Good morning, RVA! It's 52 °F, and rain is on the way this morning. You can expect slightly warmer temperatures, though, later in the afternoon. Could be lots of rain in our future this week.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 8,537 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 277 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 1,171 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 311, Henrico: 584, and Richmond: 231). This past weekend the New York Times ran an article about per-capita coronavirus testing in the United States, confirming what I’ve been writing about in this space over the last couple of days: Virginia reports fewer tests than almost any other state in the country. The NYT says that we need to administer about 152 tests per 100,000 people each day before we can consider spilling out of our houses and packing our favorite bars and restaurants with our bodies and our germs. As of yesterday, the seven-day rolling average of Virginia’s tests per 100,000 people was 24.7. That’s...a lot less than 152. Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch picked up on this story over the weekend, saying that “2,500 fewer Virginians were tested for COVID-19 this past week compared to the week prior.” And, here’s a particularly troubling quote: “Crystal Icenhour, the CEO of Aperiomics Inc. based in Ashburn, said her lab’s testing capacity is roughly 2,500 tests per week, and ‘we’re very far from maxing out that capacity.’”
City Council will hold their next budget work session today at 1:00 PM. If you head over to the City’s legislative website you can (and should!) listen to audio from that meeting. I tuned in to the first session, and you could hear everyone on the call just fine. Last week, Council asked a bunch of questions and talked briefly about the strategy they wanted to take while considering the $35 million of cuts they need to make. This week, they’ll at least hear back from the administration with answers to some of those questions.
Richmond Public Schools will also work through some pretty tremendous budget cuts tonight at 6:00 PM (you can watch live over on their Facebook). The District originally planned on increasing their budget by about $43 million, but, the coronavirus had other thoughts, and now RPS will need to cut $24 million from the budget they’d approved earlier this year. You can look through the Superintendent’s presentation ahead of tonight’s meeting (PDF) for a list of expenditures over $500,000 that he either recommends maintaining or revisiting. What a stark and sad table. It’s worth noting that, before the coronavirus took a bite out of the economy, there was already a $7 million gap between the School District’s budget and what they anticipated getting from the City and the State. It’s also worth remember that the Mayor has included $6 million over last year’s RPS funding in his post-coronavirus budget recommendations. Honestly, schools are probably one of the very, very few things to get a funding increase from the City this year. Dark budget conversations ahead, y’all!
C. Suarez Rojas at the RTD has an...interesting...story about how the City and Henrico County are (not) working together to find shelter and homes for folks in the region experiencing homelessness. Apparently the City moved some of the people living in tents behind the cold weather shelter into temporary housing at a couple of hotels in eastern Henrico. Here’s an eyebrow-raising quote from Henrico’s county manager, John Vithoulkas, addressing how he felt about that choice: “This was a poor decision made by a mid-level bureaucrat in the city. It was a really bad idea to move people, many of whom need specialized mental health services, under the cover of darkness to dilapidated hotels that Henrico County is currently investigating for myriad life safety issues...This was someone’s really bad idea, and it shows how unprepared we are as a region to deal with the issue of homelessness.” I wonder, though, if the County Manager followed that quote up with some suggestions about suitable places in the County for people to weather this crisis?
The City’s Planning Commission will also meet today at 1:30 PM, you can tune into that one, too, if you want. From their agenda (PDF), it looks like they’ll push a bunch of things to later meetings, but will still consider the 2020 additions to Richmond’s Storm Drain Art Project. I really enjoy this project, and you can check out the proposed artwork that’ll brighten up four storm drains in Shockoe Bottom at the bottom of this PDF. Otters!
Aw man, via /r/rva, a picture of a scooter in the river. This is not where they go, people!
To close, I’d like to quote at length from two of our region’s educational leaders, RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras and UR President Ronald Crutcher. While written to families, students, teachers, and graduating seniors, I still think a lot of this advice is applicable to all of us as the sameness of this crisis stretches on—whether we fall into those categories or not. Here’s Kamras: “Sustaining this level of dedication to our students and families will become even more important over the coming weeks and months as people's physical and mental health suffers, the economy falters, and housing and food insecurity become even more dire. And we know this pain will not be shared equally. The inequities and injustices that existed before the coronavirus—by race, class, and more—have only become deeper and more devastating since the onset of COVID-19. That's why we're beginning to think now about what it will take to truly meet the social-emotional, academic, and economic needs of our students and families—and particularly those most harmed by the long-term impacts of the virus—for the months and years to come. While there are countless details to be worked out as we pursue this goal, there's one thing I'm certain of: now, more than ever, we must continue to teach, lead, and serve with love” And from Crutcher in the RTD, “Class of 2020, please know we aren’t going anywhere. We will see you and your families again to celebrate your achievements, to toast your friendships, and to thank your faculty and staff mentors. This is not the end of your story. As a musician, I think of this moment as a fermata—an unexpected pause before the music continues.”
This morning's longread
A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat
To continue my thread from above about the lack of testing in Virginia, here’s a piece in The Atlantic about monitoring “test-positivity rate.” The test-positivity rate in Virginia over the last seven days has been: 33.4%, 31.1%, 23.4%, 17.1%, 23.6%, 19.2%, and 17.3%.
According to the Tracking Project’s figures, nearly one in five people who get tested for the coronavirus in the United States is found to have it. In other words, the country has what is called a “test-positivity rate” of nearly 20 percent. That is “very high,” Jason Andrews, an infectious-disease professor at Stanford, told us. Such a high test-positivity rate almost certainly means that the U.S. is not testing everyone who has been infected with the pathogen, because it implies that doctors are testing only people with a very high probability of having the infection. People with milder symptoms, to say nothing of those with none at all, are going undercounted. Countries that test broadly should encounter far more people who are not infected than people who are, so their test-positivity rate should be lower.
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