KnoxTN Today reports. Mayor Kincannon supports the idea: "As our schools attempt to re-open during a pandemic, it is abundantly clear that access to high-speed internet is no longer a luxury, but a necessity, similar to electricity and running water."

Florida hit an alarming one-day high on Sunday with 15,300 new coronavirus cases, shattering both the state and national record for new cases reported since the start of the pandemic.

With Sunday’s staggering surge in new cases, Florida eclipsed New York’s coronavirus peak of 12,274 cases on April 4.

Sure, go to Florida this summer. The beaches are great, Disney is open.

Please keep the spread in Florida or do a 14 day quarantine when you return.

Keep Florida's idiocracy in Florida.

Bystanders told Knoxville Police that a group of male subjects fired around 20 to 30 rounds near the Cumberland Avenue and 19th Street intersection from a vehicle and then fled north on 19th around 2:40 a.m.

UT students thankful after bullets fly into Cumberland Avenue apartment

The Knox County Health Department reports 1,567 coronavirus cases and 51 probable cases.

That's 381 new cases in the past week, with 17, 93, 70, 54, 65, 41, 41 as the cases per day for the past week.
That's a 32% increase over last week.

According to the TN Dept. of Health, on 6/27/2020 for the first time Knox County broke the threshold for rate of new covid-19 cases per 100,000 Tennesseans.
Knox County continues to break this threshold, three times the week of June 28, three times the week of July 5.
The ratios are getting higher, e.g. 15.14 vs 21.95.
This threshold is used for decision making processes, e.g. long term care facilities in counties below the threshold for 14 consecutive days may consider allowing visitors. Sevier County has been above this threshold for 14 days.

There are 38 Knox County COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized.
That's more than double the number of cases (17) hospitalized last week.

There have been ten total deaths in Knox County from COVID-19.
That's double the number of deaths from two weeks ago (June 27).
One of our citizens died two weeks ago from the coronavirus.
Four people died this past week.

As of July 7, 2020, ICU Bed availability is down again to 7.7%. (272 ICU beds total with 21 beds available)
As of June 30, 2020, ICU Bed availability was 11.0% (272 ICU beds total with 30 beds available).
As of June 25, 2020, ICU Bed availability was at 14.3% (272 ICU beds total with 39 beds available).

The County Health Department has a map with the number of coronavirus cases per zip code.
On July 9, 2020, these zip codes were reported with the most cases:
37921 has the most cases with 175 (population 28,000) (38.9% increase), then
37920 with 129 cases (population 39,000) (59.3% increase).
37917 with 113 cases (population 27,000) (46.8% increase)
37923 with 103 cases (population 30,000) (21.2% increase) and

From reports dated as of July 11, 2020.
There has been a steady increase in coronavirus (covid-19) cases in Tennessee.

According to the TN Dept. of Health, 61,006 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in TN and 738 have died from it..

That is an additional 10,866 cases in one week and an additional 101 reported deaths.

That is nearly double the highest weekly increase in coronavirus deaths.

On July 8 a new record (2,472) for a single day of new coronavirus cases was reported.

1,006,616 residents have been tested.
That is an additional 128,386 tests in the past week.
1,615 fewer tests were given in the last week as compared to the week before.

Hospitalizations are up. From July 2 to July 9 (7 days) the number of patients hospitalized for the coronavirus has increased by 27.6% (182 from 660 to 842).

6.1% of TN residents tested for the coronavirus have tested positive for the coronavirus.
14.6% of the 6.89 million people estimated to live in TN have been tested for the coronavirus.

Be careful out there.

Three Knox sheriff's employees, one Knoxville police staffer test positive for COVID-19

Rep. Kent Calfee (71), R-Kingston (Roane County), said on Facebook on Friday afternoon he and his wife had tested positive.

Rep. Calfee is not experiencing symptoms.
However, his wife is being treated.

He " was in the Cordell Hull legislative office building as recently as last week, when he attended two days of Joint Government Operations Committee meetings. Only a few lawmakers on the 24-member committee worse masks. "
...
After Calfee's positive test became public, Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, said on Twitter she was in the same committee as him for 10 hours last week. She noted Calfee was not wearing a mask.
...
The test results come ... days after Cleveland Mayor Kevin Brooks (who was hospitalized late last month), who led a prayer in the House on June 18, tested positive for COVID-19. Brooks shook hands with several of his colleagues that day.
...
As recently as June 27, Calfee attended a Loudon County Republican Party headquarters opening that was also attended by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, state Rep. Lowell Russell, R-Vonore, U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, and GOP U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty.

Contact tracing....

Many thanks to our legislature for being dumb as dirt.
Whatever...

Be careful out there.

WBIR: According to the Knox County Health Department, a federal response team of officials with the CDC and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response raised the red flag and have declared Knox County a hot spot for the virus. The two agencies came to offer assistance Wednesday and Thursday as the number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to surge to higher levels locally.

Is Knox County's mask mandate unconstitutional?

Knox County, TN, started out pretty good with managing coronavirus growth. Then summer arrived and everyone decided it was time to play and, for business and government, it was time to go back to work.

Two of the Knox County Health Dept. five benchmarks have turned red:
1) "Sustained reduction or stability in new cases for 14 days",
5) Sustained or decreased COVID-19 related death rate for identified positive or probable cases.

One of the five benchmarks has turned yellow,
4) Health care system capabilities remain within current and forecasted surge capacity.

The number one benchmark has been red for several weeks.

The coronavirus death rate in Knox County stayed at 5 for several months.
In the past two weeks the deaths have double. Five more people have died, four of those in the past week.

