Cooper announces modified stay-at-home order effective Dec. 11

Roy Cooper at Dec. 8 briefing
HUNKER DOWN: Gov. Roy Cooper announced new stay-at-home guidelines for North Carolina to slow the spread of COVID-19 at a Dec. 8 press conference. Photo courtesy of the N.C. Department of Public Safety

Gov. Roy Cooper made his stance very clear over the last few weeks: If COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations continued to increase, he would do whatever was necessary to keep North Carolina residents safe — even if that meant imposing additional statewide restrictions.

At a Dec. 8 press conference, Cooper followed through with that promise. Starting Friday, Dec. 11, at 5 p.m., North Carolina will move into a modified stay-at-home order, requiring most people to remain in their homes from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily.

All businesses, including restaurants, retail stores, entertainment venues and outdoor bars, will be required to close by 10 p.m. All on-site alcohol consumption must end by 9 p.m.

Similar curfew measures in Ohio and Massachusetts have seen early successes, Cooper said. “As the weather gets colder in places where people gather, places like a restaurant where you take off a mask to eat: These are places where the virus is spreading. We don’t want people to go over and visit together outside of their homes or in another person’s home,” he noted.

The new guidelines will remain in place through Friday, Jan. 8. If trends don’t improve in that time frame, Cooper warned, the next steps will involve indoor restaurant dining, entertainment facilities and retail stores.

“Our top priority is saving lives and keeping our health care system from being overwhelmed,” he said.

Critical community spread more than doubles, NCDHHS reports

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services released an update to its COVID-19 County Alert System on Dec. 8, announced Dr. Mandy Cohen, the state’s secretary of health and human services. Of North Carolina’s 100 counties, 48 are now experiencing “critical” community spread, up from 20 counties two weeks ago.

In Western North Carolina, Cherokee, Swain, Jackson, Haywood, Madison, Yancey, Mitchell, Avery and Rutherford counties are all classified in the red, or critical, tier. McDowell County falls in the orange, or substantial, tier; Buncombe, Henderson, Polk, Transylvania, Graham and Macon counties are all in the lowest yellow tier, which still indicates significant viral spread.

The high COVID-19 case counts reported over the last several days likely do not yet reflect the full impact of Thanksgiving gatherings, Cohen noted. The record cases reported over the weekend — 6,018 and 6,438 on Dec. 5 and 6, respectively — included the first wave of people who attended holiday celebrations and began showing symptoms days later, she explained. This week, Cohen predicts raw case counts will rise as individuals who were infected by others at those gatherings begin feeling sick.

Although Buncombe remains in the state’s yellow tier, local health officials also expressed concern about future Thanksgiving-related spread during a Dec. 7 briefing of the county Board of Commissioners. And according to the COVID Risk Levels Dashboard hosted by the Brown University School of Public Health, the county has reported an average of more than 28 new daily cases per 100,000 residents over the past week — above the level of spread the dashboard characterizes as a “tipping point” at which stay-at-home protocols are necessary.

“Do not wait until it is you or your loved one who is sick with COVID to wear a mask, wash your hands and wait 6 feet apart,” Cohen emphasized. “Do not wait until it is you or your loved one alone in a hospital bed, struggling against this virus. Do not wait until your family loses someone to COVID-19 to do these 3Ws. Protect yourselves, your loved ones and your community right now.”

In other news

  • Approximately 27.9% of Asheville’s jobs are remote work-friendly, a new report by Outdoorsy found. The local figure is slightly lower than the 35.5% of workers nationally in a job that can be performed entirely remotely. The full report can be found here.
  • As COVID-19 financial losses mount for many WNC families, Brother Wolf Animal Rescue is committed to keeping pets with their owners. Through its ‘Keep Me Safe’ program, the organization will provide temporary pet housing in a foster home if owners suddenly find themselves without housing. More information can be found here.
  • The Dec. 8 basketball game between UNC Asheville and East Tennessee State University has been postponed due to COVID-19 concerns within the ETSU program. Both schools are exploring options to reschedule.
  • Eight Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office deputies who had been exposed to a coworker with COVID-19 while providing courthouse security have all tested negative for the disease, according to a county press release. The deputies are expected to return to work later this week.
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About Molly Horak
Molly Horak served as a reporter at Mountain Xpress. Follow me @molly_horak

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7 thoughts on “Cooper announces modified stay-at-home order effective Dec. 11

  1. C-Law

    Folks, it’s pretty simple.

