Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp gave a press conference on Wednesday, announcing a new shelter-in-place order that’s been long overdue. But Kemp also admitted something that should terrify every person living in and around Georgia: Kemp claims he didn’t know until this week that the new coronavirus could be spread by people who aren’t showing symptoms of covid-19.
“What we’ve been telling people from directives from the CDC for weeks now— that if you start feeling bad, stay home—those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad, but we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours,” said Kemp.
Governor Kemp, a Republican who took office in 2019 under questionable voting practices, said at the press conference that his top public health advisor, Kathleen Toomey, described evidence of asymptomatic transmission as a “game changer.”
It’s not clear if Kemp is lying about only learning this recently, or if he’s really that uninformed. But the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been warning about asymptomatic transmission for over a month.