Active Cases in NC Fall To 14,712, Lowest in Three Months, and 99.83% of Us Aren’t Infectious | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Jon Sanders.

    For the second week in a row, and the sixth time in the past eight weeks, active cases in NC have fallen. This is one of the biggest untold stories about COVID-19 in North Carolina. Last week was yet another week there were more presumed recoveries from COVID-19 than new known cases. Further down I'll give a rundown of statistics, milestones, and implications of this ignored encouraging news.

Why your risk from a chance encounter with anyone is indistinguishable from zero

    People with active cases of COVID-19 are the only people in the state who can conceivably infect anyone. Even so, that doesn't mean they are all equally infectious. They're not. Furthermore, it doesn't mean every encounter with someone with an active case is equally risky. It isn't.

    As discussed in detail HERE, "The most reliable science on COVID-19 tells us that the more you're in close contact with someone infected and symptomatic, and the more severe the case, the higher your risk of contracting it."

    Pay attention to those stipulations. The person must be someone you are in (a) close contact with over a (b) long period of time while (c) infected and (d) symptomatic, especially the (e) more severe their infection.

    The next sentence: "On the other hand, your risk from a brief encounter with someone at a grocery store, someone walking from the door to the restaurant table, or someone going past on a public sidewalk is indistinguishable from zero."

    Seeing someone in the same store as you or that person walking past your table or other brief encounter (such as standing in line to vote) — not a close contact, no prolonged period of time, and a 99.83% likelihood of not even having an infection of any severity — presents essentially no risk to you at all, even without a cloth mask. This mass hysteria fanned by the Cooper administration and media is completely unwarranted and unhealthy.

Graphs, stats, and facts

    Here is the updated pie chart looking at how North Carolina's total cases break down into recoveries, deaths, and active cases (recoveries data are released on Mondays, so these numbers all reflect Monday's data):


    Here is the latest graph of week-to-week recoveries vs. cases and deaths:


    Here are some facts to know for this week's data:

• Active cases are down to 14,712, the lowest they have been since June 15 (see the chart atop this post)
• Active cases are down 28% from their peak of 20,525 on July 20
• Only 7.6% of NC's total case count constantly trumpeted by the Cooper administration and media are active cases
• Active cases represent 0.14% of NC's population; that is a little over one-tenth of one percent
• As of Monday, 176,422 people are presumed recovered from COVID-19
• Recoveries have outpaced new cases for six out of the past eight weeks
• Over nine out of every ten (90.8%) of NC's total cases are recovered, meaning they are no longer infectious
• Only 0.03% of people in NC have died with COVID-19 (regardless of actual cause of death)
• About 98.2% of people in NC have never had a confirmed case of COVID-19
• All considered, 99.83% of people in NC pose no threat to anyone of passing along a virus they've either never had or have recovered from