    At the start of this thing back in March and April I pointed out that if you cut the vectors off for this (or any other) disease it stops being a problem. I was hellbent on going after the people working in hospitals and nursing homes for this reason, since not only were they a major vector but they were giving the virus to vulnerable people that it was far more-likely to kill as well.

    Nobody listened.

    Well, months have gone by and now we have more data. So let’s use it.

    FACT: The only STATISTICALLY material transmission vectors for Covid-19 are nosocomial (by definition every transmission into a nursing home is that) and household.

    The CDC in fact says that a majority (given the current Rt estimates) of transmission happens in households.

    In fact here’s the MMWR paper on it—

    https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6944e1.htm

    “ For this analysis, 101 households (including 101 index patients and 191 household members) were enrolled and completed ≥7 days of follow-up. …. Among all household members, 102 had nasal swabs or saliva specimens in which SARS-CoV-2 was detected by RT-PCR during the first 7 days of follow-up, for a secondary infection rate of 53% (95% CI = 46%–60%) (Table 2). Secondary infection rates based only on nasal swab specimens yielded similar results (47%, 95% CI = 40%–54%).”

    If you have it you will sustain community transmission statistically within your own household alone. That is, one person gets it for each person who has it, which means no matter how many masks you force people to wear, no matter how many schools you close and no matter how many restaurants and bars you shutter THIS WILL NEVER STOP UNTIL HERD IMMUNITY IS REACHED. If you slow it down for a bit as soon as you relax anything it comes roaring back because as soon as it gets into a house it finds enough people to keep virusing.

    This marks every bit of sanction on businesses, schools and mask orders in public places WORTHLESS by simple mathematics. You cannot maintain those public constraints forever but even if you could it does not matter as transmission in households is sufficient standing alone to keep the virus spreading in the community.

    But… this also means that if you shut both of those vectors down so that transmission through them effectively ceases then nothing else matters in the other direction either (masks, shutdowns, capacity limits, etc) because all of those other vectors together are insufficient to maintain transmission (Rt) over 1.0 and as a result it’s over.

    We know how to do it. Right now. Today. For pennies.

    FOR REAL.

    Here’s the study— https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT04425850?view=results

    Got it folks? This is health care workers using standard PPE as control, and the trial group added Ivermectin and carrageenan (snorted, basically; it’s a cheap food additive but is not probably actually active. Won’t hurt you though — it’s an extract from a species of red seaweed)

    Zero infections occurred in the trial group.

    ZERO.

    That’s ONE HUNDRED percent effective .vs. 11% who got infected using MASKS without the Ivermectin — these are health care workers who have been trained to maintain protocol which nobody in the general public has been or will.

    Adverse events in the trial group from taking the drug? ZERO.

    That’s right — not one adverse event. Unlike the vaccines which are reported to be very uncomfortable — and we hope there’s nothing nasty that surfaces when we start using them on a mass basis. Do remember that this drug in particular has had billions of doses dispensed and consumed — not a few tens of thousands.

    So how do you cut Covid off?

    SIMPLE.

    All health care workers are offered the protocol after personal medical advice.

    All nursing home and other high-risk persons are offered this protocol under personal medical advice. Ivermectin is extremely cheap, about a buck a pill if that, unbelievably safe and not a daily pill, in this use it’s once a month.

    If you test positive you are handed a pill for yourself and each member of your household with instructions to eat them immediately again, under personal medical advice rendered to you and your household members. That both treats you and provides a high degree of protection for everyone else in the house from getting it from you.

    The Egyptian study —

    https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-100956/v1/682247ca-ef49-4d68-aa3f-493a8fc9a056.pdf

    showed 80% effectiveness as prophylaxis for Ivermectin among household members of confirmed infected persons.

    It also cut the early use mortality rate from 4% to ZERO.

    The expected results of oral Ivermectin distribution to at-risk, health care, and everyone in the household of someone diagnosed including the patient?

    80% prevention of contagion to other members of the household.

    80% reduction of transmission to at-risk people.

