Coronavirus daily update: Wednesday, April 29

Fast and slow

Here’s an example of how quickly the news cycle is moving these days: Some time on Monday, Greensboro GTA learned that one of its bus drivers has tested positive for COVID-19. Seems the other drivers learned about it on Tuesday, but were not told who it was. And then on Wednesday morning, none of them showed up for work. GTA put out a press release at 8:58 a.m. announcing that bus service would me “temporarily halted.”

As reporters all over town scrambled to get the backstory, GTA announced bus service had been reinstated in a 2:41 p.m. release. There’s a timeline of press releases here — but notice there’s no single release announcing the operator’s COVID-19 diagnosis.

But it all happened so fast it’s destined to become a footnote in the Triad’s coronavirus story — unless some enterprising reporter scoops it up and stays with it, which is tough to do when things are breaking so fast.

But then, things are also moving at an excruciatingly slow pace. Did you know it’s only Wednesday?

Here’s some more from the news cycle.

Some news

• Remdesivir, a drug being developed by UNC-Chapel Hill, is indicating reduced recovery times for COVID-19. A UNC epidemiologist called it a “game-changer.”
• Winston-Salem police say a group of teenagers and children, 19 of them, aged 9-16 years, stole 46 cars over the last month from city dealerships.
  • We’d love to hear more about this one, too, if anyone cares to dig in.

The numbers

• More than 60,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. The NY Times has a new tracker for states, metro areas and hot spots that is useful.
• North Carolina saw 380 new diagnoses today. That brings our 7-day rolling average up by 16, to 390. We’ve got more than 10,000 diagnoses, and 7,973 active cases. Sixteen new deaths today in NC — 379 total — with 1,796 recovered. That’s 87 new recoveries today.
• Guilford County ads 13 more diagnoses for 358 total cases, with no data on recoveries. There have been 24 deaths so far, second-highest in the state. Jordan Green has some reporting on the victims and their families.
• Forsyth County added 27 cases today, most attributed to employees from the Tyson chicken-processing plant in Wilkesboro.

A diversion

The 1970s were weird. People were into CB radios. The South had a sort-of moment in pop cultural history. And little boys stopped wanting to be cowboys when they grew up and started wanting to be stuntmen. You can blame some of this on Burt Reynolds, the No. 1 box-office draw in 1976, whose 1978 film Hooper was a tribute to the profession. TV didn’t get into the game until 1981, when “The Fall Guy” debuted — a series about a stuntman, played by Lee Majors who had just come off “The Six-Million Dollar Man,” who solved mysteries. Short take: It was dumb. But oh, the stunts! Here’s Season 2, Episode 14, wherein a jewel thief hides aboard a luxury cruise to recover from his plastic surgery. Fall Guy is on the case!

Program notes

• Tonight’s featured image is “The Departure for the Hunt” by Philips Wouwerman, 1665-68. Thanks to the National Gallery of Art‘s public-domain collection.
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