Coronavirus daily update: Friday, July 17

Reality check

Looks like it’s time to get real — time to make decisions on important things like school and sports and masks and all the rest. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has decided to hold the first nine weeks of the semester online — Plan C. Guilford has hinted that at least the first five weeks will be online. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are doing the same thing. These are decisions that cannot be put off any longer.

Soon we’ll have to make the call on the election, but not just yet.

Oh yeah, and unmarked, federal law enforcement officers are indiscriminately grabbing protesters off the street in Portland.

Reality indeed.

The numbers

• 2,051 new cases in North Carolina today; 95,477 total. We will have new recovery numbers on Monday.
  • We hit a high in hospitalizations, with 1,180 currently in beds.
  • 1,606 deaths, including 18 new ones today.
• Forsyth County makes 4,008 total cases — 62 new today. Steady at 40 deaths.
• Guilford County has 60 new ones, for 3,904. Four new deaths makes 133.

A diversion

Remember when mundane things used to matter? Before all of this — coronavirus and social justice and the Big Reckoning — we used to get so wrapped up in the dumbest shit. Maybe we still do. Anyway, here’s The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, the greatest documentary ever made about Donkey Kong, and the people who love it. It’s got everything: a villain in an American flag necktie, a sympathetic hero, an unbelievable array of nerds and a bizarre video-game elder statesman from one of its most storied halls. Worth the watch.

Program notes

• Tonight’s featured image is a staged photograph, “Don Quixote in His Study,” shot in 1857 by William Frederick Lake Price. Taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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