Coronavirus daily update: Wednesday, July 29

Some maintenance

Today I pulled the hard drive from my old computer — which was the victim of a coffee spill yesterday morning — and dropped it into another one, which came in the mail just after we wrapped up production on tomorrow’s paper.

There’s a free comic book in tomorrow’s paper, by the way. Don’t sleep on that.

Tomorrow I will jumpstart my car and then bring it to the mechanic, where I will find our if I need a new battery, a new alternator or a new starter. None are truly great options, but all are better than using jumper cables every time I want to start my car.

Tonight I’m writing the update, and waiting for the next thing to break down. And then I will fix that, too.

In the paper

• Meanwhile, we’re dropping new content on the website every day. Here’s a piece about Guilford County Schools opening plan.
• Ten activists were arrested in downtown Winston-Salem yesterday, bringing the arrest total to 55 so far.
• We’ve got some advice for Triad activist groups, who could really benefit from each other’s experience, strength and hope.
• And it’s not in the paper, but it’s news: The state fair, scheduled for mid-October, has been canceled.

The numbers

• 1,763 new cases in North Carolina today — we’ve diagnosed 117,850 so far.
  • At least 92,302 have recovered and 1,886 have died.
  • 1,291 are hospitalized — a new record.
  • We’re holding at a 7 percent positive-test rate.
• Guilford claims 45 new cases today, making 4,882 total, of which 2,604 have recovered and 139 have died. 459 are hospitalized.
• Forsyth adds 49 new cases, making 4,703. 3,220 have recovered and 49 have died, including five reported today. Just 23 are hospitalized.

A diversion

The Muppets were huge, almost from the get-go. Besides their role in “Sesame Street,” Jim Henson’s creations had been featured on variety and sketch-comedy shows since the 1950s, and were even a part of the first season of “Saturday Night Live.” But in the 1970s they got huge, with a primetime TV show, a hit movie and all sorts of merchandising and other opportunities. They were so big that in 1979, Kermit and friends guest-hosted an episode of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” which was the biggest thing on TV back then. Totally worth the watch: They interview Bernadette Peters and Vincent Price, and the whole thing was live.

Program notes

• Tonight’s featured image is a “The Contest for the Bouquet: The Family of Robert Gordon in Their New York Dining-Room,” by Seymour Joseph Guy, 1866. Taken from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public-domain collection.
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