Coronavirus daily update: Tuesday, Oct. 6

ZZ Top and beef bourguignon

I lost a dear friend on Friday night, and the world lost a footnote in New Orleans mythology. The story about Jerry delivering the baby on the pool table is true — I was drinking in the nar the next morning with the cops who were on duty that night.

I relived some of these New Orleans episodes with his widow, Kerryn, on the phone Saturday, and I reminded her that when Jerry was tending bar at the swanky Le Pavillion Hotel on Canal Street, he became friends with the guys from ZZ Top, who always stayed there when they were in town. One night he invited them over for dinner.

“I made beef bourguignon!” Kerryn shouted. “How did you remember that?”

Anyway, I miss the old bastard. The world was better with him in it.

The news is just a bunch of noise about coronavirus in the White House — now the joint chiefs of staff are quarantined. So let’s look in on the numbers.

The numbers

• 1,504 new cases in North Carolina — a drop ‚ making 215,477 of the kind we count. With 3,670 deaths (+33, 1.70 percent).
  • Positive test rate 7.9 percent. Which is bad.
• Forsyth County adds 19 cases for 7,382, of which 6,670 have recovered (+16, 90.35 percent) and 104 have died (+0, 1.41 percent).
• The entire Guilford County website is down. But 1point3acres says it added 105 for 9,234 total cases, 188 deaths (+8, 2.04 percent), no recovery data there.

A diversion

Because my friend Jerry was a carny for a time (for real), I found a bootleg rip of the 1980 film Carny, starring Jodie Foster, Gary Busey, Robbie Robertson from the Band and a young Fred Ward. I’m sure it’s fine.

Program notes

• For tonight’s featured image, we’ve got “The Grandchildren of Sir William Heathcote, 3rd Baronet,” by William Owen, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806. Taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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