Coronavirus daily update: Monday, March 8

Vaccination fascination

Coronavirus vaccinations have been flowing into arms for months now, and we’re starting to make some headway against the virus that has jacked up the last year of our lives.

An observation: A lot of people I know got the ‘rona in the last 12 months, but almost none of them announced it on social media. Conversely, everybody’s publicizing their vaccine appointments these days. It’s the newest staus symbol.

In North Carolina, we’re still on the third phase of vaccinations, which includes old and sick people and those who take care of them, teachers and restaurant workers, and a few more categories. I’m Phase 4, the internet tells me. And while appointments are filling up fast, we’ve got massive, FEMA-backed vaccine sites in Greensboro (Four Seasons Mall) and Winston-Salem (Fairgrounds) processing hundreds of people a day.

Here’s another great site to help you find your vaccination.

And if you’ve got n inside track on some, keep me posted.

The numbers

• Praise the lord and pass the peas: 1,228 new cases in NC today; 1,126 hospitalized; 4.6 percent positive test rate
  • 9.4 percent of the state has been vaccinated (982,164 people)
• Guilford County still adding more than 100 new cases per day (106). Just 61 hospitalized, though, and 1,169 current cases.
  • 8.1 percent fully vaccinated (43,304)
• Forsyth adds just 36 today. Almost 30,000 recovered as of Feb. 27.
  • 10.1 percent fully vaccinated (38,494)

A diversion

I’m just finishing tup Ta-Nehisi Coates’ memoir, Between the World and Me, which is just an incredible piece of writing, powerful and deep, to which I owe this next phase of my education. Here’s the author a couple days after Trump’s Insurrection on Jan. 6, trying to make sense of it all.

Program notes

• “The Potato Peeler” is a lesser-known Van Gogh, painted on the reverse side of the canvas that holds his “Self Portrait with a Straw Hat,” like a B-side. It was painted in February/March 1885, about a year before he left Holland for France. Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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