Coronavirus daily update: Monday, July 20

Turning up the heat

The long, hot summer hits its dog days this week, and they should last throughout August. I burned my hands on my steering wheel today, worked up a full coat of sweat by walking just half a block and now, in the late afternoon, I’m hoping for a quick little rainstorm to sizzle off the pavement.

It’s getting hotter metaphorically, as well.

The numbers

• We have surpassed 100,000 COVID-19 diagnoses in North Carolina, with the addition of 1,286 today — our total is 101,046.
  • Monday’s recovery report presumes 78,707 have made it through — that’s 77.89 percent.
  • 1,642 have died — 1.63 percent.
  • Of the remaining 20,697, at least 1,086 are currently hospitalized — that’s 5.24 percent.
• Forsyth County has added 212 cases over the weekend, making 4,220 total — 4.18 percent of the state’s total cases.
  • 2,624 recoveries — 3.33 percent of the state total.
  • 41 deaths makes 2.50 percent of the state total.
  • 1,555 active cases is 7.51 percent of the state total.
• Guilford County added 63 new cases, for 3,967 total — that is 3.92 percent of the state total.
  • 2,086 recoveries, or 2.65 percent.
  • 133 deaths, or 8.10 percent of the state total.
  • 1,748 current cases, or 8.45 percent of the state total.
• Cases are on the rise in 43 states, including NC.

A diversion

You know what else is hot? The desert. So here’s The Sheik, a silent film form 1921 starring Rudolph Valentino. The themes are tough to discern: a primitive sort of feminism, some mild racism and other buried treasures.

Program notes

• Tonight’s featured image is a Civil War-era photograph from 1863, “Confederate Method of Destroying Rail Roads at McCloud Mill, Virginia.” The Confederate Army would dismantle railroad tracks and use the ties to make bonfires, upon which they would lay the steel rails, which could be twisted out of shape when hot so they couldn’t be used again. Taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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