Good morning, RVA! It's 71 °F, and today looks like another hot and humid scorcher. You can expect temperatures in the 90s and Feels Likes closer to 100 °F today, tomorrow, and, honestly, straight on through until Friday. As always: Stay hydrated.
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: 169, 7, and 6.6, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 16.1 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 1.7; Henrico: 10.3, and Chesterfield: 4.1). Since this pandemic began, 1,356 people have died in the Richmond region. 46.5%, 58.1%, and 54.7% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
We reached some big vaccination milestones over the weekend: Over five million Virginians have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 50.4% of the entire commonwealth is now fully vaccinated, and more than nine million total doses have been administered since late last December. Those are big numbers! Great work, everyone. The daily rate of new folks getting vaccinated looks like it has started to level out, which you can see in this graph. Leveling out is better than continual decrease, but, at this rate, it'd take more than a year to vaccinate the entire population of Virginia. That's not a reasonable goal, though, as some folks will never choose to get vaccinated.
Thursday is the big marijuana legalization day, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Mel Leonor had a good piece over the week working through how the new law is still just one step towards equity. There's lots of work left for the General Assembly to do on clarifying legal gray areas that will, undoubtedly, lead to inequitable enforcement—open container definitions, application of the laws to renters, and, of course, undoing previous marijuana convictions. I imagine the newly created state agency will start working on some recommendations in the coming months and that, fingers crossed, the GA will take up a few clarifying weed bills this winter.
City Council meets tonight, and you can flip through the agenda—as it stands—here. Of note, the agenda includes a handful of small rezonings, but both the rezonings of Greater Scott's Addition and of Broad Street between the Science Museum and the VCU & VUU Pulse stations have been continued until July 26th. Also a dozen or so honorary block dedications in Jackson Ward have ended up on the Regular Agenda. These dedications are part of the JXN Project and would honor residents of Jackson Ward like Lucy Goode Brooks, Neverett Eggleston, Lillie Ann Estes, and Charles Sidney Gilpin. The ordinances are definitely worth tapping into to get a brief biography of each person and their contribution to the neighborhood and beyond. I'm not sure why they're all on Regular Agenda instead of the Consent Agenda. Maybe to give folks a chance to speak in support of each ordinance? Chris Suarez at the RTD has some more details on the project.
John Reid Blackwell, also at the RTD, has an extensive look at the future of whatever we're calling the area around Hardywood—which developers want to call "Brewer's Row." I'm stoked to see a mostly industrial wasteland turn into a place for people, and I'd love to see more trees, more shade, and more pedestrian and bike infrastructure as the area grows!
Speaking of places for people, Mark Robinson at the RTD has an article focusing mostly on the cost of the market-rate homes that are part of the larger Armstrong Renaissance development, a development which I love and find beautiful from both an urbanism and aesthetic standpoint. Just 28 single-family homes in the 256-unit neighborhood are market-rate, which makes them way unaffordable to, well, most folks. But this is what you get when you build mixed-income communities, and I'm not surprised when the (limited) market-rate components reflect the current market rate. As Robinson reports, the Armstrong Renaissance is a, "mixed-income community, which also features deeply affordable and workforce rentals," and we should build more of this sort of thing throughout the region.
I loved reading these RPS graduates' strong and determined reflections on this past school year via Alan Rodriguez on VPM. I am inspired and encouraged! Listen to Open High School graduate Jasmine Twiman when she says, "I’m proud of us. It was touch-and-go for a while, but I’m proud of us."
This morning's longread
Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling.
Well this was fascinating and also scary.
Years of research on the dangers of coronaviruses, and the broader history of lab accidents and errors around the world, provided scientists with plenty of reasons to proceed with caution as they investigated this class of pathogens. But troubling safety practices persisted. Worse, researchers’ success at uncovering new threats did not always translate into preparedness. Even if the coronavirus jumped from animal to human without the involvement of research activities, the groundwork for a potential disaster had been laid for years, and learning its lessons is essential to preventing others.
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