Joy Reid interviewed former Mayor of Columbus, GA, Teresa Tomlinson today about her esteemed governor's funny math. Tomlinson is running for David Perdue's seat in the U.S. Senate (both seats are up for grabs this year), and had some disdainful shade for the men attempting to cook the COVID-19 books.
Reid asked her about the charts that were rearranged to make it appear as if the number of cases were actually declining in Georgia to justify re-opening, and when it came time to frame her question to Tomlinson, she was so disgusted with the brazen lies of the GOP governor, she just threw her hands up and asked, "What's going on in Georgia?"
Tomlinson explained it like the adult she is, describing the GOP like the petulant, spoiled children they are.
It turns out, I mean shockingly, the highest rate of new cases was on April 27th. That's the highest rate in April and then he lifted the mandatory order just three days later. Of course three days before the highest rate he had opened up the all so essential tattoo parlors and massage businesses and so forth. So anyway it just looks like they are trying to manipulate the data.
I think this is consistent with what they have seen by Republican leaders such as David Perdue, and many others that I know you've interviewed on your show, where they have said, "We have determined that a certain amount of preventable deaths are okay in order to save the economy." They keep comparing it to car crashes and so forth. Of course we actually try to PREVENT car crashes through outlawing texting, mandating air bags and things like that.\
And that's not the only thing they've done. They're cherry-picking data, they've changed the color sensitivity of county maps in order to make it look like it was less intense. They cherry picked data to make hospitalizations look like it was down. What is going on in Georgia is that we have a trajectory of a plateau. We are exactly where we were four weeks ago and it looks like we're going to stay at that level and there will be no downward trend for at least the near future.
To be clear, we are talking about 41,482 cases of COVID-19 in Georgia, with 1808 people who have died. And so that Kemp could cozy up to his Daddy-idol Trump, and re-open those "all so essential tattoo parlors," he simply put the day with the highest number on the left side of the chart, and the day with the lowest number on the right, ordered the in-between days by descending height, and called that a valid graph on which to base the decision to open for business.
Tomlinson had an answer for the pathetic GOP false equivalency of car crashes, too, not that people who want to side with Kemp and Trump are capable of having their minds changed with facts and logic, but it was satisfying to hear, nonetheless.
