Much to the astonishment of “skeptics,” Florida and Georgia haven’t turned into apocalyptic corona hell-scapes:
“Some of the states that skeptics were most worried about, including Florida and Georgia, haven’t seen the rise in total cases that some experts feared.
Florida’s new cases actually declined by 14% compared to the previous week, and Georgia’s fell by 12%” https://t.co/KReOZQM865
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) May 13, 2020
Here’s the new map from Axios (blue is good, brown is frown):
Good news so far (with all the usual caveats) https://t.co/8mDBcLhzEr
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) May 13, 2020
At some point these NYC-DC-based journos will realize that corona is not the same everywhere?
Feared?
They were HOPING it happened so they could point to the uneducated rubes in “the South” and laugh.
They needed an excuse to not look at the failures in their states. https://t.co/rPDeOan5Zy
— RBe (@RBPundit) May 13, 2020
“What happened to all that blood on Brian Kemp’s hands?”:
Question: We're now two weeks out and the number of new cases and deaths keeps dropping in Georgia. The state is now at the lowest hospitalization rate for COVID-19 in a month. What happened to all that blood on Brian Kemp's hands?
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 13, 2020
Case in point, here’s blue-check former journo Ron Fournier (Michigan based, not NYC-DC) who three weeks ago said that very thing:
Mark this day. Because two and three weeks from now, the Georgia death toll is blood on his hands.
And as Georgians move around the country, they’ll spread more death and economic destruction https://t.co/nlpmD9uiOp
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) April 20, 2020
Care to correct, Ron?
Since Ron asked people to mark this and it has now been over 3 weeks, it is worth noting that the Georgia death rate has continued a slow decline and there has been no significant spike thus far. https://t.co/CIztQHKx9A
— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) May 13, 2020
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Nah. Instead of correcting, he asked for three more weeks:
Keep it up. Check back in three weeks. Keep proving me wrong because it’s all about owning the libs. God bless and good luck
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) May 13, 2020
Can’t they just admit they were wrong?
Lol, “check back in three weeks” after his last “check back in three weeks” doomsday prediction failed. https://t.co/ANAqRu8Xlv
— John ‘Murder Hornet’ Cardillo (@johncardillo) May 13, 2020
We’ll point it out again that these Florida critics were shouting “close the beaches!” at the same time. Gov. Andrew Cuomo was ordering COVID-19+ patients back into nursing homes and Mayor Bill de Blasio was content to not clean the subways at night:
On the surface, tweets about #FloridaMorons and viral photos of packed beaches paint a bad picture.
But when looking at the data, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s approach to this virus has been surprisingly sensible https://t.co/58KbUV54Lu
— Bloomberg Opinion (@bopinion) May 12, 2020
More from J.D. Vance:
I made this observation over two weeks ago, as a lot of folks were talking about Georgia’s “experiment in human sacrifice” and promising we’d see a wave of death by now. 1/n https://t.co/1WfRhNidLx
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 13, 2020
Now it looks like Georgia (and Florida) are not seeing the promised wave of new cases or deaths. https://t.co/1qq8M3Fd1k 2/n
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 13, 2020
Here, from @DKThomp, a chart of hours worked in small businesses. As you can see, GA is recovering slightly, but is still way behind their normal baseline. pic.twitter.com/FtE1jTEdo5
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 13, 2020
What's my point? Two things. First, people should be much more careful in assuming that life in one part of the country is radically different than in others. City policies, leftover shocks in the economy, and fear of the virus are driving behavior more than "lockdown" orders 4/
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 13, 2020
Second, after the last few years, can we please have some humility from our media and leadership? There's a lot we don't know, and making absurd predictions about the future ("mass death in GA by May!") erodes trust far more than a few random protesters in statehouses.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 13, 2020
I remember two months ago saying the IHME model was garbage. I was of course pilloried for rendering a judgment without expertise. My core argument was that it overestimated death on the way up and underestimated it on the way down. I have been proven right in both directions.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 13, 2020
The people who treated that model as some Platonic truth were wrong, and their repeated failures to show humility have created real mistrust in public authorities. We should all be wearing masks in public (indoor) spaces, but I understand why many mistrust that guidance.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 13, 2020
Everyone has gotten something wrong about COVID, me included. I'm sure I'll get more wrong in the future. But a little humility would go a long way. By all means, make predictions about the future, but be honest about the uncertainty and admit when you're wrong. /rant
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) May 13, 2020
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