NEWS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS: 32 active cases in Knox County, Health Director Buchanan supports ‘phased’ reopening of economy.

The Knox County Health Department reported two new cases Wednesday in its latest update on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

There are now 32 active cases in the county as of April 14, down from 35 on Tuesday. The total number of cases grew to 172.

The total number of recovered cases rose to 136. Recovered cases refer to those who have been released from isolation after seven days from their onset of symptoms, plus 72 hours of being symptom-free. Recovered does not mean necessarily the person had to be hospitalized.

Of the 172 cases, 21 have resulted in hospitalization at any point during the illness. This figure does not reflect the number of patients currently hospitalized in the county.

In Knox County, 4,422 total COVID-19 tests have now been conducted. . . .

Knox County Health Department Director Dr. Martha Buchanan said at Wednesday’s media briefing that she supports a phased reopening of the economy.

Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs unveiled his proposal for a strategic, phased reopening on Tuesday. Jacobs, along with the mayors of Davidson, Shelby and Hamilton counties, were asked to share their ideas for reopening with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.

“We all want to reopen the economy,” Buchanan said. “We will make that decision together.

“The plan is thoughtful. We are convening a local team to start local planning. Across our state, Nashville and Memphis look way different than the rest of us do. Planning to reopen in those areas is going to look very different.”

Buchanan said the key to knowing how and when to open the economy, as well as to what extent, will be “knowing the burden of the disease.” That includes seeing a decline on the curve of total and active cases.

“Knowing the burden of disease is going to be really important in helping us understand as we open do we need to back off or did we go too fast,” she said.

Finding that burden will require more health care providers to offer coronavirus testing, increased access to more specimen collectors and expansion of lab analysis capacity.

Regardless of when the reopening happens, Buchanan said practicing basic social distancing guidelines, like staying home when sick and washing your hands, will need to continue for some time.

Well, people should always stay home when sick and wash their hands. I will add that I don’t think Davidson or Shelby counties, which still have a lot of cases, are nearly as ready to start reopening as Knox County.

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BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES: Sen. Chris Murphy Exonerates China from Blame for COVID-19.

Fellow traveler? Useful idiot? Stooge?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): As I keep saying, you can see who’s on the payroll, or at least on the team.

WASN’T THERE A TERMINATOR MOVIE THAT FEATURED THIS? A new material to print mechanically robust and shape-shifting structures.

‘MURICA: 93-year-old woman using powers of the internet to keep beer stocked during pandemic.

I WOULD SAY IT’S MORE OF A RESULT, BUT I THINK IT’S SELF-EXACERBATING: Does Liberalism Cause Mental Illness? ” Top line: liberals are more than twice as likely as conservatives to be found to have a mental health condition. . . . Especially notable is the lower chart, which shows that ‘very liberal’ whites are much more likely to have mental health problems than ‘very liberal’ non-whites. I’d love to see this broken out further by income, as I suspect that problem is especially strong with rich white liberals. Turns out this isn’t an isolated finding.”

Woke politics is a species of weaponized neuroticism, and neurotics are often found among the spoiled. But if you pay much serious attention to it, it’ll make you crazier.

LIVING HISTORY: How the ‘Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World’ Got Its Logo.

AYN RAND DIDN’T WRITE THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE AS A HOW-TO GUIDE. Land of the Before Times: “Primitive living, it turns out, is so much easier with an inheritance…if you’re into Stone Age role-play, then spare cash and pre-built property, complete with solar panels, power outlets and rudimentary plumbing, does seem rather handy, perhaps a prerequisite. Such that our fearless disdainer of modernity can ‘divide her time’ flying between continents as mood suits, from Sweden to France’s Dordogne Valley and back to the mountains of Washington, USA. It’s the prehistoric way.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Free Money! Dems Team Up to Give Away the Farm, Barn & Outhouse. “For a not-untypical family like mine, that comes out to a stipend of $60,000 a year — even though my wife and I are still working fulltime at our pre-coronavirus jobs. The program would last for six months or until the unemployment rate returns to the pre-plague rate of 3.5%, whichever comes second. Bear with me here while I take you through some back-of-the-envelope math to figure out how much all this Emergency Money is going to cost…”

AND LATER TODAY: VIP Gold Live Chat with VodkaPundit and Kruiser at 3:30 Eastern.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Universities begin considering canceling in-person classes until 2021. This is going to be a big boost for online education, particularly as universities have to argue that online classes are equivalent to in-person instruction when defending against tuition lawsuits . . .

Related.

Also: After Coronavirus, Colleges Worry: Will Students Come Back?

“IT’S NOT THE PEOPLE WHO VOTE THAT COUNT, IT’S THE PEOPLE WHO COUNT THE VOTES:” New York Death Count Spikes After Gov’t Alters Methodology.

Related: “And if the Big Apple is going to cook the books this way, what is to stop Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and the rest?”

PARTY OF THE LITTLE GUY: Weed Up, Hoes Down in Whitmer’s Michigan. “Critics say Democratic governor’s stay-at-home order is arbitrary and favors big businesses.”

PROGRESS: New Rutgers Saliva Test for Coronavirus Gets FDA Approval.

KIRA DAVIS: Governor Gavin Newsom Unveils Six Creepy Conditions California Must Meet Before Reopening the Economy.

FOREIGN COLLUSION: US colleges received millions from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia…and didn’t report it.

We need much stricter enforcement of the various foreign-influence laws.

THE POWER LINE MID-WEEK IN PICTURES: What Day Is It? Edition.

JOE BATTENFELD: Trump move to hold China, World Health Organization accountable long overdue.

Trump is also bound to face blowback from the usual suspects in the mainstream media and China apologists. WHO supporters will say Trump is hurting the fight against the pandemic at the worst possible time.

No, in fact the timing is right to shine a spotlight on the World Health Organization. Why has the WHO been so friendly with China?

“We’ve had problems with them for years,” Trump said of the WHO. “This should have been done by previous administrations a long time ago.”

The president said he was launching an investigation to determine whether to permanently pull the plug on WHO funding.

“We will find out exactly what went on and we may be satisfied that it could be remedied and we may be satisfied that it’s so bad that it can’t be remedied. And if it can’t we’re going on a different route,” Trump said.

But the facts are already clear: WHO has been in China’s camp for years and took the communist dictatorship’s side in its response to the coronavirus pandemic. China lied about how the coronavirus got started.

The WHO’s director repeatedly praised China’s “transparency” — a joke considering that China sought to downplay the number of coronavirus cases and initially said it couldn’t be spread by human-to-human contact.

There need to be a lot of sackings, starting at the top. If there’s no price for failure, the bureaucracy doesn’t consider itself to have failed.

TRUMP: THE PRESSURE IS ON. “Now it is time to propose a long-term political plan to the American people that will turn this crisis into a victory that revitalizes America.”

THERE SEEMS TO BE MORE AND MORE THERE THERE: Questioning The Official “Wet Market” Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus Part 1: The Video.

WELL, JOY REID.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: A Fun Look Back at the Worst Things Bernie and Liz Have Said About Joe.

GOOD: President Trump Announces a Halt to US Funding of WHO, Pending Review.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Shady Leftist Group Weaponizes Consumer Protection Law to Silence Fox News, Network Fights Back.