Source: US Rep. David Rouzer (NC-7th), 5/14/20
 

Dear Friend,

The House is set to vote tomorrow on a Speaker Pelosi-authored bill for additional aid in further response to the challenges created by COVID-19.  Some of it is related to COVID-19; much of it is not.  The bill is 1,800 pages long and will cost upwards of $3 trillion.  Significantly, this is the first piece of COVID-19 legislation that has not had bi-partisan input.  Even rank and file Democrat members are upset because they have had no input either.  As a consequence, this bill will be the first COVID-19 legislation that registers a partisan vote and will be dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate.   

In terms of substance, the bill would put this country on a path to becoming a permanent welfare state.  Your local restaurants and small businesses would never be able to get back to any normal footing under this bill because it extends overly-generous unemployment payments well into next year and puts in place new onerous regulations.  Additionally, the bill federalizes election laws, increases funding for the National Endowment of the Arts (to name just one line item completely unrelated to the crisis at hand), and mandates prisoner release.  Those are just a few of the items, along with many more on the Democrat wish list, that are in the bill.  For these reasons and many others, my vote will be Nay.  

• The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has begun updating its COVID-19 dashboard page with estimates on the number of individuals across the state that have recovered from their COVID-19 infection.  DHHS estimates that as of Monday, some 9,115 patients have successfully recovered from the virus in North Carolina.  These figures will be updated weekly and can be found here.
• As of yesterday morning, there were 15,816 confirmed COVID-19 cases in North Carolina and 597 deaths attributed to the virus.

If you think you need a test to determine if you have COVID-19 contact your health care provider and share your symptoms.  Not all health care providers provide testing on-site.  These sites listed provide testing for COVID-19.  Some require an appointment and/or a referral from a health care provider. Locations are subject to change.

• There are currently more than 1.391 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 84,000 deaths in the United States, as reported by Johns Hopkins.  Worldwide, there are more than 4.3 million cases and more than 297,000 deaths worldwide.
  
  
• The US has performed 8.7 million coronavirus tests to date, including 1.9 million in the past seven days.