Politicizing Coronavirus Unforgivable: Emory Public Health Dean

ATLANTA, GA — The dean of Emory University’s school of public health on Tuesday criticized White House attacks on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “unforgivable.”

Dr. James Curran, who led the CDC task force investigating AIDS in the 1980s, told reporters in a video conference that the Trump Administration has cowed CDC experts into silence by demonizing experts on COVID-19.

What’s more, he added, the Trump’s administration’s denigration of science goes far beyond simply ignoring the problem.

Curran said that as an AIDS researcher “we were never kept away from the press the way the CDC now is with COVID,” as reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “With COVID, there’s interference, which is even worse than neglect in many ways.”

The White House countered with a written statement Tuesday, saying through spokesperson Judd Deere that President Donald Trump’s highest priority has always been “the health and safety of the American public.”

GEORGIA CORONAVIRUS NUMBERS FOR OCT. 15, 2020

The Georgia Department of Public Health in Atlanta reported a total of 336,241 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at 2:50 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15. According to the health department’s website, that includes 1,686 newly confirmed cases over the last 24 hours.

Georgia also reported 7,492 deaths so far from COVID-19, with 19 more deaths recorded in the last 24 hours. In addition, the state reported 30,081 hospitalizations — 163 more than the day before — and 5,580 admissions so far to intensive-care units.

No information is available from Georgia about how many patients have recovered.

Counties in or near metro Atlanta and other metropolitan areas continue to have the highest number of positives, with Fulton County still in the lead.

1. Fulton County: 29,429 cases — 100 new
2. Gwinnett County: 29,295 cases — 138 new
3. Cobb County: 20,924 cases — 86 new
4. DeKalb County: 19,969 cases — 112 new
5. Hall County: 10,163 cases — 65 new
6. Chatham County: 8,984 — 28 new
7. Clayton County: 7,686 — 70 new
8. Richmond County: 7,610 — 39 new
9. Cherokee County: 6,625 — 54 new
10. Bibb County: 6,398 — 27 new

Counties in or near metro Atlanta also continue to have the most deaths from COVID-19.

• Fulton County: 599 deaths — 2 new
• Cobb County: 444 deaths — 2 new
• Gwinnett County: 428 deaths — 1 new
• DeKalb County: 384 deaths — 1 new
• Dougherty County: 189 deaths — 1 new
• Bibb County: 187 deaths
• Chatham County: 178 deaths
• Muscogee County: 173 deaths
• Richmond County: 173 deaths
• Clayton County: 170 deaths

All Georgia statistics are available on the state's COVID-19 website.

Globally, more than 38.7 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, and nearly 1.1 million people have died from it, Johns Hopkins University reported Thursday.

In the United States, more than 7.9 million people have been infected and more than 217,000 people have died from COVID-19 as of Thursday. The U.S. has only about 4 percent of the world's population but more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country.