Recent editorials from Georgia newspapers:
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April 14
The Brunswick News on absentee ballots for the upcoming primary election:
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is trying to make it easier on voters this election cycle. He’s mailing out absentee ballot request forms to everyone in the state who’s registered to vote. He just figures people might prefer to select their elected officials this way because of the coronavirus, which health officials predict will no longer be pandemic by June 9, primary election day.
Sounds reasonable. Any voter who prefers to vote by mail can do so. No other explanation is necessary. Simply return the request form with the proper information.
There’s always the potential for cheating on elections via absentee ballots, even when closely monitored and watched. Suffice it to say, the Secretary of State is taking extra steps to minimize the chance of that happening.
Keeping it honest will be hard enough without doing what the Democratic leadership in the Georgia General Assembly is advocating.
It’s asking for more. It wants absentee ballots to be stamped and ready to be mailed back to the state, and it wants the ballots sent to every registered voter in Georgia. This includes residents who do not ask for one. Democrats contend more people would participate in the election process if everyone received a ready-to-mail ballot.
No one could deny that. More ballots would likely be cast with a mark-and-mail ballot.
But it also opens the door to dishonesty. Ballots sent to voters who never requested them could end up in someone else’s hands, including minors living in the same household. Is this really the way we want to pick members of Congress, the Georgia Legislature and county commissions?
One could easily argue that even if there is fraud, it would be only a small percentage of the total vote cast. True, but look how many elections have been decided by a handful of votes.
The cost of a stamp is not going to keep someone from voting except for maybe those who dislike being inconvenienced - the no-shows, the same people who are unlikely to take the time to travel to the polls and vote on election day.
Stick to the initial plan. Mail absentee ballots to only those who request them.
Online: https://thebrunswicknews.com
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April 13
Savannah Morning News on expanding what statistics are gathered on coronavirus cases:
The coronavirus pandemic has us all scoreboard watching.
Every visit to a news website, every glance at a newspaper front page and every click of the TV remote control brings you the COVID-19 numbers. The tally of confirmed cases and related hospitalizations and deaths. The count of remaining beds, ventilators, test kits and PPE supplies.
For all the stats, two are notoriously absent, at least not here in Georgia: Data on those who tested positive and have recovered; and those whose symptoms were serious enough to require hospitalization and have since been discharged.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s release from an intensive care unit late last week was a reminder that even some of those among the sickest survive COVID-19. It’s easy to read the headlines and listen to the surge projections and feel a sense of doom, even as most understand the overwhelming majority of coronavirus victims recover.
Actually, a significant number of those who contract the virus experience no or mild symptoms.
Yet Georgia officials are hesitant to release data that supports that reality. The main reason is those numbers are unreliable. The state does not require health care providers to track recoveries, and many Georgians who test positive recuperate at home and do not require a follow up and thereby cannot be counted as recovered.
As any statistician will tell you, if you don’t trust the numbers, you’re better off not reporting it. Bad data is often considered worse than no data at all, and so it is better report the verifiable stats - confirmed cases, hospitalizations and deaths - and let the public extrapolate from there.
Except those equations leave out key variables. If you have 154 confirmed cases and five deaths, as Chatham County did as of April 13, that doesn’t mean 149 people have recovered. Not at all.
The time has come to offer a broader statistical scope. The pandemic’s curve is tapering nationally. At the same time, Savannah is bracing for a surge of cases.
Recovery numbers would give context. Surely the local hospitals know how many residents have been hospitalized with COVID-19 and later released. If we were to know the number of confirmed cases, how many of those victims were hospitalized, how many have since been discharged, and how many have died, we’d have a much better understanding of this crisis.
If the recovery rates are indeed high, perhaps we’d come away with a new sense of hope.
At the same time, the public must also be prepared for discouraging findings. Consider the numbers out of Michigan, one of the states that does share recovery data. As of April 11, officials confirmed 433 documented recoveries out of nearly 24,000 cases. Contrast those 433 recoveries with 1,392 deaths.
Not very reassuring, even as most understand that of the 22,000 not classified as either recovered or dead, many more - many, many more - will survive than perish.
The takeaway is this: transparency is the best policy. Officials should put more numbers on the scoreboard and trust that the public can understand them in context.
Online: https://www.savannahnow.com
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April 13
The Augusta Chronicle on the vulnerability of senior care homes to the coronavirus:
Sadly, Windermere isn’t alone. The same coronavirus scenario here is being played out in senior care homes across the country.
The news here late last week was devastating: At last count on April 11, 70 residents and staff members at Augusta’s Windermere Health and Rehabilitation Center, near Doctors Hospital, had tested positive for the coronavirus. On April 13, it was reported at least one resident had died.
Experts have long identified seniors as being most at-risk for contracting COVID-19, which swept through the Golden LivingCenter-Windermere facility in a flash.
Nationwide, news agencies such as The Wall Street Journal have reported more than 2,300 seniors have died so far in U.S. nursing homes. Data gathered by NBC News put the total closer to 2,500. Either way, it suggests the death toll is greater than what the federal government has been reporting.
If you’re asking yourself how such a health crisis could deliver such a crushing blow to senior care homes coast to coast, you don’t have to drill down very deeply to discover the reasons.
USA Today recently analyzed federal inspection data and found that 75% of U.S. nursing homes “have been cited for failing to properly monitor and control infections in the past three years – a higher proportion than previously known,” the newspaper said.
According to the industry magazine McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, nursing home workers surveyed by the publication about two weeks ago reported being “underequipped and understaffed” as COVID-19 drifted deeper into the United States.
“More than 77% of respondents said their facilities were experiencing personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages,” McKnight’s reported March 30. “Nearly 3 in 5 (59%) said their locations were using homemade or improvised PPE, or reusing it.”
COVID-19, with grim efficiency, is exposing vulnerabilities in many of our society’s corners. In this case, the coronavirus’ spread is underscoring America’s nursing shortage in general and specifically the dangerously low staffing levels in so many nursing homes.
Too often, wages are low. Workloads are unrealistic. Those factors account for lousy employee retention rates. And the health care professionals who are left to care for our loved ones are coping with unrealistic patient-to-staff ratios. Those staffers are among the 75% of care homes we mentioned earlier who struggle to fight infections.
All those problems are shouldered by care homes every single day. Now throw a global pandemic into the mix - one that’s most deadly specifically to typical care home residents.
The result is precisely what we’re witnessing right now. Because people can often carry the coronavirus without displaying any symptoms, the virus can spread through a closed facility such as a care home like wildfire, even with acceptable infection screening in place.
COVID-19 is pulling these health care shortcomings into stark relief, at a time when America is relying on medical professionals more heavily than ever. While they help us, please do your part to help them. Give blood. Donate to charities helping hospitals. Bring food or other welcomed provisions to health care workers. Strive to stay healthy yourself by observing hygienically safe behavior.
If nothing else, simply say “thank you” to the fighters on the frontlines.
Online: https://www.augustachronicle.com
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