Mark Sexton, deputy director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, tours an alternative hospital bed facility in Atlanta on December 29. | Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP

The state’s Covid-19 surge is a microcosm of a pandemic raging out of control.

President Donald Trump rallied to support two Republican Senate candidates in Dalton, Georgia, on Monday night. He appeared maskless in front of a large crowd, in a county buckling under a coronavirus surge, in a state struggling more than most with its outbreak.

In many ways, Georgia is a microcosm of a pandemic raging out of control.

Whitfield County, of which Dalton is the seat, ranks 16th out of 159 Georgia counties in its number of daily cases per 100,000 people, according to Covid Act Now’s database. The regional hospital that serves Whitfield County reported last week that its facilities