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500 Dead, but Who’s Counting?
NO, SERIOUSLY, IS ANYONE ACCURATELY COUNTING COVID-19 DEATHS?
By Blake Aued and Chris Dowd news@flagpole.com
The coming week could be the worst one
of the seemingly never-ending coronavi-
rus pandemic, public health officials have
been warning. Estimates are that deaths
in Georgia will peak around the time the
next issue of Flagpole comes out. Whether
Athens hospitals are able to handle it
depends on whether Clarke County’s neigh
bors and Gov. Brian Kemp acted quickly
enough.
“Locally, I feel like we’re actually sta
bilized,” Piedmont Athens Regional CEO
Michael Burnett said on a conference call
with city leaders last week. “The ER volumes
are more steady now. The shelter in place
seems to be having some sort of impact.
“What we’re watching is some of the
communities around us. They might have
been lagging a little bit. As a regional hospi
tal, we’re going to have to take care of those
patients as well.”
The Athens-Clarke County Commission
declared a state of emergency and issued
a shelter-in-place order on Mar. 16. Local
residents spent the following weeks mak
ing masks and staying away from crowds,
while in surrounding counties like Oconee,
business continued as usual—cheered on
by elected officials like Sheriff Scott Berry—
until Gov. Brian Kemp gave his own order
Apr. 2. While Clarke has seen more COVID-
19 cases—83 to Oconee’s 38, as of Apr.
12—Oconee has surpassed Clarke on a per
capita basis.
Of course, no one knows how accurate
those numbers really are. Last week the
Department of Public Health subtracted
a death from Oconee and added one
to Clarke. It also remains unclear how
the official number of deaths in Clarke
remained at nine last week, even though
WSB-TV reported that ten COVID-19 vic
tims had died at one local nursing home,
PruittHealth Grandview. County com
missioners were stunned to learn of that
report. “Why does it take a whistleblower
contacting WSB for us to find out what’s
going on?” Commissioner Russell Edwards
said. The furor prompted DPH to issue a
report on nursing home deaths.
Even the cases DPH does track leave out
crucial information. While data from states
like Wisconsin and Louisiana suggest that
African Americans are bearing the brunt of
the coronavirus crisis, DPH is not keeping
racial statistics for COVID-19 cases.
As for the hospitals, both Burnett and
St. Mary’s CEO Montrez Carter said their
staffs have been preparing for a surge.
Both said they have plans to increase the
number of intensive care unit beds, have
canceled all elective surgeries, are limiting
visitors and have enough equipment. They
have even figured out how to use anesthesia
machines as makeshift ventilators. Both
hospitals now have the ability to analyze
tests in-house, which Burnett called “a huge
game changer.” Instead of taking 12-14
days to get test results back, it now takes a
few hours.
How long will the surge last? “We don’t
have the level of detail to answer that ques
tion with the lack of testing,” Carter said.
Meanwhile, ACC Manager Blaine
Williams and other officials continue to
work on details of a coronavirus relief
package. Some funding sources, such as
revolving loans, were intended to serve as
bridges to federal relief, but Williams said
he’s been surprised how quickly the feds
are acting. ACC is also talking to the Athens
Land Trust about employing people to tend
to community gardens, and to the Clarke
County School District about assisting with
meal delivery. (Working with CCSD, celeb
rity chef Hugh Acheson recently distributed
250 meals at Bethel Midtown Village and
the Pinewoods mobile home park, home to
many Latin American
immigrants who are
ineligible for federal
benefits.)
While downtown
and other commercial
areas have emptied
out, police are dealing
with a rash of smash-and-grabs, including
two at the same business downtown and
nine on the Eastside, since the shelter-
in-place ordinance took effect Mar. 20.
Williams said that police are stepping up
patrols, closing a gap in coverage down
town, and that the burglaries may have
been “crimes of opportunity” committed by
homeless people.
In addition, county officials are in talks
with the Bigger Vision winter homeless
shelter about reopening, and are consider
ing hotel vouchers to house the homeless.
Handwashing stations and portable toilets
have been deployed downtown.
At the state level, Kemp extended the
shelter-in-place order through Apr. 30 and
the state of emergency until May 13. With
the state of emergency extended, Secretary
of State Brad Raffensperger postponed the
May 19 primaries until June 9.
Commissioners also talked about a few
things non-coronavirus-related at their Apr.
7 meeting. They put off a vote on a contract
with the Department of Corrections to have
inmates pick up litter along state highways
until the DOC agrees to pay the inmates
or let ACC pay them. And they approved a
240-unit apartment complex off Hull Road
near the Space Kroger shopping center on
Highway 29. [Blake Aued]
Big Bill Over Paper Ballots
The ACC Board of Elections did not have
the authority to hire a second attorney
to help defend their use of paper ballots
during early voting last month, according
to ACC Attorney Judd Drake, who origi
nally counseled board members against the
switch to paper ballots, saying it would be a
violation of state law.
