Coronavirus daily update: Thursday, July 30

The summer that wasn’t

Can you really call it a summer if you haven’t been to a parade or a ballgame, sunbathed on a crowded pool deck, attended a music festival, sang songs around a campfire, sat in a dark movie theater, thrown a cookout or been in one decent, neighborhood-wide water-gun battle?

Technically, I suppose, you can. But I’ve lived through 50 of them, and this ain’t summer.

Whatever you call it, it’s coming to a close, like the end of the movie Meatballs, and most of us have a short list of failed aspirations or things we did not do, like the end of the movie Porky’s, which you should never, ever watch.

But! Things are happening! Including a new issue of TCB, out today with a free comic book inside!

In the paper

• Gyms are supposed to be closed, but many are open. What’s up with that?
• Jordan went to a protest action in Raleigh.
• Nik Snacks looks at selling plates in the neighborhood.
• The teenagers have been staying up all night.
• Some words about the X-Men from Jermaine Exum of Acme Comics.
• And imagine if all the Triad activist groups started coordinating….

The numbers

• 2,344 new cases is one of the worst days yet in NC — 120,194 total; 1,239 hospitalized; 1,921 dead.
  • Positive test rate climbs a point to 8 percent.
• Forsyth County reports 88 new cases for 4,791 — the dept. of health did not make a Facebook post today, but they’re usually pretty good about it.
• Guilford County adds 75 for 4,957. One more death makes 140.

A diversion

From the dawn of television, the variety show has always been a staple of the American diet. In the very old days, all shows were variety shows, one vaudeville act after another. Today we have stuff like “America’s Got Talent” and such. But in the 1970s, a variety show needed a celebrity anchor or two. We had “Sonny and Cher,” “The Mandrell Sisters,” “The Captain and Tennille” and maybe the purest version of the form, “The Donny & Marie Show,” featuring the two most attractive Osmond children. Here’s one from 1976, with Jimmie Walker, Andy Williams, Paul Lynde and more.

Program notes

• Tonight’s featured image is a “Boating,” by Edouard Manet, 1874. Taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
• If you’d like to help Triad City Beat, please consider becoming a supporter. You could also give us a like on Facebook and share our stories on Twitter.