Good morning, RVA! It's 77 °F, and, later today we should get a reprieve to the opressive heat. You can expect highs in the 80s, but rain should move in late morning or early afternoon to cool things down. Tomorrow's forecast looks like a real winner, so get excited.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 136, 21, and 6, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 18.7 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 0.9; Henrico: 11.9, and Chesterfield: 6). Since this pandemic began, 1,352 people have died in the Richmond region. 45.8%, 57.2%, and 53.7% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Despite the VDH dashboard's stubborn refusal to tick over from 69.9% of adult Virginians with at least one dose to the full 70%, the Governor declared victory yesterday at Hope Pharmacy in the East End. From the release, "Virginia is the 16th state in the nation to meet this goal set by President Joe Biden in early May and reaches the key vaccination milestone two weeks ahead of the nationwide July 4 target. To date, over 8.8 million doses of vaccine have been administered in Virginia and more than 4.2 million individuals, or 60.3 percent of the population 18 and older, are fully vaccinated." That's pretty rad, and we're seeing some good progress at the local level, too: 53.6%, 69.1%, and 65.9% of adults in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have had at least one dose. We should celebrate this local progress but also take these local number with a grain of salt. According to the dashboard, a full 1,080,323 people have not been "mapped," which I assume means they aren't tied to a locality. That's 22% of all people with at least one dose! Doing some reprehensible napkin math and assuming that those one million untethered folks are distributed equally and evenly, (aka just adding 22% to the local-level percentages), we'd end up with 65.4%, 84.3%, and 80.4% of adults across our three localities with at least one dose. Now, of course, I have no reason to think that's how the math would actually work out—in fact, the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Sabrina Moreno reports that it may be weighted towards people living near the North Carolina border—but a million folks is a lot of people in a state with a total population of 8.5 million. Anyway, good work everyone, and good luck in the continued work!
Welp, add one to the enormously long list of "shows what I know"s. The RTD's Chris Suarez reports that "On Monday, the Richmond Planning Commission declined to recommend whether the City Council should authorize the mayor’s administration to remove the bases for the J.E.B. Stuart, Jefferson Davis and 'Stonewall' Jackson statues on Monument Avenue, along with the one for the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Libby Hill. The commissioners did not vote on whether to endorse the removal of the Matthew Fontaine Maury monument’s pedestal and several smaller monuments on Monument Avenue and in Monroe Park after ending their meeting early Monday evening because of technical difficulties. The commission did, however, endorse plans for the removal of the A.P. Hill statue at the intersection of Hermitage Road and Laburnum Avenue, citing traffic safety concerns there." I certainly did not expect that! And I certainly did not expect that the Governor's office, who sent a letter of opposition via Chief of Staff Clark Mercer, would get involved, either! What seemed like a straightforward plan to get rid of racist garbage and present the community with a blank slate from which to work, now seems incredibly messy with differing levels of involvement and expectations from the City, the State, and the public. We'll see what City Council decides to do next, but I'm not sure they're going to love the State weighing in on on this particular issue at this particular moment in the process. I also have some thoughts on this Reimagining Monument Avenue group, which is not directly associated with the City or its Department of Planning, but seems to be who everyone assumes will do the eponymous work of reimagining Monument Avenue. But! I would like to learn more first.
I have to link to this editorial in the RTD supporting GRTC's decision to remain fare-free for another year, because I never thought I would read these sentences in our local paper: "And in the long term, we have to find better solutions than our dependency on cars. Multimodal transit is the answer, and GRTC is a key part of that emerging framework."
Tonight at 6:00 PM you can attend an actual in-person, indoors public meeting—if you feel comfortable with that sort of thing. The City will host a conversation about the draft City Center Plan at the Convention Center and, of course, simultaneously on Microsoft Teams. This, I think, is the only public meeting on this plan before it works its way through the legislative process, so, while you'll have plenty of public comment opportunities moving forward, this might be your best chance to influence tweaks, changes, and edits. You can read the full plan and leave comments using Konveio here. I know Konveio is a drag to use, but if you've got thoughts and feelings I really encourage you to go drop a bubble or two—I already see a handful of "WHERE'S THE PARKING??" comments that probably need some balancing out.
This morning's longread
Gaslit: How the fossil fuel industry convinced Americans to love gas stoves
Gas stoves are maybe terrible, turns out. This is like when I learned the auto industry invented jaywalking to help sell cars.
Beginning in the 1990s, the industry faced a new challenge: mounting evidence that burning gas indoors can contribute to serious health problems. Gas stoves emit a host of dangerous pollutants, including particulate matter, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides. One 2014 simulation by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that cooking with gas for one hour without ventilation adds up to 3,000 parts per billion of carbon monoxide to the air—raising indoor concentrations by up to 30 percent in the average home. Carbon monoxide can kill; it binds tightly to the hemoglobin molecules in your blood so they can no longer carry oxygen. What’s more, new research shows that the typical home carbon monoxide alarms often fail to detect potentially dangerous levels of the gas.
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