Talk:COVID-19 pandemic in Georgia (U.S. state)

WikiProject COVID-19
I've created WikiProject COVID-19 as a temporary or permanent WikiProject and invite editors to use this space for discussing ways to improve coverage of the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. Please bring your ideas to the project/talk page. Stay safe, --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 16:48, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19 cases by county table
I'm curious if there are any thoughts on how the 'cases by county' table should be formatted for future expansion. Georgia has 159 counties. If all counties start reporting cases, it will be a lot of horizontal scrolling. Thoughts? Triggan (talk) 21:10, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , Still wide, but you might get some ideas from Template:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data/United States medical cases. --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 21:13, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I think an edit to the table may have messed up the numbers, the highest number of cases should be in Fulton county, not Forsyth, and Clarke county had 8 cases as of March 19. Spokensprak (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , Thanks. It appears another user attempted to add a county that has yet to have any confirmed cases. Triggan (talk) 20:55, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

It appears that the Georgia Dept. of Health is going to start announcing new by-county case numbers twice per day (once at noon and again at 7pm EDT). Should we be updating our numbers along with that, or should I just continue to update numbers at noon everyday? Or do we start having two rows - one for the noon update and another for the 7pm update? Triggan (talk) 21:10, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
 * , I've been updating at noon and then replacing those numbers with the 7:00 PM numbers. I'm also waiting for the 7PM numbers to update the SVG map in the infobox. Brad (talk) 06:50, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

i have a suggestion for what's important right now for viewers and that is a graph showing daily increase in case numbers. The cumulative graphic was nice but that is not the one that matters anymore and of course is not the graph that will peak and then show a decrease, which is what people want to see. You could of course calculate that number from what you show, but the cumulative orange lines will ALWAYS be increasing. I hope you can so this. Thanks

Responses, Kelly Loeffler? Misplaced
The whole section under the Responses header, before State government, is about Kelly Loeffler's stock sell-off. That needs to be in this article, but its position gives it undue weight over everything else in the responses section. The space between the section title and the first subsection title should be used for general, encyclopedic information or explanations concerning the whole section in general, not as a place for one scandal that, in the grand scheme, is hardly a response to the pandemic. Yes, her response was allegedly to sell and make money from the pandemic using secret information she gained as a public official, and that is both newsworthy and encyclopedic (though not NPOV in its current form, and I think there are real BLP problems too as long as this remains an allegation), IMO, but that was allegedly her personal (NOT public) response to the coming economic crisis, not a response to the pandemic. I think it should be put somewhere else in the article. Keep it, restate it, and move it. Dcs002 (talk) 05:03, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Misleading Map
With something that moves as quickly as this, having the infobox map be almost 2 weeks out of date is exceptionally misleading, despite the indication of the date the map represents. I'd like to change it myself, but I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing, so I thought I'd make a note in here so that at least it was on someone's radar. Any help or direction, either to some instruction on how to fix it or actually fixing it, would be appreciated. Jmshinn (talk) 15:56, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * , thanks and you're correct that it was outdated and thus misleading! I've updated the map, I had been meaning to previously but never got around to it. FYI I use Inkscape to edit the .svg file and then upload it on Wikimedia Commons. Brad (talk) 00:23, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19 cases in Georgia table
I'm noticing the table data here does not match the daily numbers currently posted on the Georgia Department of Public Health website.

Both cumulative totals were 818 as of this morning, April 22, but the daily numbers are different. For example, Public Health website says Georgia's peak was on April 6, with 41 deaths, whereas the Wiki table says it was on April 20 with 94 deaths. I think what is happening is that the Public Health data has lags and they update previous daily numbers whenever they get an update to the cumulative number, matching the numbers back to the dates where the deaths actually happened. I think the Wiki numbers are being updated for the cumulative number daily only and so it is not revising the past numbers.

Shall I update the Wiki table to match the current data on the Public Health website for February 1 thru April 22?

Msigmond (talk) 16:57, 22 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I tried getting their numbers, but if I total deaths from their individual days I get 863 instead of their published total of 872. If the daily numbers don't add up to their published total number, then it is kind of useless because everyone is seeing the daily reported total. If it can be resolved (or if I just did the math wrong) then I have no problem with anyone changing the underlying data in the chart. Brted (talk) 21:20, 23 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I think the large table at the end (showing the cases for each county, each day) is not needed. We don't need that much detail.  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 23:56, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe instead just hide it underneath a [show] link or something? I certainly understand the space concerns, especially if the data is updated (I'll do it eventually), but such county-by-county historical granular data isn't easily found elsewhere — it's significant and I think proper for this article. Brad (talk) 02:40, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like it hasn't been updated since April 4. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 06:28, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19 pandemic in Atlanta
Hello Wikipedians from Atlanta, So the largest city in the American state of Georgia is Atlanta and also the state capital of Georgia. I hope anyone will create article titled COVID-19 pandemic in Atlanta, The proposed article will be titled as title COVID-19 pandemic in Atlanta will be focused on the pandemic within the city of Atlanta, Georgia. The propose article will include how many active cases, how many deaths, how many recoveries and how many overall cases within the city of Atlanta. I will by happy for anyone's reply for the requested article to created and will be only focused on the city of Atlanta. Thanks for your time. Come back some if it's created. See you later. 2001:569:74D2:A800:597:7665:7DAB:5D7F (talk) 07:03, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikemenn (talk • contribs) 20:09, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Changing Covid-19 Table?
I like whoever updates the Covid-19 cases and deaths to consider changing the daily death count from a percentage to a number of deaths each day. For example, instead of 202-05-03 saying "1,179 (+0%)" it would say "1,179 (+5). As the number of cases grow, a percentage increase becomes more and more meaningless as the denominator grows bigger. And in the example of above 0% isn't accurate; 5 people died.

