Coronavirus daily update: Friday, Sept. 11

9/11 Edition

It was a beautiful day. Until it wasn’t.

I was in the living room of our Lincoln Green apartment, my wife getting ready for work and I tending the baby. We thought it was an accident. And then the second plane hit.

More than a few friends were lost that day, and hundreds more braved the aftermath to get back to Long Island, Brooklyn, New Jersey… wherever… covered in ash and fear.

I don’t want to talk about how we all “came together” that day because that brief spark of unity failed to ignite anything but a couple decades of lying and spying.

Little did we know, our troubles had just begun.

Some news

• Gov. Roy Cooper is enforcing the 50-person gathering limit by disallowing — uninviting? — athletes’ parents from sporting events. No schools in the state will allow more than 50 spectators at a game. And Duke has already decided to hold its fall sports without home fans at all.
• Everybody’s talking shit about Marty Kotis’ cryptic billboard on Greensboro’s Battleground Avenue.

The numbers

• North Carolina surpassed 3,000 coronavirus-related deaths yesterday. Four more makes 3,016.
  • We also had an uptick in daily cases, 1,532 vs yesterday’s 1,222. 182,286 total. New recovery numbers Monday.
  • Positive test rate 5.3 percent — the lowest it’s been since the beginning.
• Guilford County adds 55 for 7,523. Of those, 4,367 have recovered (+44, 58.05 percent), which means they’re coming in faster than they’re going out. No new deaths.
• Forsyth County totals 6,543 today, after 66 new ones. 5,790 have recovered (88.49 percent).

A diversion

Football season starts this week, and I am of mixed opinions. I love football, and am very pleased to have the Saints to carry me through the fall and winter. I dig college ball, too, but I’m concerned about the health risks for students and fans. Still, I’ll be watching. In honor of that, here’s NFL Films 1967 debut: “They Call it Pro Football.” Harry Kalas’ voice is the one I associate most with the game.

Program notes

• For tonight’s featured image, we have “A City on a Rock,” by Francisco de Goya — or, at least, done in his style, from the mid-1800s. Taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection. And hey: The Met is now open on Fifth Avenue in NYC, if you’re in town.
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