Here in California, it’s been nigh on three weeks since most of us have seen the dim but glorious lights of bars and restaurants. But over in Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp has just this week issued a statewide stay-at-home order, as he has only recently learned that people seem to be catching the virus that causes covid-19 from other people.
“Finding out that this virus is now transmitting before people see signs, so what we’ve been telling people from directives from the CDC for weeks now that if you start feeling bad, stay home … those individuals could’ve been infecting people before they ever felt bad,” Kemp said in a press conference announcing the order on April. “But we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours. And as Dr. Toomey told me, this is a game-changer for us.”
Despite Kemp’s protest that the CDC didn’t tell him the virus can be transmitted through asymptomatic people, both the CDC website and federal officials, including US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, have been issuing that very warning for over a month. Senator Rand Paul, who was the first Senator to test positive for covid-19, says he displayed no symptoms, similar to as many as a quarter of other carriers. Perhaps Kemp meant that the CDC did not call him, personally, to explain the information it was attempting to circulate, which was, obviously, an oversight on their part.