x A stunning admission of deadly ignorance from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who says he only just learned that asymptomatic people can transmit #Covid19. Ã¢ÂÂ[I]ndividuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad, but we didnÃ¢ÂÂt know that until the last 24 hours.Ã¢ÂÂ pic.twitter.com/T7NZWk2GDR — Andisheh Nouraee (@andishehnouraee) April 2, 2020

Kemp made this troubling claim to explain a long-delayed statewide stay-at-home order that he announced Wednesday. With more than 4,630 coronavirus cases in Georgia and 139 related deaths in the state, the order is set to go into effect Friday and last through April 13. The governor also closed K-12 public schools for the rest of the academic year. "The reality is if you do not comply, you are violating the law, and you will be facing stiff penalties,” Kemp said. “Even worse, even worse, you are literally endangering the lives of those around you, your loved ones and all fellow Georgians.”

The governor’s statement represents quite the flip-flop from a stance he took mere days ago when he maintained that only vulnerable populations should be required to shelter in place and that the decision to restrict larger populations should be left to the cities and counties. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced a citywide stay-at-home order March 23 in an effort to “exercise every reasonable power to slow the spread of this virus,” according to Channel 2 Action News.

Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore urged state officials to follow in the mayor's footsteps. “I believe we need to have more aggressive measures,” she told Channel 2. “As contagious as this virus is ... we’re (not) going to be able to stem the tide of it without taking more drastic measures.”

Toomey, however, supported the governor’s decision to initially only implement a stay-at-home order for vulnerable populations. "What's good for Atlanta - which is I believe the correct thing that Mayor Bottoms did, may not be the correct thing for these other areas," Toomey told 11 Alive. "And if you look at CDC's guidelines, the guidelines are tailored to the community ... and how things are spreading. So, it depends on the community."

What the governor cites as the impetus for his change of heart, however, is information the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been reporting since early February, when the agency made mention of asymptomatic carriers in multiple coronavirus updates. As news coverage of the virus picked up, several media outlets reported that one of the reasons the virus has spread so quickly is because people may not know they have it.

CNN reported that almost half of the passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship who had the virus were asymptomatic, according to a CDC report the news network published March 24. The Huffington Post explained March 18 that asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 spread the virus most frequently, according to a study out of China. Even the governor’s own home state paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reported as early as March 16 that in three confirmed cases of the coronavirus at the senior care facility The Retreat at Canton, the residents were “asymptomatic.” The heavy news coverage of that specific fact begs the question of how on earth an elected official accountable to an entire state of voters didn’t know the very element that makes the coronavirus pandemic so threatening.