NEWS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS: KNOXVILLE CURVE, FLATTENED: Coronavirus in Tennessee: 27 active Knox County cases, 196 total. “The Knox County Health Department reported three new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the total case number to 196. There are now 27 active cases in the county as of April 21, down from 28 on Monday. The total number of cases grew to 196 from 193. The total number of recovered cases rose to 165. . . . Of the 196 cases, 27 of them have resulted in hospitalization at any point during the illness, unchanged from Monday.”

I expect things will be reopening soon and this goes to a point I made a while back — if you’re going to shut things down eventually, it’s best to do it early and hard. That’s what we did in Knoxville and Knox County, mostly due to Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon’s early action, and it’s paid off. If you look at the infection curve for Knox County, you can see that. We shut down on the 21st, and the decline in cases started less than a week later, in line with the 5.2 day average incubation time. It’s dropped steadily since, notwithstanding a great increase in testing.