RALEIGH – It must be hard to drop the Chicken Little persona. More than a year after the initiation of Pandemic Panic politics, Governor Roy Cooper continues to hype fear and worry, this time due to the ‘Delta Variant.’
But Jon Sanders of the John Locke Foundation is wondering just how Cooper can still act as if the sky is falling. Sanders, director of regulatory studies for JLF, takes a look at the current COVID numbers and how they compare to recent months. TLDR: It’s hard to see how any form of emergency is justified, let alone masking kids in school.
The graph atop this post shows daily new case counts of Covid-19 announced in North Carolina since January 1. Sharp-eyed readers can clearly see the new spike in cases from the “Delta” variant, which WRAL assured us is “Covid-19 on steroids” and which had Gov. Roy Cooper today announcing “We’re worried.”
Nevertheless, even with an uptick of new cases announced this week, here is how Covid numbers have changed just since May 14, when Cooper surprised himself and the rest of us by lifting nearly all of his personal and business restrictions:
| May 14 | July 9 | Change | |
| New cases (7-day rolling average) | 1,262.9 | 439.4 | Down 65% |
| Hospitalizations (7-day rolling average) | 950.3 | 394.7 | Down 58% |
| Test percent positive (7-day rolling average) | 4.1% | 3.0% | Down 27% |
Out of curiosity, I wondered how Covid numbers have changed since January 8, Cooper’s first Covid-based Executive Order this year, when he kept in place a statewide curfew on people, kept closing some businesses early, kept tighter restrictions on alcohol sales and hours, and sought additional enforcement of the face mask order in addition to extending all of his other restrictions against private citizens and businesses.
This isn’t a look at Covid’s peak, as you can see. No, the virus continued to behave like a virus, a natural phenomenon not beholden to a human ruler and his antiscientific dictates. Did you know that not even one of Cooper’s twelve extensions or tightenings of his mask order against people — which was done under the promise it would actually reduce cases and virus transmission — not one happened with new case levels lower than they were when he first issued it? But here are those numbers:
| January 8 | July 9 | Change | |
| New cases (7-day rolling average) | 7,671.7 | 439.4 | Down 94% |
| Hospitalizations (7-day rolling average) | 3,754.9 | 394.7 | Down 89% |
| Test percent positive (7-day rolling average) | 11.8% | 3.0% | Down 75% |
But Roy Cooper is “worried.”
We’re worried he might have been bumped on the head a little too hard.
Read the rest of Sanders’ analysis here.
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