Coronavirus daily update: Friday, Dec. 11

Worst week ever

In terms of numbers, yes, this has been as bad as it gets in North Carolina. We’ll dive into that in a bit. And a statewide curfew descends tonight, 10 p.m., with alcohol sales ending at 9 p.m., which means if you want to get properly drunk in a bar tonight, you need to start right about now.

Things are happening, vis-a-vis the coronavirus: New York City has shit down all indoor dining. A vaccine is on the way — Trump says he’s firing anybody who can’t get it done by today. And the CDC says we’ll be averaging more than 3,000 deaths a day in the US for the next 60-90 days (the Times reports 2,923 today).

And hey: Remember Sweden, that model of coronavirus restraint back in the early days of the pandemic? As in, “Look at Sweden!” shouted with Mountain Dew droplets flying everywhere. Well, it sucks there now.

A lot of people are catching the ‘rona. Many of them need to be hospitalized. A few of them are dying. Let’s add them up.

The numbers

• Fuck me: 7,540 new cases in North Carolina reported today — that’s more than 1,000 higher than the previous record, set two days ago. 423,623 total. 5,752 deaths (+38).
  • 2,514 hospitalized (new high)
  • 10.4 percent positive test rate, trending down.
• Guilford takes on 469 new cases, 17,496 total. Of those, 15,157 have recovered (86.63 percent) and 268 have died (+9, 1.53 percent).
  • There are 2,069 active cases, 11.82 percent of the total. Of these active cases, 192 (9.28 percent) are hospitalized.
• Forsyth gets 329 more, for 16,015. Recoveries total 13,022 (81.31 percent), with 178 deaths (1.11 percent).
  • 2,815 active cases

A diversion

Shit is kinda hairy right now, so I figured I’d find a cat movie — you know, something with cats kind of frolicking around, chasing laser pointers and such — which led me down a rabbit hole of YouTubes made specifically for cats, which I find vaguely troubling. Are we teaching our cats to watch TV? That’s where I found this probably really crappy made-for-TV movie from 1986 called The Richest Cat in the World, which is only on YouTube, I suspect, because it has been disavowed by Disney.

Program notes

• In “Pilate Washing His Hands,” Mattia Preti (aka Il Cavalier Calabrese) from 16763 explores the biblical story of Pontius Plate washing his hands as his men led Christ to his execution. If you look closely, you can see Jesus! Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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