Good morning, RVA! It's 39 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 50s. Did we do it? Have we moved into the cold part of the year? I'm not sure because this weekend's weather forecast looks warm, sunny, and amazing.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,677↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 6↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 247↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 122, Henrico: 81, and Richmond: 44). Since this pandemic began, 442 people have died in the Richmond region. Before you inhale sharply at the dramatic rise in new positive cases, a note from the VDH website: "The 2,677 case count reported on Monday, November 16 is due to a catch-up from the VDH data system being down for upgrades for a few hours over the weekend." On Sunday, VDH reported 1,161 new cases and the seven-day average at that time was 1,396. Feel free to do whatever back-of-the-napkin math you'd like to get a better sense of this weekend's and Monday's numbers—or just wait until new data drops today. VDH also updated their COVID-19 Pandemic Metrics dashboard, and for the sixth straight week, the Central Region is experiencing "substantial community transmission." Three of the Commonwealth's six regions are at "substantial community transmission" and the other three are "approaching substantial community transmission" with an increasing trend. Percent positivity in our region, for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield is 4.09%, 6.20%, and 7.24% respectively. These are all not the best numbers, and I'm nervous about what the holidays will bring. A lot of folks should stay home, a lot of folks don't have the option of staying home, and it's legitimately heartbreaking for many, many people who do choose to stay home. We've got a long, hard winter road ahead of us, I think.
Related to schools and COVID-19, Henrico County Public Schools Superintendent Amy Cashwell says the District will NOT return to in-person instruction on November 30th as planned. They'll now wait until January 11th for the youngest students to return. Here's Cashwell on her reasoning, "When our approach was adopted back in October (in order to give families ample time to plan), the core metrics for the local area and region inspired more confidence in expanding in-person learning than they do today. Since then, two of the three core metrics being monitored have increased significantly. The number of new cases per 100,000 people over a 14-day period has risen to the highest risk level, and the percentage of positive tests in our region has seen a sharp increase. The third metric, related to the ability of HCPS to implement mitigation strategies, remains at the lowest risk level. While my confidence in our school division’s ability to adhere to and implement our health and safety plans remains strong, the sharp increases in two of the three core metrics is of concern to me and to our Health Committee."
City Council's Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee will meet today and consider the ordinance to adopt Richmond 300 as our City's new master plan (ORD. 2020-236)! This is incredibly exciting, and I'm grateful for all of the folks—both staff and citizenry—that have put in hours and hours of work to pull this plan together. You can, of course, let LUHT hear your support of this ordinance and Richmond 300 generally by sending a couple of emails (Councilmembers Robertson, Gray, Jones, and Trammell sit on this committee). You'll have a chance to express your support to Full Council if/whenever this lands on their agenda. I think we'll know from the tone of today's conversation whether that'll be a vote for Current Council or New Council.
As he works from quarantine, Mayor Levar Stoney has written a thank-you letter to Richmond. Part coronareminder, part policy platform, the letter lays out some priorities for the next four years while speaking pretty openly about how he'd now handle a project like Navy Hill differently. About the latter he says, "I have learned [Richmonders] want to be brought to the table as we build a more equitable city. I have also learned that to deliver on that expectation, we need consistent and robust community engagement, a willingness to adjust, and an understanding that compromise is not a bad word." As for policies/goals for the next term, he lists: health and safety during the pandemic, public education during the pandemic, a focus on justice and equity (especially around economic development projects and policing), access to high-paying jobs and affordable housing, and better City services. I'm focused on that first bit about community engagement. There are currently, right now!, opportunities for the City to do "robust community engagement,"—Monument Avenue, the City's legislative priorities for the General Assembly, whatever's going on around the Diamond—and I'd love to see them put some of these words into action.
Heyoh, what's this! The Governor has officially announced support for legalizing marijuana in Virginia—at this coming General Assembly session! I'd just written a while back that pending the results of whatever study the GA had commissioned we might see some movement in this direction, but I didn't expect such full-throated support from the Gov: "It’s time to legalize marijuana in Virginia...Our Commonwealth has an opportunity to be the first state in the South to take this step, and we will lead with a focus on equity, public health, and public safety.” I'm excited to read more about the legislation he plans to introduce, especially since he wants to focus on racial equity by "including initiatives such as social equity license programs, access to capital, community reinvestment, and sealing or expunging records of past marijuana-related convictions." Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury has more details, including that Northam "envisions an 18 to 24 month timetable for the state to establish and regulate the new marketplace." I mean, this seems like the easiest vote to make during a budget-crushing pandemic, just look at these numbers: "The Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission study found that legalization could generate more than $300 million per year in tax revenues by the fifth year of operations and, combined with decriminalization, could reduce marijuana arrests by 84 percent. Legalization could also create more than 11,000 jobs, the study found, but most would be lower-paying positions in retail, cultivation, packaging and security."
Via /r/rva, here's weirdly gendered 1988 WTVR report on shopping at Willow Lawn when it was still an indoor mall. Men! What do they even know about shopping! Nothing, turns out!
This morning's longread
QAnon High Priest Was Just Trolling Away as a Citigroup Tech Executive
I am fascinated by QAnon, continue to read articles about it, and am really close to subscribing to all of the Q-busting podcasts listed in this article.
Even so, the movement had been contained mostly to the internet’s trollish fringes until around the time Gelinas came along. In 2018, while doing his job at Citi, he created, as an anonymous side project, a website dedicated to bringing QAnon to a wider audience—soccer moms, white-collar workers, and other “normies,” as he boasted. By mid-2020, the site, QMap.pub, was drawing 10 million visitors each month, according to the traffic-tracking firm SimilarWeb, and was credited by researchers with playing a key role in what might be the most unlikely political story in a year full of unlikely political stories: A Citigroup executive helped turn an obscure and incoherent cult into an incoherent cult with mainstream political implications.
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