Nashville Mayor John Cooper said Thursday that he and members of his administration have shown total transparency providing information to the public about COVID-19.
Cooper said this at a press conference Thursday.
FOX 17 reporter Dennis Ferrier asked Cooper to respond to criticism that Nashville accepts federal COVID-19 assistance despite the mayor closing bars and restaurants based on insufficient data.
Cooper said he acted on federal COVID-19 guidelines.
“It was not insufficient data. It was an alarming trend that was responded to, and I think we can look back and say we responded to it and have been very successful. Our successful reopening strategy is that we have to look after our own reputation here in Nashville. We have businesses that depend on Nashville’s public health reputation to reopen successfully, and we are doing that now that we are able to show improvement with the disease that we are a safe city, particularly for being a major hospitality center,” Cooper said.
“As we have gotten better health news, we are opening capacity and we should celebrate every Nashvillians’ hard work in getting that done. We had a lot of potential super-spreading events. There was a lot of danger and risk. We were the Number One worst county in the state. And due to our hard work Tennessee’s numbers are improved, and we are in a situation that we can get people back into what is the most affected industry in America, which is the hospitality industry.”
As The Tennessee Star reported this week, Cooper announced at a July 2 press conference that he was shutting down all bars in the city for at least 14 days. In the process he temporarily shut down entertainment and event venues and reduced restaurant capacities from 75 percent to 50 percent.
At the time, Cooper made no mention of an internal email sent within the Metro Davidson County Health Department just two days earlier stating there had been only 19 cases of COVID-19 traced to bars in the city. County officials traced just three cases traced to restaurants.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Lying pos …ppl are getting sick of Democrat run cities.
Democrats have got so used to lying that they don’t even know when they lie.
In politics, ‘If you’re explaining, you’re losing.’
Complete transparency as in, “Here take a look at this c̵o̵o̵k̵e̵d̵ spreadsheet…the numbers don’t lie.
John, You took the words right out of my mouth.