Coronavirus daily update: Wednesday, Feb. 24

The downstroke

You no longer have to take my word for it: Gov. Cooper made it official today: Executive Order 195 eases many restrictions, though not all. You can drink in bars until 11 pm. You can have gatherings up to 25 people. You don’t have to stay at home. But you still have to wear a mask in the grocery store.

Here at home, Triad City Beat makes seven years with this week’s issue. In honor of that milestone, I wrote more profanity into this week’s editorial than I have ever done before. I am getting to be too old to suffer these fools.

Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers found himself in a snafu of his own making, concerning a death in the jail and a lawsuit by the family.

And we’re vaccinating teachers in Guilford and Forsyth!

Don’t be dismayed by today’s numbers (they’re up). Think of it like knocking over a vending machine. You’ve got to push it back and forth a couple times before it tips.

The numbers

• A pop of 3,346 new cases in NC today. Kinda shitty after the last few days, but this is how these things go. With 109 new deaths (11,074).
  • But hospitalizations keep dropping (1,530), and positive test rate drops to 6.2 percent.
  • And meanwhile we’ve vaccinated 7 percent of the population (730,843) and another 1.26 million have had the first shot.
• Guilford County posts 122 new ones, which is not too great, and a jump in active cases( 2,344, +122) but no new deaths (513).
  • 5.5 percent of the county has been fully vaccinated.
• Forsyth adds 112 today, and two more deaths (340).
  • 7.6 percent of Forsyth County residents have been fully vaccinated.

A diversion

In honor of the downstroke, and our ability to get up for it, I’m dropping some live George Clinton here. I came onto the Mothership in the late 1980s, catching a dozen or more live performances in my teens and twenties in various states of funkiness. But I’m posting a show from 1985, on the German TV show “Rockpalast.” The gang was still pretty young back then, very much on drugs — but it was thew ’80s so… you know. This is more than 90 minutes of pure funk.

Program notes

• Here’s a street scene, “After a Long Cruise,” courtesy of John Carlin, who was born both deaf and mute; he painted it in 1857. Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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