Coronavirus daily update: Monday, Feb. 1

A NC temperature check

We’re one month into the new year, about six weeks into the vaccine phase and almost two weeks into the Biden Administration, which is a good time to pull our heads up from the daily grind and take a look at how we’re doing.

In the United States, we’re finally dropping off a third wave that dwarfed the first two, with new cases down a third and daily deaths just starting to wane. We’re approaching 20 million vaccines administered, with a long way to go.

North Carolina is trending down in new cases, intermittently, easing pressure on our hospitals, but daily deaths are increasing. Generally, rural counties are running hotter than urban ones. We’ve given out more than 1 million vaccines so far; sourcing continues to be a problem, though we’ve been assured more are on the way.

The numbers

• 3,776 new cases in NC today, three consecutive days of decline. 761,302 total, 80,856 of which are antigen-positive cases. Up to 9,342 deaths (1.23 percent), 894 of which were antigen-positive cases.
  • New recovery numbers: 683,697 (89.8 percent), making 67,263 current cases.
  • A 9.7 positive test rate works for me right now.
• Guilford County adds 462 today, which is actually down from last week’s average. with 391 deaths — 17 reported just today — and 5,443 current cases.
• Forsyth says 118 new ones today, making 27,913, and 280 deaths. Recovery numbers have not been touched in a week.

A diversion

This one’s weird.

Everyone loves Charlie Brown, right? Aficionados of the Peanuts oeuvre know Snoopy’s skinny cousin Spike, who had a mustache and lived in the desert. Full-on nerds, though, might remember this spin-off from 1988, “It’s the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown,” which was one of those hybrid animation/live-action jobs that everyone was trying to do after Roger Rabbit. This one was not received well, and has b=not benefited from a re-assessment.

Program notes

• Tonight we present “To Decide the Question,” by John George Brown in 1897, devoid of context. Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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