Good morning, RVA! It's 39 °F, but later today you can expect highs near 60 °F. Sunshine continues through the day, into tomorrow, and then could skadoodle until next week as more rain moves in this weekend.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 6,500 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 195 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 907 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 254, Henrico: 453, and Richmond: 177). While the number of new reported positive cases has decreased from a peak on April 11th, Virginia has reported fewer tests for the last three days than at any point since April 6th.
Correction! Yesterday, I wrote about the disproportional impact COVID-19 has on Black people in Richmond and misstated the demographic make up of the City. I cited year 2000 data but called it 2016 data, and the City has changed so much in the last decade. Here's the facts: Black people make up 62% of positive coronavirus cases in Richmond and yet, as of 2016, make up just 47% of the City (that's from the Richmond 300 Insights Report (PDF)). Related to this, Ibram X. Kendi writes in The Atlantic about the importance of disaggregating coronavirus data by race. To quote a bit, "Too many Americans are infected with the belief that a cause or the cause of higher black infection or death rates is that black people are not taking the viral threat seriously, and that white people have lower infection and death rates because they are taking COVID-19 seriously...The answer of the hour can be heard. Our voices are still crying out in the wilderness: Black people are not to blame for racial disparities. Racism is to blame." You can look at the public spreadsheet The Atlantic has put together as part of the COVID Tracking Project to collect racial data from each state as available. There are still a lot of empty cells in that spreadsheet.
Yesterday, the Governor announced the need for up to 30,000 volunteers "to provide support for the expected surge in hospitals and long-term care facilities throughout the Commonwealth" through the Medical Reserve Corps. That's especially those of you with medical experience, but also other folks, too, who want to serve their community. If this sounds like you, please fill out an application over on the Medical Reserve Corps website. Also, maybe give this page a bookmark. As we learn more about COVID-19 and how folks who've been infected build antibodies, it may be an import role to fill for those of us who've already caught the bug and recovered. Unrelated and unsurprising, the Governor also extended the existing business closures to May 8th.
RISE for Youth, a group dedicated to "dismantling the youth prison model by promoting the creation of community-based alternatives to youth incarceration," posted a letter from several Commonwealth Attorneys asking for the release of youth from juvenile detention that don't "pose a substantial safety risk to others or the community." This request comes as Ali Rockett at the Richmond Times-Dispatch investigates a possible COVID-19 outbreak at the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Chesterfield.
Those federal relief checks are real and out in the wild! If you qualify, you might could even have one sitting in your bank account at this very minute. I couldn't get it to work, but theoretically you can check the status of your check on the IRS website. If you made less than $75,000 (or $150,000 for married couples) you should end up with $1,200 (or $2,400), plus a $500 check per "qualifying child." That's seems like a lot of money, but, for some context, according to the Partnership for Housing Affordability "Average rents for new, market-rate apartments built since 2014 are between $1,200 and $1,400—affordable only to households earning $50,000 per year or higher." So we're talking less than one month's rent for most new apartments. Looking at it that way...not a ton of money—especially for folks who've just lost their jobs. P.S. I couldn't find a good source for the average rent across the region, so if one of you housing people could send it to me, that'd be great.
Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense has news so breaking that it can even cut through the huge stack of daily coronavirus updates: Trader Joe's is planning to open a new store in the former Martin's space at the Stoney Point Shopping Center. New grocery stores are Richmond's most favorite hobby, so I'm sure lots of people are incredibly stoked. It must be said, though, that the only practical way to get to this new store will be by car. The only bus service out that way is hourly, and the streets are so big and fast that biking's not a super realistic option.
This morning's longread
Our Pandemic Summer
This piece in The Atlantic is depressing, but I hope it helps reframe our current situation. It's not about returning to what life looked like for us in February. It's about learning how to thrive with whatever life looks like in June.
As I wrote last month, the only viable endgame is to play whack-a-mole with the coronavirus, suppressing it until a vaccine can be produced. With luck, that will take 18 to 24 months. During that time, new outbreaks will probably arise. Much about that period is unclear, but the dozens of experts whom I have interviewed agree that life as most people knew it cannot fully return. “I think people haven’t understood that this isn’t about the next couple of weeks,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota. “This is about the next two years.” The pandemic is not a hurricane or a wildfire. It is not comparable to Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Such disasters are confined in time and space. The SARS-CoV-2 virus will linger through the year and across the world. “Everyone wants to know when this will end,” said Devi Sridhar, a public-health expert at the University of Edinburgh. “That’s not the right question. The right question is: How do we continue?”
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