I'd be happy to do the math and correct it.

Mikemenn (talk) 20:13, 5 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Looking at other states and their charts, they pretty much all use percentage increases. I think it is important to try to stay uniform in how information is presented across many different state and country pages. Brted (talk) 02:39, 7 May 2020 (UTC)


 * One advantage of using percentage increases instead of raw numbers is that if/when percentages stay the same day after day (e.g., 5%, 5%, 5%...) it indicates continued exponential growth. Exponential growth of a pandemic is a much graver public health concern than steady but non-exponential growth StanfordPostDoc (talk) 22:55, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Update, more actual data?...
So the state government response section currently concludes with: "As a result of the state's reopening, COVID-19 cases and deaths are predicted to rise in Georgia, with a death toll of 5,000 possible according to Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation."

But the actual data, at least thus far, do not reflect this. This chart, from the AJC (Georgia's "newspaper of record"), shows that new cases have not increased since the April 24th reopening: https://www.ajc.com/news/coronavirus-georgia-covid-dashboard/jvoLBozRtBSVSNQDDAuZxH/ They've continued their slow but steady decrease, with the reopening showing no apparent impact. And the reopening was some three and a half weeks ago, so well beyond the typical lag-time from the incubation period.

Of course a spike might still happen in the future at some point. Perhaps it hasn't happened yet because many people are still mostly staying at home in spite of the official reopening. Or perhaps some else entirely. One can only speculate.

But in terms of the actual evidence we have, Georgia hasn't yet seen a spike since reopening, so the article should reflect that. I would suggest rewording it to something like:

"COVID-19 cases and deaths were predicted to rise in Georgia as a result of the state's reopening [the old citation], but thus far there hasn't been a spike in new cases or deaths following reopening. [new citation to AJC article linked above]" (Note: The word "were" is bolded here to emphasize the tense change, but I'm not suggesting bolding it in the article.)

-2003:CA:872E:948C:F9F2:BFD3:BF9C:6EA4 (talk) 00:04, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Cases and deaths have continued to decline. I would appreciate it if people did not delete my citation of this fact. Wiki should not be about promoting the liberal point of view on topics. It should be about facts. If cases and deaths go up, then that would be the time to modify the article. This is a persistent problem I have with wiki. I have a master's degree in philosophy of science, graduated at the top of the class in medical school, and have published articles in several medical publications, but when I cite medical facts, they tend to be reverted to whatever availability biased pov is in the press. I understand that the press wants Georgia to fail. Maybe it will. So far, it has not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:240:CB81:3770:68BB:7A:C0D2:EEB8 (talk) 20:50, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Since nobody has objected, I'll go ahead and update it as I'd suggested above. -2003:CA:872E:94D0:F5B5:369:D6B8:309C (talk) 08:45, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

It's hard to pin this down, since the trend hasn't stayed the same. As of 23 May, the slow declines in reported new cases and deaths, which continued for most of the past month, have been nearly completely reversed. Something really neutral would be better here. Maybe "As of the 23rd of May, new case and death rates were nearly the same as on the day the reopening was announced." It might be another month or two before a stable assessment can be made. JerryOBrien (talk) 05:23, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Death data
The chart of deaths by day does not match the chart on the linked source. The death data available to download from https://dph.georgia.gov/ does not show the date, so how is the graph created? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.102.43.42 (talk) 12:58, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The chart represents the totals published daily by DPH in giant numbers at the top of the page and always has. The numbers in their graphs are different and try to assign a date to a death or test result, but because it can take over a week to get results in, they usually only have a couple of reports for the current day (if any), making it look like the numbers are dropping, which is not the case. The numbers in the chart on Wikipedia have consistently represented the total reported by DPH on each day given. I tried at one point to use the DPH graph data, but the deaths don't add up to their published daily total. The numbers in the graphs at DPH are hard to use because they are subject to change at any time, changing big parts of the chart. Unless there is some consensus on changing the Wikipedia chart contents, it is easier to leave it as it is now. Brted (talk) 19:58, 7 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Hey! Where's the graph! We need deaths/day.

Error in death statistics for 6/6/2020
Hi all - on the table, COVID-19 cases in Georgia, United States, the cumulative deaths is lower than what was the day before.

Just wanted to point this out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:1200:8398:8DD3:78C4:E78E:54DB (talk) 00:25, 7 June 2020 (UTC)


 * DPH published a lower number, so that is what was put here. Later in the day, they revised the number, so the 6/6 number was changed and is now positive. DPH said some deaths were double reported, so when they caught the error, the number went down. That's going to happen. Brted (talk) 20:59, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Too Many Statistics
The statistics table is very bulky and doesn't add much in the way of understanding. Perhaps the same information could be shared in a line chart with the most-affected counties. However, the giant table with actual numbers is far too much information. My suggestion is to delete the giant table at the bottom and move the chart "COVID-19 pandemic medical cases in Georgia by county" to the bottom. However I wanted to make sure there are no objections before I make such a massive change to the page. Michelangelo1992 (talk) 19:59, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I have made the above changes, especially since the large table was more than 2 months out of date. Michelangelo1992 (talk) 15:40, 12 August 2020 (UTC)