    Nearly 100% reduction in death for those who are given the drug early. Yes, it won’t work for everyone I’m sure. But if it’s 90% that’s a hell of a lot better than we have now, and the Egyptian data says that 99% of those who you intervene early with never need a hospital. In other words the entire hospital “overload” problem disappears immediately.

    In addition the Rt, effective transmission rate, is dampened by approximately 0.5 which is enough to drop it under 1.0 everywhere in the United States.

    https://rt.live/

    There is no need for masks, for business or school closures or capacity limits of any sort because the primary vectors are eliminated and transmission cannot be maintained.

    Do this and the entire “pandemic” is over in ONE WEEK.

    I WILL REPEAT MYSELF JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

    IF WE DO THIS IT ENDS THE PANDEMIC IMMEDIATELY AND PERMANENTLY — AND COSTS ABOUT $2/PERSON WHO IS INFECTED OR EXPOSED.

    The two primary vectors are cut off and that’s the end of it. Those who get it are, with a high degree of reliability, treated and recover at home. Statistically nobody goes to the hospital and nobody dies.

    Statistically zero people who are not today infected need to die from this point forward.

    Zero.

    And we’ve known that this drug works since June, so everyone in the political, medical and so-called “science” communities who have sat on their ass and screamed about MAAAASSSSSSSKKKKSSSS are murderous bastards.

    We’ve known how to cut this virus off at the knees by making it unable to infect another person, on average, for each person infected for nearly six months and every one of those *******s willfully and intentionally ignored this in favor of “vaccines” and WORTHLESS mask orders.

    Cut the bull**** Cooper!

    Willful ignorance is not an excuse.

    IT IS MANSLAUGHTER.

    • G Man

      The problem is that none of that fits the current narrative which has propelled so many commonplace politicians onto a plane of omnipotence where they can play the roles of executive, legislative, and judicial authority. This couldn’t be better for the uber-rich who are quite happy to dump their money into fixing elections and suppressing actual discussions and science so they can further separate the “upper class” from the rest of us with the destruction of small business and the working class in our country. All the while, we are convinced that racial justice is the biggest problem we face in our society.

      The atmosphere of fear and doubt makes the masses crumble and become parrots of the ruling class. The few who seem to be able to see what is going on are now policed by the self-deputized parrots who now believe that we are the cause of all their problems. They are 100% certain that the hypocritical “leaders” are only there to look out for us and know better than anyone else what we need.

      So, shut up, put your mask on, and stay at home. You know the virus only spreads at night (after 10PM) and unless you are a politician or an essential protester then you are a super-spreader and have no business being out in public or voicing an opinion or asking questions.

      • Dopamina

        Two possibilities I guess: either you are wrong or you are right.

        Here’s the thing: wearing a mask doesn’t hurt you if you are right and this is all overblown – but yet folks like you still piss and moan about that.

        We wouldn’t need these lockdowns if adults could stop acting like selfish children and conduct themselves with a little personal responsibility. Why is it so hard for so many to honor their civic duty to their fellow man? When did we become so selfish? But I know based on the volume of conspiracies you listed off that there is no getting through to you – you cant reason someone out of a position they haven’t reasoned themselves into.

        Hope life gets better for ya!

        • G Man

          Like so many others, you seem to assume I refuse to wear a mask.

          I WEAR A F^@&ING MASK EVERY TIME I GO OUT IN PUBLIC!

          I still believe it should not be a mandate and I still believe the impact it has is minimal, if any. My question is: In light of me doing “my civic duty” even against my own beliefs, what do I get in return? Remember when people used to compromise and negotiate with each other. I’m giving in on this but you won;t give anything back because you just feel like this is something I MUST do for your own good and you don’t give a shat about what anybody else thinks or believes.

          So, who is the selfish one here? Who is the one making false assumptions about others? I can reason out everything I posted. How about you?

    • bsummers

      Wow, “C-Law”. You sound like a real expert. I’ll just ignore all the professionals who aren’t afraid to put their names behind what they recommend.

      • Dopamina

        Hey man, he cut and pasted this from Facebook, surely it must be gospel.

    • Dopamina

      Good thing you are posting this wall of text here where literally no one will see it.

      Herd immunity would result in the death of millions of people, get a grip.

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