Physicians, county officials discuss COVID-19 response

Apr. 1--We are failing as a society, says Whitfield County Emergency Management Agency Director Claude Craig.

"Out of 159 Georgia counties, only 40 have no positive test (for the new coronavirus COVID-19)," he said Tuesday night during a livestreamed discussion about the virus.

He noted that President Donald Trump asked for 15 days of social distancing -- stay at home, have no gathering of more than 10 people and remaining six feet apart from others -- to slow the growth of the virus.

"We failed at that," Craig said.

On Sunday, Trump extended the call for social distancing to the end of April.

"We are going to be dealing with this a lot longer than we should be," Craig said.

"Stay at home. People ask me 'What can I do?'" Craig said. "Stay home."

Whitfield County Board of Commissioners Chairman Lynn Laughter and physicians Brad DeLay and Pablo Perez also took part in the discussion.

"As far as staying safe, it's really, really simple," DeLay said. "In some of the hot spots around the country, the common denominator is people packed together."

DeLay emphasized frequent and thorough hand washing and advised those who are sick to remain at home.

But DeLay said to help keep their mental health, people need to get outside their homes and outdoors when they can, as long as they maintain social distancing.

"We have the power right here to make a difference," DeLay said.

He said he was "impressed with how wrong they did it in Philadelphia" during the Spanish flu of 1918-20 in which an estimated 50 million people died worldwide, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In 1918, as the flu was beginning to advance across the United States, officials in Philadelphia refused to call off a planned parade. Six months after the parade, some 16,000 Philadelphia residents had died from the flu and a half million were made ill by the disease. Cities that canceled parades and limited public gathering saw much lower death totals.

"Other cities that took it more seriously benefited from that," said DeLay. "I think right now the best thing to do is take (the coronavirus) seriously."

Perez offered advice on how to stay safe in Spanish and in English. He said there are people who have the virus but aren't showing symptoms. But they can still be "shedding the virus," he said.

Perez noted that some countries, such as the Czech Republic, have mandated that people wear masks, and that seems to have reduced the spread of the virus because it reduces the chance that those with the virus will expel it into the air when they breathe or talk, and it may also protect those who don't have the virus from inhaling it.

Perez said the CDC is now considering recommending that people wear masks when they are out in public.

"We wish we could tell you when this will all be over, but I don't think anybody really knows that," said Laughter.

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Another conference call

In an effort to spread awareness and to discuss the county's response to the new coronavirus (COVID-19), Whitfield County Board of Commissioners Chairman Lynn Laughter and Emergency Management Agency Director Claude Craig will host another live public conference call on Thursday beginning at 5 p.m. They will be joined by Mark Krueger of Nichols, Cauley & Associates LLC, who will discuss recent tax law changes due to COVID-19. This event will be livestreamed via the Whitfield County website (www.whitfieldcountyga.com) and can be accessed at https://livestream.com/accounts/25637515/events/7960637. The participants will answer as many questions as possible during the conference call. The call-in number will be given during the conference call.

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