Good morning, RVA! It's 35 °F, and today looks gross. Expect cold weather, rain, and then 1–4 inches of snow overnight. Plus some ice on top of that? NBC12's Andrew Freiden says "freezing drizzle" could continue into tomorrow morning, and the National Weather Service at Wakefield say a second round of storms on Friday night "will bring the potential for significant icing." Winter weather approaches! Stay dry, stay warm, and stay inside if you can.
Water cooler
Early yesterday morning, Richmond Police officers responded to a report of a shooting at the 2100 block of Harwood Street. They arrived and found Sylvester Washington, a man in his 40s, shot to death.
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 3,203 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 34 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 426 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 255, Henrico: 102, and Richmond: 69). Since this pandemic began, 717 people have died in the Richmond region.
We're up, we're down, we're up, we're down—it's hard to tell what's going on from the daily VDH data dump. We'll look at the stacked graphs tomorrow, but the local numbers, driven in part by an increase in cases in Chesterfield, aren't tracking with statewide counts. If you want to get deeper into the local data—way, way down—check out this Weekly Case Report from the Richmond and Henrico Health District (PDF). There is a lot of really interesting information in this PDF. To just pick one: Case rate per 100,000 people in Richmond and Henrico compared to Virginia (5,843; 5,931; 6,219). Some of this data is available on the VDH dashboard, some of it's not, all of it's worth scrolling through. Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says, "Richmond, Henrico among first in Va. to release equity data for recent cases, vaccinations."
Of course, and unfortunately, the data say a predictable thing: Black and Brown communities who are more impacted by this disease are not receiving more of the vaccine (page 17 of the data report). Moreno goes into some of the reasons why, how—due to racism—these communities lack access to healthcare, transportation, and sick leave. Important context for this conversation is that 42.1% of folks vaccinated in Richmond and Henrico since the week of December 15th have not reported their race. If we had better data would it show an increased or decreased disparity? I have no idea, but it sounds like we should have more complete data in the coming weeks: "Richmond and Henrico have shifted to having a volunteer base dedicated solely to data entry at events, emphasizing its importance to providers and learning how to quickly pull in the data that’s coming from separate sources."
The Virginia Mercury's Kate Masters has a great piece about how technology platforms are thwarting local efforts to quickly and efficiently administer vaccine. To date, local health districts have not been given a tool to create vaccination clinics open to a certain set of people. Want to open up vaccination to folks over the age of 75 living on Richmond's Southside? Prepare for a lot of manual labor to make that happen—as one health district employee said "It's been a Herculean effort, but Herculean is not scalable." I think Masters's article pairs really well with this Twitter thread from Dan Hon about why the NYT's recent "this guy built a vaccine website for $50!" article is harmful and irresponsible. Read them both, and then sit quietly with your anger!
One final vaccine thing: Governor Northam, along with his pals Governor Hogan and Mayor Bowser, requested "increased federal support in administering the COVID-19 vaccines to essential federal employees." Specifically, they want "a dedicated allocation of vaccine and associated supplies to support the vaccination of essential federal workers, contractors, and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) employees within the National Capital Region." Part of this, I'm sure, is to get the feds to cough up additional vaccine, but part of it is an implicit acknowledgement that transit workers are super important to the functioning of a city. I'm excited about what this could mean locally! Currently, transit workers are prioritized for vaccination in Phase 1b Group 7 (below folks like veterinarians or people that work manufacturing jobs). I think that current prioritization points to a rural/suburban bias, and having the Governor escalate D.C.'s transit workers to a top priority maybe creates some wiggle room to do so in Virginia's cities.
Mel Leonor at the RTD has an exhaustive recap of where we are with legalization of marijuana. There are a lot of moving pieces, and it seems like folks from the Senate and the House still have a ways to go before they get on the same page. And remember! Bills die in frequent and interesting ways! You shouldn't get too attached to any specific path forward for this legislation.
If you're not following along live, you should really read impeachment.fyi' s coverage of yesterday's impeachment trial. One of the quotes that sticks with me is from Rep. Castro: "On January 6, President Trump left everyone in this capitol for dead." CSPAN has seven hours of video, if you really want to commit.
This morning's longread
How the empty bags and wrappers got there
I loved this pandemic piece from local writer Kelly Gerow.
This is not new for me. The idea of alone time — true alone time, not just “everyone is asleep but me” time, that a lot of overworked parents stretch into the too-late hours — is so decadent and rare that I naturally associate it with indulging in unhealthy foods. My first night alone since having children happened only the year before, and I started the day with a giant buttermilk biscuit with bacon, egg and cheese, had expensive chicken salad and crackers for lunch, and ate out of a quart of ice cream for the rest of the day. The next day I ordered Pad Thai with an appetizer of fried tofu for dinner and a giant slice of peanut butter and chocolate pie from an amazing bakery that we save for special occasions. Half of the pie was left on the morning my husband came back, and before he arrived, I ate it for breakfast to ensure I wouldn’t have to share it. That was a great weekend.
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