As Gov. Roy Cooper’s mask order is apparently working so well he decided to do “something else” about the virus by socking the state into a curfew until sometime in 2021, here is this week’s NC Threat-Free Index:

  • As of Dec. 7: 341,041 North Carolinians are presumed to be recovered from COVID-19
  • Active cases comprise 13.2% of NC’s total case count (note: a case of COVID isn’t a permanent infection, and only someone with an active case of the virus can conceivably transmit it to you)
  • Active cases represent just 0.5% (five-tenths of one percent) of NC’s population (note: active cases are lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 minus recoveries and deaths)
  • Six out of every seven (85.4%) of NC’s total cases are recovered, meaning they are no longer infectious
  • Only 0.05% of people in NC have died with COVID-19 (regardless of the actual cause of death)
  • Over 96% people in NC have never had a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19, despite the PCR test cycle threshold set so high as to produce a large amount of false positives (note: this proportion will always decline, but we have been living with this virus since February, as far as testing is concerned)
  • All considered, 99.5% of people in NC pose no threat of passing along COVID-19 to anyone — a virus most have never had and the rest have recovered from (note: this proportion will fluctuate based on the relative growth in lab-confirmed cases vs. recoveries) (side note: this proportion is likely understated because NC’s population has continued to grow since July)