Coronavirus daily update: Tuesday, April 28

A river of news

The river of news never stops flowing, I often tell my reporters (and anyone else willing to listen to me crap on about it). And there are enough stories swimming around in it for everyone who wants to dip their cup.

Today, in particular, the river ran high.

Some news

• Let’s begin with the Bhutanese immigrants living in High Point and working at the Tyson chicken plant in Wilkesboro — a 90-minute commute each way — where five employees have tested positive for COVID-19.
  • Tyson Foods took out a full-page newspaper ad yesterday in the NY Times, WaPo and other outlets claiming that the coronavirus is “breaking” the food-supply chain.
  • President Trump said today he’ll sign an executive order bundling meat production in the the Defense Production Act, forcing them to stay open and protecting them from legal liability if workers get sick. We’ll look at the text of that order when it comes through.
• In other food news, High Point staple Carter Brothers Barbecue announced they would be closing permanently.
• And Greensboro has been named host city for the 2023 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament.
• Reopen NC held a protest in Raleigh today — photos to come — on the same day that the NC Legislature came back into session.
• Yesterday the state DHHS started quantifying the many outbreaks in “congregate living settings,” like nursing homes, managed-care facilities and even Rudd Farm.
• In Pittsboro, a Lowe’s employee tested positive for COVID-19. And in Chapel Hill, a dog tested positive. It’s the first case of canine coronavirus in the country. And with that timely bit of alliteration, let’s head into the numbers.

The numbers

• We’ve surpassed 3 million cases worldwide, and crossed the 1 million mark in the US today. so far, 58,640 Americans have perished, at least 140,138 recovered.
• We’ve got 426 new cases in NC, according to the N&O database, with 9,674 total diagnoses. At least 1,709 people have recovered; at least 361 people have died.
• Forsyth County adds five for 183.
• Fourteen more in Guilford, now 345.
  • 23 deaths so far in Guilford, which means two more today.

A diversion

We get a re-run channel through our digital antenna that gets us all sorts of old TV shows, and sometimes I make the kids watch. Last year I had to explain to them that “My Two Dads,” a forgettable sitcom from the late 1980s was not, as they assumed, about a same-sex couple trying to raise a daughter, but was instead about two heterosexual men living together and raising their daughter. I’m almost certain it was pitched as a gay show, but the studio execs nixed that storyline so they could nab stars Paul Reiser, who had just come off Beverly Hills Cop II and was cutting his TV chops before starring in the hit “Mad About You,” and Greg Evigan, a noted stage actor who had last been seen on the small screen in “BJ & the Bear,” a show about a long-distance truck driver and his monkey sidekick — another show my kids had trouble swallowing. In memory of all that bad and not-so-bad television, here’s Season 2 Episode 10 of “My Two Dads,” which I assume involves some sort of misunderstanding.

Program notes

• Tonight’s featured image is “Noah’s Warning About the Coming Flood Goes Unheeded,” by Luigi Ademollo, undated. Thanks to the National Gallery of Art‘s public-domain collection.
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