The State Elections Board came to the
same conclusion, ordering Athens to use
the new state-approved voting machines
instead of paper ballots in a hearing on
Mar. 11. Drake would normally have repre
sented Athens in a case like this, but since
he had already publicly stated his legal opin
ion in opposition to the Board of Elections’
action, he chose to recuse himself. Instead,
he appointed Thomas Mitchell. The Board
of Elections also hired a second attorney,
Bryan Sells, but did so without the approval
of the commission and without a legal
ly-binding contract, according to Drake.
Sells and Mitchell are now billing the
local government for a total of $41,633
($23,618 for Sells and $18,015 for
Mitchell). These bills include travel to and
from Athens, legal research, preparation
for the hearing and multiple phone conver
sations with Board of Elections Chairman
Jesse Evans. It also includes $4,475 in fees
coming after the hearing on Mar. 11 had
ended; their ser
vices were retained
through Apr. 1.
Last week, the
ACC Commission
reluctantly agreed
to pay those attor
ney fees, which
will come out of the county’s general con
tingency fund. This passed in a 9-1 vote.
Commissioner Jerry NeSmith was the lone
no vote, saying it “would be a terrible prec
edent.” Drake advised commissioners that
they would have a strong case if they opted
not to pay Sells, whose hiring they never
approved, but Sells would probably sue.
Despite their votes, other commissioners
had reservations about the expense as well.
Commissioner Tim Denson agreed with
NeSmith, saying the Board of Elections
didn’t “have the authority to spend tax
payer dollars.” Commissioner Russell
Edwards blasted the decision not only to
hire Sells, but also to switch to paper bal
lots, saying, “blowing up the entire system”
was the “wrong move.”
Evans told Flagpole that he had to hire
Sells because Mitchell is not an expert
on election law, and that he asked Mayor
Kelly Girtz to call a commission meeting
to approve the expense. But Girtz said
he couldn’t call one on such short notice
during spring break. Mitchell also said Sells’
expertise was essential to the case in a let
ter to the mayor and commissioners.
In defending the switch to paper ballots,
Evans cited the concerns of several Athens
residents who have spoken at Board of
Elections meetings about the importance
of securing the vote. “We definitely did the
right thing for our community,” he said.
“Ballot secrecy is a fundamental aspect
of our democracy. We are living up to our
oaths of office, and we are continuing to do
what is necessary to ensure free and fair
elections in the community that we serve.”
Director of Elections Charlotte Sosebee,
however, has said that her office hadn’t
received any complaints from citizens about
ballot privacy as they were casting their
votes.
Despite the decision of the State
Elections Board, paper ballots might still
occasionally be used at Athens-Clarke
County voting precincts in the election
scheduled for May 19. The local elections
board recently passed a policy clarifying for
poll workers that wait times longer than 30
minutes would be considered an emergency.
In such a voting emergency, additional
paper ballot voting stations could be opened
if that would help reduce waiting times.
Other emergencies allowing for paper
ballots include power outages or voting
machine malfunction. Use of these paper
ballot stations could also help election staff
include the required number of voting sta
tions (i.e. one per 250 voters) in each pre
cinct while still maintaining voter privacy.
The ACC Board of Elections decided
not to appeal the ruling of the state board,
which prevents the use of paper ballots gen
erally. Instead, the local elections office is
using curtains to ensure privacy. Although
Evans said he was confident the Board of
Elections would have won an appeal, the
board opted not to spend any more tax
payer money.
A version of this article originally
appeared at athenspoliticsnerd.com. [Chris
Dowd] ©
THIS M«»IIU V«ILB
LIFE IBM THE
COROHAVERSE
WHERE YOU AND I ARE GOING TO
SPEND THE REST OF OUR LIVES
THE G.O.P. IS A DEATH CULT
A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
LOOK AT ALL THESE THINGS
AMERICANS DIE FROM. 1 WE DON'T
SHUT DOWN SOCIETY FOR ANY OF
THEM!
by TOM TOMORROW
WHAT ABOUT ALL THE PEOPLE
WHO HAVEN’T DIED YET
A LOT OF SO-CALLED CORONAVIRUS
FATALITIES WERE PROBABLY ON
THEIR LAST LEGS ANYWAY—LIKE
BILL O'REILLY SAYS'.
THE TRUMPKIN TWO-STEP ■ THE NIGHTLY SHITSHOW ■ THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
WHE ARE THE
MEDIA BLOWING
THIS MINOR STORY
ENTIRELY OUT
OF PROPORTION?
AND WHE WON'T
THEY BROADCAST
EVERY WORD TRUMP
UTTERS IN THIS
MOMENT OF NA
TIONAL CRISIS1
SIR, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP
PEOPLE NOT DIE?
ENOUGH WITH YOUR NASTY
‘GOTCHA" QUESTIONS' WHY
DON'T YOU ASK ABOUT THE
IMPORTANT NEWS—THAT
MY RATINGS ARE AT
"BACHELOR FINALE" LEVELS.'
IF THE ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL IS
LOWER AFTER ISOLATION—IT PROVES
WE DIDN'T NEED TO ISOLATE*
WHO COULD
HAVE POS
SIBLE
FORESEEN
THIS?
We are continuing to do
what is necessary to
ensure free and fair elections in
the community that we serve.
4
FLAGPOLE.COM | APRIL 15, 2020