Image source: Screenshot of May 23, 2020, News & Observer video of Ace Speedway, which opened despite the governor’s shutdown of races and other events without following the state Emergency Management Act. The Speedway was one of many embattled North Carolina businesses to challenge the governor in court, but judges tended to defer, while media companies — such as the source of this video — cheered the lockdowns, which didn’t materially affect them.

Here is the NC Threat-Free Index for the week ending June 7. Readers be advised: these numbers reflect what Gov. Roy Cooper desperately refers to as a “State of Emergency“:

  • As of June 7, there were 985,048 North Carolinians presumed to be recovered from COVID-19
  • Active cases comprised just 0.8% 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 0.07% (less than one-tenth of one percent) of NC’s population (note: active cases are lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 minus recoveries and deaths)
  • Over 39 out of every 40 (97.9%) of NC’s total cases were recovered, meaning they are no longer infectious
  • Only just over 0.1% of people in NC had died with COVID-19 (regardless of the actual cause of death)
  • About 90.6% 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, over 99.9% 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)

Community immunity update

For June 7, the estimate is now 70.3% of adult North Carolinians with immunity (vaccine-induced immunity andnatural immunity), using CDC estimates of actual infections and DHHS estimates of current vaccinations and the formula outlined here.

As a reminder, it is widely accepted that herd immunity from Covid-19 is with 70% of people immune. Furthermore, the ongoing, rapid decline in virus numbers in North Carolina is also indicative that North Carolina is either at or very near herd immunity.