Image source: Screenshot of June 27, 2021, WTVD news story, “‘I’m gutted for everyone involved’: NC State fans, players react to baseball team forced forfeit.” For more details, read Carolina Journal, “COVID madness and questionable NCAA protocols end N.C. State’s chance at the national title.”

Here is the NC Threat-Free Index for the week ending June 28. Readers be advised: these numbers reflect what Gov. Roy Cooper desperately refers to as a “State of Emergency” necessitating him and only a few other governors nationwide to order small children to remain muzzled and breathing through pathogen-filled cloth:

  • As of June 28, there were 994,472 North Carolinians presumed to be recovered from COVID-19
  • Active cases comprised just 0.5% 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 0.05% (five-hundredths of one percent) of NC’s population (note: active cases are lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 minus recoveries and deaths)
  • Over 49 out of every 50 (98.2%) 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 90.5% 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 21, the estimate is now 71.0% of adult North Carolinians with immunity (vaccine-induced immunity and natural 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 (new cases are down 75% just since May 14, when Cooper lifted nearly all restrictions) is also indicative that North Carolina is either at or very near herd immunity.

Deaths as reported vs. when they actually occurred

In keeping with the trend discussed here under the title “DHHS still reports deaths from 2020 as ‘new’ Covid deaths,” of the 52 total “new” deaths announced in the past week, six (11.5%) were from 2020 and 16 (30.8%) were from January through March.

Just over half (30, or 57.7%) occurred in the past three months, April–June.