WHEN YOU CAN’T TRUST THE NUMBERS: Bombshell: Nashville mayor’s office deliberately kept vital COVID info about bars and restaurants from the public.

The coronavirus cases on lower Broadway may have been so low that the mayor’s office and the Metro Health Department decided to keep it secret.

Emails between the mayor’s senior advisor and the health department reveal only a partial picture. But what they reveal is disturbing.

The discussion involves the low number of coronavirus cases emerging from bars and restaurants and how to handle that.

And most disturbingly, how to keep it from the public.

Disgraceful. Trust is the chief asset public health officials have, and they’ve squandered it with barely a thought. It will be a generation at least before people trust them again, even if they clean up their act, which at present seems unlikely.