Here is the NC Threat-Free Index for the week ending March 8:
- As of March 8, there were 837,824 North Carolinians presumed to be recovered from COVID-19
- Active cases comprised just 2.9% 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 represented about 0.2% (two-tenths of one percent) of NC’s population (note: active cases are lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 minus recoveries and deaths)
- More than 19 out of every 20 (95.8%) of NC’s total cases were recovered, meaning they are no longer infectious
- Only about 0.1% of people in NC had died with COVID-19 (regardless of the actual cause of death)
- Meanwhile, about 91.8% people in NC had 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 2020, as far as testing is concerned)
- All things considered, nearly 99.7% of people in NC posed no threat of passing along COVID-19 to anyone — a virus most had never had and the rest had recovered from (note: this proportion will fluctuate based on relative growth in lab-confirmed cases vs. recoveries, and it is likely understated because it does not account for vaccinations)