Good morning, RVA! It's 73 °F, and super-hot highs return today. Expect highs in the mid 90s and more triple-digit Feels Likes—the next handful of days are absolute scorchers. Stay hydrated!
Water cooler
It's Tuesday, so let's check in on Virginia's coronacounts via VDH's data dashboard (which just got some new updates yesterday). Here are the graphs of all-time cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. New cases have surpassed their scary springtime levels and have continued their to climb back to winter's terrifying heights. The hospitalization graph doesn't really do a ton to reassure me, honestly. Check out this newly updated Cases Rates by Vaccination Status page, which does make me feel pretty good. According to VDH, as of August 14th, just 0.2% of fully vaccinated Virginians have developed COVID-19, 0.009% have been hospitalized, and 0.0018% have died. These are very small numbers with many zeros in front of them, and they should make those scary graphs from earlier feel less scary (assuming you're vaccinated). Although, Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has some reporting on what those numbers actually mean and how the State could improve how they're tallied. Finally, and not like you thought otherwise, but the level of community transmission in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield is high. Basically, other than a couple of counties in Nebraska, the level of community transmission is high across all of America.
As foretold by the New York Times, the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine yesterday for people 16 and older. Also as foretold, vaccine mandates immediately began to pop up: The NYT reports that the Pentagon, New York City School System, New Jersey's state government, CVS, and a handful of universities all announced mandates yesterday. You should expect more of these, including employers closer to home—maybe even your own employer! The FDA is still working through full approval for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, authorization for 5–11 year olds, and booster shots for the general public. It's going to be a busy couple of weeks in vaccine world.
Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams write about the history of Westwood, a small, Black neighborhood out in Richmond's West End. The Department of Historic Resources just installed one of those marker signs out that way commemorating the neighborhood, which was founded by formerly enslaved individuals after the Civil War. As you can imagine, Westwood has had its challenges over the past 150 or so years. Listen to this bananas story: "In 1942, the city of Richmond annexed Westwood from Henrico County, but residents had to walk to a hydrant near the community entrance to fill buckets with water for drinking and washing. At one point...elected officials tied the offer of water and sewer service to a condition that Westwood’s 65 families vacate their homes as soon as the owner or spouse died." What! Eventually, a "biracial coalition of clergy, residents, the League of Women’s Voters and the Times-Dispatch editorial page" forced the City to get their heads on straight and extend water and sewer service. Tap through and read some more about this small community's resilience over the years.
Ben Paviour at VPM reports on yesterday's meeting of the Virginia Redistricting Commission, which sounds more productive than some of the previous meetings. The Commission voted to start redrawing the Commonwealth's political districts from scratch rather than use the existing, proven-to-be-gerrymandered maps. That seems good! The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Mel Leonor reports that the Commission will roll up their sleeves and dig into the actual work of redrawing this coming Thursday. I imagine we'll hear more on about their progress (🤞) on Friday.
Today is the first day of VCU's fall semester, and, with in-person instruction and vaccine mandates in place, that means students are back on campus. I love it! The city is once again filled with that special VCU-flavored life. Please be extra careful if you make the (possibly dumb) decision to drive through campus as there are suddenly thousands of new humans out and about learning how to get around.
This morning's longread
"A Smile With Sharp Teeth": Mike Richards’s Rise to ‘Jeopardy!’ Host Sparks Questions About His Past
If you need the background on whatever is happening to Jeopardy, here you go. As of yesterday, Mayim Bialik has taken over temporary hosting duties after this dude got canned.
In 2007, he auditioned to replace Bob Barker as Price’s host when the iconic emcee was preparing to retire. “Of all the people we were trying out, he had the least professional experience,” Roger Dobkowitz, a longtime Price producer, said in 2012 of Richards’s hosting audition. “He knew all the right words to say, but he did not bring anything special, personality or performance-wise, to the test show. His performance was compared to that of an eager student performing in a college show and putting on his best impersonation of what he thinks a game show host is.”
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