Note that young people get sick and die from the coronavirus. The largest number of cases in Knox County are in the 21-30 age group. Two of the deaths were in the 18-44 age group, two others were in the 45-64 age group. It is not just people 80 and older dying from coronavirus.

Come on people. Let's not become a hotspot.
Respect your fellow citizens.

Be careful out there.

Let’s make this go viral so trump can see it!!! pic.twitter.com/XxzhFh4Dbu

— Dumptrump 19 (@19Dumptrump) July 7, 2020

All of them ...

Assignee: The United States of America, as Represented by the Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services

Patents by Inventor Anthony S. Fauci

Nashville Scene: The State Capitol Commission formally requested a waiver to relocate Nathan Bedford Forrest (and others) to the Tennessee State Museum...

The two no votes came from Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. Matthew Hill, who represent their respective legislative bodies. Both Republicans said their votes were a reflection of the wills of the majority of the members of the chambers.

In the middle of a pandemic...

Starting Friday, July 10, 2020, Masks are to be worn in all public indoor places where social distancing is not possible, [Sevier County Mayor Larry] Waters said in a press conference in Sevierville.

There are exemptions based on TN Gov. Lee's guidance.

Will the tourists go along? Who will enforce?

Be careful out there.

Reclose the bars, restaurants, pay all non-essential workers and business rent, coordinate travel with states, mandate masks until transmission falls below 1 so that contact-tracing can resume without being overwhelmed. Do what the EU did. We can't personal responsibility, encourage and magical think our way out of this nor become numb to the sickness and death of 10's of thousands of our fellow citizens.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - The implications of silent transmission for the control of COVID-19 outbreaks

We found that the majority of incidences may be attributable to silent transmission from a combination of the presymptomatic stage and asymptomatic infections. Consequently, even if all symptomatic cases are isolated, a vast outbreak may nonetheless unfold. We further quantified the effect of isolating silent infections in addition to symptomatic cases, finding that over one-third of silent infections must be isolated to suppress a future outbreak below 1% of the population. Our results indicate that symptom-based isolation must be supplemented by rapid contact tracing and testing that identifies asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases, in order to safely lift current restrictions and minimize the risk of resurgence.

From the Maryville Daily Times (AP News):

International students will be forced to leave the U.S. or transfer to another college if their schools offer classes entirely online this fall, under new guidelines issued Monday by federal immigration authorities.
.
The guidelines, issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, provide additional pressure for universities to reopen even amid growing concerns about the recent spread of COVID-19 among young adults.

So far, Harvard University is going online only, even though they are allowing some students to live on campus this fall. Many California colleges are going online only, e.g.California State University system, City College in California, ​Los Angeles Community College District, Univ of CA at Irvine, Univ of CA at Los Angeles, Univ of Southern CA.

Here’s a List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall, from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

It shows UT Knoxville using a hybrid model but UT Chattanooga and UT Martin with in-person models.

However, I know that some of the colleges listed are actually doing the hybrid model even though they are listed as doing in-person.

This city, like so many others in the South, has the makings of a virus hot spot: It reopened quickly, there is little regard for masks and distancing, which studies show help mitigate the disease, and contact tracers have begun to lose threads on possible infections. Meanwhile, bars, restaurants, gyms, beauty parlors, pools and many other businesses have remained open despite a precipitous increase in coronavirus infections.

How Chattanooga, Tennessee, became a coronavirus hot spot

The Knox County Health Department reports 1,186 coronavirus cases and 30 probable cases.

That's 343 new cases in the past week, with 16, 53, 15, 50, 70, 46, 93 as the cases per day for the past week.

According to the TN Dept. of Health, on 6/27/2020 for the first time Knox County broke the threshold for rate of new covid-19 cases per 100,000 Tennesseans.
Knox County continues to break this threshold, three times in the past week.
This threshold is used for decision making processes, e.g. long term care facilities in counties below the threshold for 14 consecutive days may consider allowing visitors. Sevier County has been above this threshold for 14 days.

There are seventeen Knox County COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized. That's one less hospitalized than last week.

There have been six total deaths in Knox County from COVID-19.
One of our citizens died this past week from the coronavirus.

As of June 30, 2020, ICU Bed availability is down since June 25 to 11.0% (272 ICU beds total with 30 beds available).

The County Health Department has a map with the number of coronavirus cases per zip code.
On July 2, 2020, these zip codes were reported with the most cases:
37921 has the most cases with 126 (population 28,000) (28.5% increase), then
37923 with 85 cases (population 30,000) (23.2% increase) and
37920 with 81 cases (population 39,000) (32.8% increase).
37917 with 77 cases (population 27,000) (40.0% increase)

Largest weekly jump in coronavirus cases so far.

From reports dated as of July 4, 2020.
There has been a steady increase in coronavirus (covid-19) cases in Tennessee.

According to the TN Dept. of Health, 50,140 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in TN and 637 have died from it..
That is an additional 9,968 cases in one week and an additional 53 reported deaths.
That is nearly double the highest weekly increase in coronavirus cases.

Every day this week there were record numbers of newly detected coronavirus cases in Tennessee, as compared to any previous weeks..

878,230 residents have been tested.
That is an additional 130,001 tests in the past week.
67,153 more tests were given in the last week as compared to the week before.

Hospitalizations are up. From June 25 to July 2 (7 days) the number of patients hospitalized for the coronavirus has increased by 161 from 499 to 660.

5.7% of TN residents tested for the coronavirus have tested positive for the coronavirus.
12.7% of the 6.89 million people estimated to live in TN have been tested for the coronavirus.

Be careful out there.