Coronavirus daily update: April 2, 2020

Where have we gone?

I’m at the office. I needed the stronger internet signal, and to check the mail. I shivered as I touched the envelopes, and then slathered my hands in sanitizer.

There’s maybe 10 of us in the entire building, though from the fire escape I can still see white smoke chuffing from the industrial stacks off South-Elm-Eugene Street, can hear metal clang against concrete at the steel mill next door.

I’m right here, and you’re right there. But where are we? We as a people, I mean. As a country, yes but also as a species.

We’re scared. We’re anxious. And we know, most of us anyway, that it’s just getting started.

We’re huddled in our homes, if we have them, thankful for the shelter. Many of us are not working — about 10 million Americans filed for unemployment in the last few weeks. Here in North Carolina, the state website is swamped. more than 350,000 North Carolinians filed for unemployment since March 16, 20,000 of them yesterday.

And some of us are getting sick.

We’ve passed 1 million cases of COVID-19, in every country on the planet. Its speed is immaculate — bringing the world to a halt in just two weeks. Except, of course, the world is still spinning. And the numbers continue.

The numbers

• Yep, more than 1 million cases worldwide, with most of them — about a quarter-million — in the US, twice as much as No. 2 Italy, though we’re much, much more populous. But with those big numbers come big exponential swings. Our daily increase was 13.2 percent, not bad compared to, say, Canada, which jumped 15.9 percent. But theirs was just 1,500 people, and ours was more than 28,000. It seems as if the coronavirus might be slowing, or at least beginning to level off.
• Things are escalating in North Carolina. The N&O has us breaking the 2,000 mark today at 2,014. Guilford increased by 10, to 74. Forsyth remains at 57 — but the data looks old. A new site I’m following has Forsyth at 63. Sixteen people have died in NC, by the state numbers, 184 are hospitalized, and almost 29,000 have been tested.

Some news

• The NY Times publicly shamed Guilford County as the fourth-worst county in the US in terms of residents still traveling last Friday.
• You should stay home.
• The abortion protestors who got arrested last week are suing the city of Greensboro this week.
• They should have stayed home. You should stay home, too.
• Something good: This new site I’m following shows that our new-case rate in North Carolina seems to be leveling off — in the low 200s a day. Perhaps we can maintain this rate.
• By staying home. There’s nothing out there anyway.

A diversion

There hasn’t been any college basketball since they pulled Florida State off the floor of the Greensboro Coliseum on Day 3 of the ACC Tournament. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch old games on YouTube. And if you go far back enough, you can find classic games you missed and it’s like watching them live! Sort of! So here’s a throwback to 1974, when Maryland battled NC State for the ACC Tournament Championship in the Greensboro Coliseum. This should kill at least an hour — no commercials! — and it’s worth it for the fashion alone.

Program notes

• Tonight’s featured image comes from Carolyn de Berry and Harvey Robinson, who ventured out into Greensboro to see what wasn’t happening.
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