Good morning, RVA! It's 73 °F, and maybe, for the majority of today, it doesn't rain! Still, you should probably expect cloudy skies, highs in upper 80s, and possibly some afternoon thunderstorms depending on the cards we're dealt.
Water cooler
Didn't expect to read this headline in the New York Times this morning: "U.S. to Advise Boosters for Most Americans 8 Months After Vaccination." The NYT thinks the announcement could come as early as this week, with folks receiving their booster in September. To be honest, I feel atwixted about this decision. So much of the world remains unvaccinated, yet here we are noodling on administering third doses to the general public before the end of the year. I feel like there must be some path forward that allows us to fully protect the most vulnerable Americans without sucking up a major chunk of the worldwide vaccine supply.
It's Tuesday, and that feels like a good time to check in on VDH's coronacounts dashboard. First, take a look at the all-time graphs of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The big, giant takeaway from these three charts is that while cases are at levels we haven't seen since the Dark Winter, deaths remain incredibly low. That's good news. Second, VDH has rearranged their dashboard a bit and added a new "Level of Community Transmission" page, which looks a lot like the CDC's analogous page. VDH will update their page weekly, and, I think, the CDC's updates daily. For now, those differences won't matter as the basically the entire country is experiencing high levels of community transmission, so you should get used to seeing solid red maps for a while.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Kenya Hunter reports that RPS's School Board voted 8-1 to approve a vaccine mandate for District staff (4th District's Jonathan Young voted against, because, in Hunter's words, "it wouldn’t show Richmond school employees that the board and the administration trust personnel"). While Hunter reports that RPS is one of the first districts in the state to require vaccination for staff, I don't think they'll be the last. Vaccinating teachers is a great way to keep them safe, keep students safe, and limit as much disruption of the classroom as possible.
Speaking of, School Board member Liz Doerr sent out an excellent email the other day (which I cannot find an online link to), that pointed me towards both this RPS reopening dashboard spreadsheet and the full text of RPS's fall reopening plan. From the former, it looks like the District has checked off a lot of the planned reopening infrastructure work—things like plumbing, HVAC, hand sanitizer, PPE, safety protocols. The latter is fascinating, and you should give it a scroll if you have any questions about how RPS plans on reopening to in-person learning in the next couple of weeks. It's unclear to me if the Board needs to vote on this plan or not, but they did discuss it last night (according to this very long Twitter thread).
Staying with schools, the Chesterfield County Public Schools superintendent posted this video on Twitter asking parents to drive their children to school if they can, due to a 100-driver bus shortage. I will try not to think too hard about someone standing in a new electric bus, bought to "help the environment," while asking every household to drive their children to school in a car.
VPM reminds me that you can watch the final Civilian Review Board Task Force town hall online tonight at 6:00 PM. It's been a heckuva year, and to make any progress at all on this work seems incredible to me. I think the Task Force is gearing up to release their final report soon, and I look forward to reading it.
This piece about Charlottesville's Champion Brewing making a Duke's mayonnaise beer was sent to me with "This is relevant to your interests." I feel seen! I absolutely love how every single person in this article is trying to play down how disgusting a mayonnaise beer sounds. The highest praise comes from customer Lucas Adam who says "I would try the beer." Amazing! Let's be clear, though: I, too, would try this beer, Lucas.
Finally, via /r/rva, a picture is worth at least 100 gallons of soy sauce.
This morning's longread
The Hidden Melodies of Subways Around the World
Some cities have way more thoughtful subway chimes than others. Paris, what even are you doing! For me, though, nothing beats Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please.
“One of the biggest things about transit is just trying to get people to step lively on and off trains as the doors are about to close,” said Max Diamond, a New York City Transit conductor. “It seems to a layperson like a door chime is innocuous, but it’s a really critical part of keeping the capacity of the subway up.” So, Diamond said, you wouldn’t want the chime to be too long, or it might slow things down further on an already overburdened transit system. On the other hand, according to Fisher, of the British Columbia Rapid Transit Company, it can’t be too short or people might miss their window of opportunity to rush out the doors. (New York’s two-note chime lasts just a fraction of a second, on the shorter side of transit chimes.)
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