Good morning, RVA! It's 48 °F, and today's way cooler than yesterday. Expect highs below 60 °F and probably some dang clouds. Rain returns tomorrow.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 5,747 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 149 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 806 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 211, Henrico: 397, and Richmond: 167). The aforelinked VDH website now has a bunch of new coronagraphs that you can take a look at—mostly breaking things down by demographics and geography. For what it's worth, I still think this graph combining the daily number of new reported positive cases (blue) and the number of new tests (pink) is one of the more helpful ones. Virginia continues to see more reported positive cases each day while the number of tests reported remain flat (or, in recent days, has actually decreased). On the same graph, you can also see how testing impacts positive cases—when tests go up, so do the number of positive cases (duh).
Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has some details on how UVA's new coronavirus model works. You can check out the scientists' presentation (PDF) which features some graphs of positive cases, hospitalizations, and ventilations assuming four different social distancing scenarios. In their best case models, Virginia is, through intense social distancing, able to "pause" the spread of the virus. That means no growth in new cases, but, as discussed in the previous paragraph, we're not quite there yet. Masters says that in that best case scenario, "Virginia would see a later, lower peak between mid-July to late August with around 15,000 confirmed cases. The surge would exceed hospital capacity in some regions around the same time, though researchers pointed out that continued social distancing could postpone that by one to two and a half months." Note that we're not doing all of this social distancing business so we can happily return to pre-coronavirus Normal Life in June. We're doing it so that our cities and counties can have time to prepare for (and possibly avert) the collapse of our healthcare system. We've got some time to build up those resources though: As the scientists' presentation cheerfully points out, "under current conditions, Virginia as a whole will have sufficient medical resources for at least the next couple of months."
City Council had their first budget work session yesterday and heard this presentation (PDF) from the City's Budget Director. Here's the bad news: At the moment, the City expects a $38.5 million loss in revenue compared to the budget submitted just a month ago. I know so very little about how municipal finance works, but even these new vomit-inducing projections seem optimistic. For example: They're looking at a 5% sales tax reduction, 10% for meals tax, 10% for lodging tax, and 10% for the admissions tax. The City Assessor thinks that the real estate tax will drop 5.4% or $17.3 million, the largest chunk of the loss. To balance the budget, the Mayor proposes, among other things, to cut proposed salary increases, eliminate vacancy funding, pull $900,000 for new sidewalks, and decrease by $10.3 million the amount of new funding that was headed to RPS. It doesn't sound like any existing jobs are on the chopping block. Basically, this is mostly last year's budget. In their discussion after the presentation, Council had concerns about the projections and wondered whether they should plan for a more pessimistic future. They'll meet again this coming Monday, April 20th, to figure that out!
Beginning in May, the Commonwealth will expand access to Virtual Virginia—something that, since I am not a teacher, I did not know existed. Sounds cool, I guess! Here's a thing: I am a parent of a public school student, and I'm doing my dang best to make sure he both literally survives a pandemic and gets some booklearning along the way. At the moment though, I feel absolutely overwhelmed with resources. I know Virtual Virginia is not For Me but For Teachers, but the thought of another arrow in my already-packed-full quiver of videos to make my son sit through is...exhausting.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch published a column from Mayor Stoney in support of universal vote-by-mail in Virginia. We took a couple steps towards vote-by-mail at this year's General Assembly session in the form of both no-excuse absentee voting and a permanent absentee voter list (HB 207). Unfortunately, I think both of those things don't take effect until July 1, 2021 (someone correct me if I'm wrong, please!). There's no doubt in my mind that Virginians will need a way to vote from home this year. I mean, read that quote from the UVA scientists again about seeing a peak in coronavirus cases in late August, and then think about how folks are going to feel about voting in person come November.
Mel Leonor, also at the RTD, has the boring news that the House of Delegates will hold their outdoor meeting on the Capitol grounds. BORING. How about hosting the House on Brown's Island? Way more fun, right? Maybe you even get a singer/songwriter to come in and play a set or two on the stage during breaks?
Remember 1,000 virusyears ago when the New Dem Majority passed a bunch of cool bills, including one that would have Virginia join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (charmingly pronounced "Reggie")? Those were the days! Sarah Vogelsong at the Virginia Mercury has the exciting details on how the Commonwealth will jump into this regional cap-and-invest program.
This morning's longread
My Childhood in a Cult
This is a serious piece about a serious thing, but I couldn't help reading these lines about the banality of cult life and think about the similar out-of-place banality of quarantine life.
To people who grew up in more ordinary circumstances, my childhood sounds exotic, scandalous, and fascinating. Cults are fascinating—but one thing the Manson Family and the Lyman Family have in common is the banality of daily life inside these worlds. If you live in a large group of people, there are always dishes to wash and heaps of laundry to hang up to dry. The travel plans for Venus took place against a backdrop of these everyday chores. As I like to say when I tell people about my background, “It wasn’t all acid and orgies.” (Acid was used by adults, as a tool for spiritual growth. To my knowledge, there were no orgies.)
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