Coronavirus daily update: Monday, July 6

The fireworks summer

This Fourth of July was the most explode-y night I believe I’ve ever experienced. The crackles and concussions of high-grade fireworks lasted, nonstop, deep into the night. We couldn’t see any of the displays from our neighborhood that night, but we saw tufts of smoke rising from the tree cover everywhere we looked.

You know what else is exploding? COVID-19 rates in the South!

The numbers

• Over the holiday weekend North Carolina posted 1,413, 1,329 and today’s total of 1,546 for a total of 74,529 total cases.
  • This week’s recovery data came in: 55,318 total recoveries statewide thus far, with 1,398 deaths, makes 17,813 active cases.
  • 982 are currently hospitalized (81 percent of hospitals reporting), which is 5.51 percent.
  • Our positive test rate is 9 percent; testing has been low the last few days but should pick up after the holiday weekend.
• Forsyth County reports 63 new cases today, making a total of 3,353 (4.49 percent of the state’s total). 2,040 have recovered (60.84 percent) and 37 have died (1.10 percent).
• Guilford County totals 3,149 (4.22 percent of the state total). That’s up 149 from our last report on Friday. 1,755 have recovered (55.73 percent) and 118 have died (3.74 percent).

Some news

• The Supreme Court of the US upheld “faithless elector” laws, meaning that, if they have enacted this legislation, a state’s electors in a presidential election must cast their vote for that state’s winner of the popular vote. NC is one of the states that can cancel an elector’s vote for swerving, and then replace the elector.
• A federal judge called off Graham’s no-protest zone. The Confederate monument remains.
• There’s been another COVID-19 outbreak in the GPD: Five sworn officers and two non-sworn. All are recovering at home.
• Bars in the state are getting the shaft. While true bars (no food, no brewery) are still shuttered by governor’s orders, all ABC permits for the quarter must still be paid. A move to extend the deadline died in the General Assembly last week.

A diversion

ABC Afterschool Specials were definitely a thing, a friend’s Facebook page recently reminded me — socially responsible television for kids to watch instead of doing their homework. And the absolute gem of the entire was “Stoned,” from 1980, starring a young Scott Baio as a teenager who tries drugs and alcohol to fit in. If I remember right, it had absolutely no effect on teenage inebriation — certainly not at my high school, where we recited the dialogue as punchlines while getting high in the parking lot — but it does hint at the hedonistic teenage wasteland into which we all were inducted.

Program notes

• From the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s public-domain collection, tonight we’ve got “The Bather,” by Winslow Homer, 1899.
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