Not so fast…

Daily corona round-up

Remember when a week used to last a long time?

It’s only Wednesday, folks, and news started breaking within minutes of filing yesterday’s round-up. I managed to tack one on — the stay-in-place order from Durham Mayor Steve Schewel — but another I missed: The amended emergency order from Guilford County. Surely by now that’s old news, right? So much has happened since then.

And, I’ll remind you, it’s only Wednesday.

  • Top of the news is the stay-in-place order coming from the mayors of Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem beginning at 5 p.m. on Friday and ending, tentatively, on April 16, along with a limit on all gatherings to 10 people.
    • You can still go out to buy food. You can still hike, golf, run on the greenway, ride your bike and pursue other activities, but you can’t play on playgrounds.
    • Read the Greensboro declaration here.
    • You can still work if your industry is deemed an essential service. These include, in this order: healthcare and public health; law enforcement, public safety and first responders; food and agriculture; energy; water and wastewater; transportation and logistics; public works; communication and information technology; community-based government operations; human services; critical manufacturing; and hazardous-waste disposal.
    • Grocery stores and drug stores are essential services.
  • Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers announced that the county will not be issuing any new concealed-carry permits during this time, but that permits in process would be fulfilled.
  • House Whip Jon Hardister (R-Guilford) has been giving a useful morning update on his Facebook page. Today he announced that the House Select Committee on COVID-19 will have its first virtual meeting tomorrow, and he even dropped a link to the livestream.
  • I guess they’re passing some sort of bill in the Senate tonight? Who the hell knows.

The numbers

  • Guilford County recorded six new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total to 22. Forsyth County added three for a total of 17. One of Forsyth’s cases is a student at Wake Forest University, quarantined in a residence on campus. The student had been on a university-sponsored trip to London.
  • North Carolina now has 596 cases, up 84 today; 54 percent of them are in Mecklenberg (170), Durham (84) and Wake (73).
  • The state recorded its first coronavirus death today — a Cabarrus County resident, the N&O reported, in his late 70s who had underlying health problems.
  • As of this writing, 64,522 Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19. I just clicked refresh, and it’s 64,645. 933 have died.

A diversion

Here’s a video of Puddles the Clown singing a Flat Duo Jets song. If you have not heard either of these names before, or Dexter Romweber, for that matter, consider this worthy fodder to venture down the internet rabbit hole.

Program notes

  • Our featured image tonight is “The Alamo,” by Robert Shaw, 1905
  • If you like Triad City Beat, please consider joining our mailing list, or making a donation. It’s worth it for the Puddles videos alone.

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