Coronavirus daily update: Thursday, Oct. 8

Paperwork

I’ve been up to my ears in a huge document all day, and I’m not even done with it. As a result, I disengaged from the news cycle for like eight hours. What’d I miss?

I know we dropped a huge one today — Sayaka Matsuoka’s longform examination of the 25 people who were killed by Triad law enforcement over the last 10 years.

As for everything else, I will get to it when I finally muddle through this monster document, that I hate.

The numbers

• 2,428 new cases in NC today. Come on, man! That’s the worst in many weeks. 219,162 total positives. 3,722 deaths (+29, 1.70 percent)
  • Positive test rate 5.5 percent, which is not bad! But also not good.
  • 1,051 hospitalized, a new high
• Guilford County has a new coronavirus dashboard that seems to update in real time: 53 new cases for 9,352, with 5,452 (58.30 percent) recoveries and two new deaths for 187 (2.0 percent).
  • I have solved the mystery of Guilford’s high hospitalization rate: They had been reporting the cumulative number. As of right now there are 3,713 active cases, 79 of which are hospitalized (2.13 percent), though the number is still triple Winston-Salem’s.
• Forsyth County adds 84 for 7,501, with 6,279 recoveries (83.71 percent) and 104 deaths (1.39 percent).
  • 668 current cases.

A diversion

In honor of the fly on Vice President Mike Pence’s head during the debate last night, I bring the 1965 film Curse of the Fly. This was actually the second sequel to the 1958 film — the one with “Help me! Help me!” It disappeared after its theatrical run — no DVD or VHS tape or anything, emerging in a box set that came out in 2007. This probably means it’s not very good. Like you got anything better to do?

Program notes

• For tonight’s featured image, we’ve got “Two Children Teasing a Cat” by Annibale Carracci, from the late 1600s. Taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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