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The NBA’s All-Star Weekend Decision Is Going to Get People Killed
Thousands of fans flocking to Atlanta will have devastating consequences
On Friday night I went to pick up food from a couple of restaurants at Cumberland Mall right outside of Atlanta. It might be hard for you to visualize what I saw because it’s so foreign to what so many Americans are experiencing right now, but here goes: the first restaurant was packed inside, with zero seating restrictions. Patrons sat clustered in booths and shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar, hardly a mask in sight. The next restaurant was not only packed, but its waiting area was standing room only. As I was waiting for my food, I kept walking around trying to find a way to stay six feet away from everyone. Even that was difficult—the mall itself was full. The parking lot barely had any vacant spots. It looked like Black Friday.
Atlanta is in a wide-open state, and has been since Georgia governor Brian Kemp put business over lives, lifting many restrictions in April, when Covid had barely begun to surge, and allowing restaurants to open at full capacity starting in June. In both April and June, the 14-day average of new cases in both Cobb and Fulton County was in the mid-40s; today, it’s 10 times higher. It just doesn’t feel safe to be indoors anywhere near Atlanta.
