Good morning, RVA! It's 66 °F, and highs today look like they’ll top out in the low 80s. It’s raining now, it’ll probably rain for the rest of the morning, but Andrew Freiden says today the sun returns! Maybe we'll even see some more of it over the weekend? 'Twould be nice.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,229 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 25 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 103 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 32, Henrico: 18, and Richmond: 53). Since this pandemic began, 163 people have died in the Richmond region. To be honest, the data in my personal spreadsheet no longer looks anything like the data on the VDH website, which has me both bummed and frustrated. Check out this graph from VDH of Number of Cases by Event Date and compare it to my graph of Number of Positive Cases by Date Reported. These are two different graphs that show two different things, for sure. But, still, every day reporters—and hobbyists like myself—are all "Welp, 1,229 new cases reported today, that's the most ever in a single day. Yikes." Meanwhile the VDH graph says, "Nah, that was back on May 16th and today doesn't look so bad." I'm not smart enough to know what's going, but I wonder if its due to the concept of completeness. I figured this was a thing but just found out there's a specific word for it yesterday via Patron Casey on the GMRVA Slack (which is open to all patrons!).
Mayor Stoney announced that Richmond will use some of that federal CARES Act money to support folks who test positive for COVID-19 and need a safe place to isolate. I'm pretty excited about this as it's one thing for officials shout at people to isolate if they get sick, but it's an entirely different thing to actually help sick folks who don't have the space or opportunity to do that.
It's Friday, and the Virginia Employment Commission has updated its weekly unemployment insurance claims numbers. 44,699 new people filed for unemployment insurance in the week ending May 16th—this is down 7,440 claimants from last week. The horrifying—but mathematically beautiful—graph of both new and continued claimants continued its previous trends, with the total number of folks filing for unemployment insurance increasing. However, the rate of that increase has slowed, which seems good. It's still shocking to look at these numbers in the context of this same week form last year, a week that saw "only" 18,177 continued claims. That's 22 times more claims! VEC also provides a breakdown of claims by locality. For the week ending in May 16th, Richmond saw 18,875 total claimants. That's two and a half Siegel Centers of people.
Colleen Curran at the Richmond Times-Dispatch talked with some music venues who are basically stuck in eternal pandemic purgatory until...who even knows when. Honestly, it's nice? refreshing?—neither of these are the right word—to read something about the issues facing any industry other than the restaurant industry. I love restaurants, but, I'm thankful to expand the context of our conversations about how COVID-19 is impacting local businesses. As The Broadberry's Lucas Fritz says, "We have zero income. The Broadberry is completely closed with no revenue coming in. We still have to pay rent, utilities and insurance fees on a monthly basis. We’ve been burning through cash since March."
Roberto Roldan at VPM sat down for an interview with John Moeser and Rutledge Dennis to talk about Richmond's annexation of Chesterfield. My contractual obligation to always link to annexation stories aside, I know about this stuff and am still shocked every time I read about it. Here's Moeser: "What the Richmond oligarchy decided to do was to simply reduce the black population. And the way to do that was to annex thousands, tens of thousands of white people from the adjoining County, Chesterfield County. In fact, when people learn the story about the annexation, they are amazed. They are shocked. I mean, the number of secret meetings that were held." Secret meetings! Gah!
Lately, I'm into scavenger hunts or lists of things that give me an excuse to get out and explore parts of Richmond I've never seen before—usually by bike. RVA Bike Month's Treesure Hunt is a great example, and this #RVAHistoryHunt also seems pretty cool. While both of these "events" are ostensibly tied to a time, it's not like history or trees are going anywhere anytime soon. Save these links for a sunny quaranday when you've got nothing else to do!
Logistical note! Monday is Memorial Day, and I will be taking the day off to sleep in a bit and, depending on the weather, maybe go for a wonderfully long bike ride. However! I've got some bonus content headed your way, so keep your eyes on your inbox and your ears on your podcast app. We will speak again on Tuesday.
This morning's longread
Here’s what happens when a contact tracer calls you
My quest to truly understand contact tracing (and maybe become a contact tracer in the process?) continues! Marie Albiges at The Virginian-Pilot sat down for an interview with an actual contact tracer so she could learn about how that process works. So fascinating!
I didn’t want to contract the virus myself, and convincing a stranger to let me listen in on an interview didn’t seem likely. Plus that wouldn’t fly with HIPAA, the law that protects people’s private health information. So the Chesapeake Health District proposed the next best thing: a mock interview, in which I pretend to be a patient with COVID-19. On Wednesday, I got on the phone with epidemiologist Lisa Engle. We settled on the terms — she would ask me questions as if I were a COVID-19 patient, and I would tell her exactly how I spent my days leading up to when I was tested. At the end of the interview, she would shred her notes on my fake illness, and I could write about it.
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