Coronavirus daily update: Tuesday, March 31

Burying our own

There’s a lot of news happening while everyone is staying at home. The Justice Department is investigating the FBI. There was a shooter at an Asheville courthouse today. And everybody is watching “Tiger King.”

But the news from home seems so much more relvant.

The news

• Both Guilford and Forsyth counties recorded their first deaths due to COVID-19 today. Guilford’s case was a 78-year-old man with underlying health conditions who died on Tuesday. No more details were available about the Forsyth case at this time.
• Over at NC Policy Watch, Lisa Sorg does some prognosticating about North Carolina’s future. It’s not great. But it could be worse.
• The Winston-Salem Symphony has canceled the rest of its season. The Tanger Center in Greensboro, which was scheduled to open this month, is rescheduling events as early as July 11.
• Here’s a new tool: A real-time health weather map of the US. I have not figured out how to read it yet. But this is a fine segue into the numbers.

The numbers

• As noted, Guilford and Forsyth have officially lost people to COVID-19. Guilford finishes the day with 50 cases — that’s up six cases. Forsyth added two more for a total of 42.
• There are 1,522 cases of COVID-19 documented in North Carolina. That’s up 149 cases from yesterday, which is not as big a jump as the previous day’s 186-case increase.
• Stay home. It’s working.

A diversion

You had to know it was only a matter of time before Chad Nance released a video about this whole thing. This one, orchestrated by Dale Cole and performed with the Virtual Village, hit social media today: a who’s who of Winston-Salem culturati doing what they do: collaborating and having fun.

Program notes

• Tonight’s featured image is “The Death of Sapphira,” by an artist whose name is lost to time, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art’s public-domain collection. Sapphira and her husband Ananias were punished for embezzling from Jesus.
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