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Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Talks Dealing With COVID-19 Diagnosis And Violence In City

She revealed she tested positive, but told ‘Good Morning America’ that Atlanta is dealing with a ‘perfect storm.’

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms says she feels alright and is only affected by allergy symptoms the morning after she announced that she tested positive for COVID-19.

“I have a slight headache, but that’s not unusual during allergy season for me and allergy season is just about year-round in Georgia,” she said. “So just the same headache I have during stressful times and allergy season.

Appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America, Tuesday morning (July 7) Bottoms said that her family is dealing with coronavirus with one of her children testing positive and another testing negative. Two other children, she said, would be tested Tuesday. Her husband, Derek Bottoms, she said had slept from Thursday until Monday, which she said concerned her, but he is now feeling better.
Mayor Bottoms said she tested “low positive,” which means her symptoms could be increasing or decreasing, but she was told to regard it as if she is positive and follow recommended quarantining guidelines.

Meanwhile, as Bottoms and her family deal with the coronavirus, Atlanta has entered what she called a “perfect storm of distress.” The disease is worsening in Georgia, and angst over police violence, particularly the death of Rayshard Brooks is still heightened. That, along with the spate of recent violence that took the life of 8-year-old Secoria Turner over the holiday weekend, has frustrated the city.

“I think that people are obviously anxious and even angry about COVID-19, loved ones are dying, people are losing their jobs,” she said. “I think that there’s a lot of frustration, a lot of angst and I think that the rhetoric that comes out of the White House doesn’t help it at all, it doesn’t give people much hope and I think that it’s all converging together and we’re seeing it happen and spill out into much the streets of Atlanta and we’re seeing it across the country.

“And you add on top of that the cases that we’ve all witnessed of police brutality and it has all come together in a violent way,” Bottoms said.

Demonstrators had been forced off the site of a burned out Wendy’s restaurant where Brooks had been killed June 12 after Turner was shot July 4 while riding in her mother’s vehicle, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The protesters said they didn’t know who shot the child, but were also grieving for her. Bottoms ordered the encampment shut down. “I tell you if you are looking to be part of the solution and not the problem then you are going to have to clear out,” she said on Monday (July 6).
In a response to the violence in the city, which left four dead in total, Gov. Brian Kemp has declared a state of emergency and deployed 1,000 National Guard troops to Atlanta, the AJC reports. Bottoms said she disagrees with that tactic.

“I asked Gov. Kemp to allow us to mandate masks in Atlanta and he said no, but he has called in the National Guard without asking if we needed the National Guard.”
Kemp had also made the decision to reopen the state in the midst of the pandemic, which Bottoms said was too aggressive a move. Atlanta, Bottoms said, had a phased approach to reopening and had not averaged any higher because “but our numbers are surging,” she said. “It was too aggressive, it was too soon and we’re paying for it not just in Georgia, but we’re paying for it across the country.”

For the latest on the coronavirus, check out BET’s blog on the virus, and contact your local health department or visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

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