Over Memorial Day weekend, a small North Carolina race track opened up for stock car races, drawing a capacity crowd of more than 4,000 spectators, and ignoring the state's public health rules because county officials gave the go-ahead. Raleigh News & Observer reporter Andrew Carter wrote a hell of a good feature story about the return to what a lot of the people there wanted to call "normal," as the racing season finally got underway at that Ace Speedway in Altamahaw, after a two-month delay. This isn't a big old NASCAR venue, just a little local track, a four-tenths of a mile oval. Most of the people Carter spoke to said they'd been cooped up for too long, and so it's time for everybody to get back to business, but safely. If "safely" means cramming close together and yelling loudly over all the engine noise, which is a super-efficient way for the virus to spread.

The people at the racetrack all seemed vaguely aware that the pandemic isn't over, but they're largely over the pandemic, and just don't want to think about it anymore. So they probably wouldn't have cared that in the week prior to the race, North Carolina's COVID-19 hospitalizations were actually increasing — from 481 on May 16, to 589 on Saturday, May 23, the day of the festivities. Since then, the number of current hospitalizations statewide is up to 702, as of yesterday.

To be honest, it's a difficult story to read, because it feels like an early chapter of And The Band Played On. There's a strong likelihood of a future story, profiling people who'll get sick or die after attending the race. Maybe not — viral outbreaks are a matter of risk, not certainty. But the odds are far higher than if all those folks had stayed home and held nice cookouts in their own backyards.