“This is a game changer, dude? Yeah. So is the wheel.”
Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp has been under fire for refusing to issue a stay at home order for his state’s 10.6 million people. On Wednesday, after his fellow GOP Governor to the south, Florida’s Ron DeSantis succumbed to nationwide public outrage, Kemp finally told his citizens to stay home.
But Kemp is now under fire for his false claim that “we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours,” that coronavirus can be spread by asymptomatic people.
During Kemp’s announcement he also falsely claims he’s been “following the science,” and calls it a “game changer.” He’s now being accused of a “stunning admission of deadly ignorance.”
Scientific and mainstream media articles going back to at least February 24 – not in “the last 24 hours” – have made clear people with no symptoms can transmit the coronavirus. Many more articles appeared in mid-March. A University of Texas at Austin study published March 16 found “that more than 10 percent of patients are infected by somebody who has the virus but does not yet have symptoms.”
Harvard epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding doesn’t hold back on Kemp’s claim: “That is a lie. We’ve know about asymptomatic transmission for well over a month or more.”
Many across the nation are furious, and as some pointed out, the CDC is based in Atlanta.