The Georgia National Fairs remains the massive half a million people elephant in the room.
I previously addressed this and embedded the article in "Donald Trump Held a Rally in My Hometown." However, I realize that embedded articles do not always load properly in the app. Therefore, I am including an additional link.
Trump's rally was merely the latest in a string of events. It's the one that garnered the most attention on Medium because it's Trump. It's certainly not the one we should be most concerned about. There were also more people at the bike rally than at Trump's.
As for Treats on the Trail, the city claims they make these decisions on a monthly basis. Hence, they cancelled all events in September because we were above the case threshold when they made the decision. The Trump rally happened in September, not October. Therefore, the existing standard says the event would have been cancelled if it were hosted by the city and not the state.
Do I necessarily believe that they wouldn't have bowed to political pressure? I don't know. Locally, cancelling Food Truck Friday was a big deal. It's really popular (and yummy). Did I mention yummy? Sorry, I'm 1000% behind eating my way through a parking lot. I digress.
Anyhow, Treats on the Trail was held on October 2. According to the Georgia Department of Health, Houston County had 48 confirmed cases on October 1, giving it a 7-day moving average of 49.4. Hence, the city's decision to allow October events, including Treats on the Trail.
The way I see it there are two issues here:
1) the month of the events and
2) the state of Georgia's willingness to steamroll over local decisions.
For me personally, the entire COVID debacle has been an eye-opening experience with the Kemp administration's perspective on home rule. Basically, they hate it. Is it overreach when the state of Georgia ignores or overrides local decisions? Arguably yes. But that's a discussion for another day.
