Coronavirus daily update: Monday, Feb. 8

Encroaching reality

Yes, it’s called the “Coronavirus daily update,” and I’ve more or less stuck to that schedule throughout the pandemic, beginning in March when my own work schedule got blown into smithereens.

But I took a couple days off last week, and I can’t promise that it won’t happen again. Business is starting to creep back into life here in the Triad, and I’ve finally been able to schedule sales meetings with some regularity again.

Hit me up if you want to buy something.

I’m still committed to writing the update on those days when my workload allows. And if I can sell enough stuff, I’ll pay someone else to do it.

We’re fast approaching our 7th anniversary here at Triad City Beat, and it’s no exaggeration to say that we did not know we were going to last this long. But here we are, surviving a pandemic! Also also: two impeachments.

Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate starts tomorrow. I will be watching.

The numbers

• New cases are declining statewide — down to 3,084 today, with a 7-day average dropping to around 4,000. 799,279 total — we’ll hit 800,000 tomorrow — 93,329 of which are antigen-positive cases. 9,991 deaths — we will top 10K in the next day or two — 1,033 of which came from antigen-positive cases.
  • New recovery numbers: 730,454, making roughly 58,835 current cases.
  • Hospitalizations are down: 2,339 statewide.
  • The county alert system was updated last week: 61 red counties (including Forsyth) and 33 orange (including Guilford).
  • 8.6 percent positive test rate, better!
  • Vaccination data from Johns Hopkins: 232,815 fully vaccinated (2.24 percent of the state), about 1 million have had the first dose.
• How did Guilford County rate orange? 327 cases today, down by hundreds from last week’s numbers, with four new deaths for 427. Hospitalizations down to 140, and 5,556 current cases.
• 160 new cases in Forsyth today, making 29,448, with 298 deaths. That’s all the data we get today.

A diversion

I have recently quit smoking cigarettes. It’s going fine. Fine. It’s fine. So fine that I was going to drop the 1971 Dick van Dyke film Cold Turkey, about a whole town that quits smoking. But I couldn’t find it on YouTube. So here’s a live John Lennon concert in New York City from 1972. Lennon smoked cigarettes until the day he died from an assassin’s bullet in 1980. Lucky bastard.

Program notes

• “The Reprimand,” from the Frenchman Jean-Georges Vibert in 1874, is loaded with subtext but has very little actual text to describe it on the Met website. Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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