Good morning, RVA! It's 33 °F, and it's gonna rain. I'm not sure my already-soggy neighborhood needs another half inch of rain, but that's what's happening this afternoon. If you need to go out, make sure you bring something to keep you warm and to keep you dry, too.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,303 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 134 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 230 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 90, Henrico: 85, and Richmond: 55). Since this pandemic began, 755 people have died in the Richmond region. Now that Chesterfield has its data reporting issue sorted out, the local seven-day average of new reported cases in the region, like the statewide numbers, has fallen to a level not seen since early December. Everyone: Keep doing what you're doing (unless you're one of those people who just haven't changed their behavior at all over the past year—then to you I make a rude gesture with both of my hands). We don't want a repeat of the winter or last spring. Just look at this powerfully simple graph of weekly deaths in the United States over the last five years. The past 12 months have been real, and its hard to argue otherwise looking at this graph. Almost 500,000 people have died in the U.S. because of this disease—it's hard to comprehend.
Over in vaccine land, I've been tracking how much vaccine the state reports receiving each week, and last week was a bust. Just 99,750 doses, compared to an average of 218,892 doses over the previous three weeks. Some of that, I'm sure was weather related, but dang. Everything, and I mean everything, changes when we have abundant supply of the various vaccines—and, I think, that time is coming sooner rather than later.
Jessica Nocera at the Richmond Times-Dispatch writes about families making the choice to send (or not send) their kids back to school at Chesterfield's J.A. Chalkley Elementary. Nocera does a great job of laying out how freaking complex this decision is, especially for families of color: "At Chalkley, where 45% of students returned, only 1 in 3 Black students showed up on the first day back, while nearly half of Hispanic students and about 6 in 10 white students did, according to state and county data. The district’s whitest school zone, Bettie Weaver, had the highest percentage of students who signed up to return." I think statistics like this underscore how the Governor's decision to mandate/strongly encourage/whatever that all school districts open up to in-person instruction by March 15th felt a little tone deaf to some folks.
As I keep saying, bills can die rapid and interesting deaths in the General Assembly, so don't get your hopes up. That said, check out this piece by the Virginia Mercury's Sarah Vogelsong about the GA getting pretty close to adopting California's "stringent" vehicle emission standards and electric car sales targets. "Transportation", writ large, accounts for almost 30% of emission in the U.S., and personal travel is a big chunk of that. Converting as many cars as we can to electric will put a big dent in our emissions, but electric cars do not "solve" climate change. They do nothing to make our cities better places to live—places where people can walk, bike, and take transit. They do nothing to combat sprawl, itself a huge driver of emissions. But! We can and should do both things: Create ways for folks to live less car-dependent lives and get as many vehicles running on electricity as possible. Side note: I really like this graph of California's greenhouse gas emissions by category which shows transportation accounting for 40.1% of the states emissions and passenger vehicles making up 69.8% of that (PDF, p. 6).
RVA Rapid Transit has launched a new program, called The Rider's Voice, to collect stories and experiences of folks who use transit. You can either call in and leave a voicemail (804.286.0007) or take this online survey. This month's topic is "How has free bus fare affected you?"
The RTD's Michael Martz reports that Urban One, a "Black-owned Washington media company," will team up with the owner of Colonial Downs and submit an application to build a casino on the Southside of Richmond (the deadline for those applications, by the way, is today at 3:00 PM). I still don't think I want any resort casinos in the City, but this new proposed location—in a hard-to-reach, Phantom Zone out by the Port of Richmond—is at least better than adjacent to Hillside Court or in the Movieland parking lot. In fact, you might remember this old, unused Philip Morris property as the spot the City briefly pitched to relocate the Department of Social Services during the whole Navy Hill situation—I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about that!
City Council will meet tonight, and I don't see the paper that would accept money from DRPT to paint the Pulse lanes red—but, remember, the agenda can and does change frequently. One new ordinance to keep an eye on: ORD. 2021-021 will keep sidewalk dining applications free for restaurants (normally $300) until June 30, 2021.
This morning's patron longread
Short of Vaccine, States Find Hidden Stashes in Their Own Backyards
Submitted by Patron Lisa. Hey look, it's Richmond's Dr. Danny Avula in the New York Times!
Until a software patch was created, vaccinations of hospital staff did not show up in the state’s system. Some clinics were using paper records and were slow to file. Dr. Avula put a 10-person team on “pounding the data,” and the state began rising in the national rankings. Then he tackled stockpiles. Walgreens and CVS had already drawn down most of the quarter-million doses allotted to the state’s long-term-care program. On Jan. 25, with the C.D.C.’s permission, Dr. Avula put the 62,000 doses that were left under state control. Many other states are doing the same. At least 20 states said they had shifted or planned to shift doses that had been set aside for long-term-care facilities, according to a New York Times survey of all 50 states.
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Picture of the Day
I might be getting a little too
