Habersham County Emergency Service’s Director Chad Black, like public safety officials everywhere, is on the front lines of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. At the outset of the outbreak in March, Now Habersham sat down with him and other public health and safety officials to talk about what was to come. Since then, Habersham County has risen near to the top of the list of counties in Georgia with the highest number of positive cases. With at least 382 confirmed cases, Habersham remains 13th out of 159 counties. The only other county in Northeast Georgia with more confirmed cases is Hall County with over 1,900.
At least twelve Habersham County residents with COVID-19 have died.
People upset by the public alarm over COVID-19 continue to rail against government restrictions and the media’s reporting of the pandemic. They accuse the government, public health officials, and the media of perpetrating a ruse. There is a legitimate argument to be made in that statistics released by the Georgia Department of Public Health do not provide a complete picture of the virus’ impact because those statistics do not differentiate active from recovered cases. However, health officials say numbers are rising, not because they’re being manipulated, but because people are still being infected and more people are being identified as having the virus due to increased testing.
Still, conspiracy theories continue to spread across social media channels even as the virus continues to spread through our communities.
Now Habersham asked Director Black for his take on the current pandemic situation. Here’s our Q & A with him.
How many cases are you all seeing per day?
It’s varying, last week our overall calls dramatically decreased compared to past weeks, and of course, calls that were COVID-19 positive or potentials, also dropped. But over the weekend, especially Sunday, we responded to 30 calls and 13 of those were COVID-19 related in one shift.
How are first responders holding up?
Overall, really good, but they are tired, every call is being treated as if the patient is positive, to err on the side of caution for both our personnel and the patients. Really proud of these men and women on the front lines, they are true Public Servants in every aspect of that term! We are discussing the overall mental health of our personnel, even if they don’t show it, we know it’s placing extreme stress on them and we have to be ready to address that. Actually, we have to be proactive and meet those needs before the employee really starts to have an issue.
What are you asking the public to do?
Continue to abide by the social distancing of 6- feet, wear a mask when in public, wash hands frequently and use hand sanitizer often, and don’t go out in public unless necessary, same as we have been asking people to do.
Did the governor open up the state too soon?
I don’t believe the Governor had an option to be right, regardless of what decision he made. It’s either for opening up or against opening up, really no in-between of people’s thoughts when it comes to that decision. He made a decision based on a lot of information that I am not privy to. The people who didn’t adhere to the recommendations and his shelter orders prior, are the same ones who will be out now, the ones that did adhere, are the same ones who will be safe and do what is required now. For our area, we are just seeing the numbers dramatically increase, so it does cause some concern, but I can’t say I personally disagree with the decision the Governor made.
Leadership sometimes requires very difficult decisions, and sometimes those may not be easy or in the majority of the popular thoughts, I know I would not want to wear his shoes in making that decision. What we need to do is support the decision, do what we can to minimize exposure, adhere to the recommendations, and use common sense when out, and we will see improvement. If we don’t, and people continue to have family get-togethers in large numbers, etc., then we will see this continue unfortunately, I am afraid.
With Cinco de Mayo this week and Mother’s Day, there is concern to see another spike in the next two to three weeks following these two events, if people don’t abide by the recommendation. Hopefully, that will not happen but the potential certainly exists due to these two days, one already past and the other this Sunday.
Is the pandemic a conspiracy or hoax?
This virus has gotten everyone, even the “pro’s” are at a loss to some extent. Daily, they are learning something new, changing what we do, etc. so to me, that is the big issue, as has been stated, we are writing the rules to deal with this as we go!
I truly don’t think our president or a governor, who all run on the economy, would do something intentional or be part of something to both harm people and put the economy of our nation, and their states in the sinkhole! I just don’t see that happening, but that of course, is my opinion.
This virus caught the majority off guard, and it’s new, so a lot what was done, said, etc. has changed as the learning curve has changed during this pandemic. Shutting the economy down, not good, people getting sick and dying, not good, but again, we have many more die in auto accidents, drug overdoses, suicides, heart disease, stroke, and the flu and people don’t seem to want to address those issues.
This is a contagious virus, I know that for a fact, but again, I don’t know how many that are listed as COVID deaths are truly related to COVID, nor do I have any clue how many positive cases we truly have. Data is skewed and not accurate so nobody really knows how bad this is, or how “not” bad this is. I can tell you health care workers who are treating these people who do have it are seeing very sick people on acuity levels never seen with other virus type issues.
I just think the government is not sure or positive on varying levels in dealing with this virus and that is what is causing the majority of the “unknown” in dealing with this, so they sometimes do what they think may work or be good and then it’s not, then people get on the conspiracy theory.
