FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOES NOT TRACK COVID 19 CASES AT PRIVATELY-RUN PRISONS: On Sunday, a public health director in North Carolina confirmed one inmate and at least three staff members have tested positive for the virus at Rivers Correctional Institution near the Hertford County town of Winton. It is a low-security prison for men run by the GEO Group in Boca Raton, Fla. Sue Allison, a spokeswoman for the bureau, confirmed last week in an email that the bureau’s case tracking does not include the privately run prisons. She did not say why. Efforts to reach bureau officials on Sunday by phone and email were unsuccessful. Irving Joyner, a law professor for N.C. Central University in Durham, said the lack of reporting out of privately-run federal prisons is another example of governmental officials not taking seriously the health and welfare of inmates in a pandemic. “This is just another example of dereliction of duty as it relates to the safety of that population that’s incarcerated by our government,” he said.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article242125516.html

172 NC FATALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH CORONAVIRUS COMPLICATIONS: North Carolina has at least 6,031 reported cases of the coronavirus as of Saturday morning, and 172 people have died, according to state and county health departments. The state health department reported 394 new cases on Friday, the second-highest jump since the outbreak began. At least 429 North Carolinians were hospitalized with COVID-19 Friday, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. That’s down from Thursday’s all-time high of 452. Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte, has the most reported cases in the state, with 1,136. The county has reported 24 deaths. Wake County, which includes Raleigh, has 574 reported cases and three deaths. Durham County has 338 reported cases and four deaths.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article242101686.html

UNC-CH RESEARCHERS TARGETED BY CONSPIRACY THEORISTS OVER VIRUS: By March, Kari Debbink, a professor at Bowie State University who holds a doctorate from UNC-Chapel Hill, had received her first death threat. The reason: She was being accused of helping create the novel coronavirus, which has caused the COVID-19 pandemic that has shut down much of the world, in a lab in North Carolina. One unfounded theory that many internet users have latched onto and that has been amplified by right wing news channels has placed its sights on North Carolina. It claims — falsely — that COVID-19 was created at UNC-Chapel Hill, specifically in the lab of Ralph Baric, where Debbink once worked. Baric is one of the world’s preeminent researchers of coronaviruses — having studied the family of viruses known for their crown-like shape for 30 years. His lab on the UNC campus was one of the first places in the U.S. to receive a sample of the novel coronavirus earlier this year to begin conducting tests.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article241996426.html

BERGER PUSHES RANDOM TESTING BOONDOGGLE FOR CORONAVIRUS: A new study based at Wake Forest Baptist Health will mail coronavirus antibody tests to 1,000 North Carolinians, legislative leaders announced Monday. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger has been calling for weeks for random sample testing to better gauge the extent of the outbreak, and now the legislature will put up $100,000 to mount the project itself, sending people tests through the mail. People will use the kits to prick their fingers once a month for a year, and the test is meant to determine whether their blood contains COVID-19 antibodies. "Much like a political opinion poll, researchers will use the proportion of people in the representative sample who have antibodies to extrapolate the prevalence of immunity to the larger population," Berger's office said Monday.
https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/nc-legislature-will-fund-random-covid-19-tests/19054667/

NC'S NEGLECTED UNEMPLOYED NEED AND DESERVE BETTER, NOW: That lack of concern and preparedness has left nearly half a million hard working North Carolinians, who never dreamt of being out of a job, applying for unemployment benefits as a result of policy orders relating to the COVID-19 outbreak. They may be victims of a legislature that too often sought to comfort the wealthy at the expense of the state’s working families, children and the disadvantaged. The 2013 reforms to the state’s system, in reality “was an ideologically inspired effort to effectively eliminate unemployment insurance.” It appears to have been working. At the end of 2007 about 38 percent of North Carolina’s unemployed received unemployment insurance payments for as many as 26 weeks. By the end of last year, that was down to 10 percent who received benefits for no more than 12 weeks. This is simple – either you care about our unemployed and our uninsured, or you don’t.
https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/editorial-north-carolina-s-neglected-unemployed-need-and-deserve-be...