from Texas

    Great reporting! And it's heartening to see small business owners taking this situation seriously and thinking deeply through how to serve their customers while maintaining public health. I've been disheartened honestly that a number of people where I live that are demanding the economy open are the same people who refuse to wear a mask or socially distance, when we actually can open more businesses if and when we figure out how to do it without spreading this disease and (unintentionally) causing the deaths of valuable members of our communities. And by "valuable," I mean everyone, because we all have value—even the most vulnerable.

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    1. Ann G

      Unfortunately, that's so often true, that the ones who demand the most freedom are the ones who are the most irresponsible and are going to use their freedom in a harmful way. We need sober and thoughtful leadership, not those prone to accepting votes from the loudest voices.

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  10. Lee Vollrath

    This took every one by surprise and business and churches are struggling to come up with plans. Many are evolving as we near Friday and Monday. But as a physician, I would have preferred to see a longer and clearer trend before implementing these changes.

    The Porch Light is a great example. It is a great place but is very small. Reservations are a must. But there is no way to distance there.

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