🕵️ Good morning, RVA: 773 • 12; unreliable tests; and a lack of contact tracing infrastructure

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F, and highs today should hit somewhere in the low 60s. Stick around, though, because we could see highs in the 80s later this week—not like you’re going anywhere!

Water cooler

The Richmond Police Department reports that Makayla A. Gregory, 20, was shot to death on Saturday night on the 2000 block of Sussex Street. Another victim is being treated for life-threatening injuries and is listed in critical condition.

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 773 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 12 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 53 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 22, Henrico: 13, and Richmond: 18). Small side note: I’m not sure what’s happening with the number of new deaths, which have been shockingly low over the last two days. That’s great news if it’s not just a weird reporting artifact.

As the Commonwealth stumbles toward the May 15th start of Phase One, Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the most important coronavirus piece I’ve read in a while. For the past several weeks I’ve said testing in Virginia is abysmally low, but, turns out, it’s even worse: “Virginia remains far from Gov. Ralph Northam’s goal of 10,000 tests per day and is not meeting the testing goals laid out by leading health researchers. The state’s already low testing numbers are inflated by unreliable antibody testing.” Wait, what? Leonor continues: “The VDH confirmed Friday that the state’s rising test numbers — touted by the Northam administration as a sign of progress — include the results of antibody testing. As those tests inch their way into the market, Virginia’s own health officials have said that commercial antibody tests have not been vetted by federal regulators and are not yet reliable sources of data. The state does not know how many unreliable tests are among those in its count.” The data focus of Northam’s plan to move to Phase One on May 15th is “percent positivity.” He’s shows this graph, with it’s gently download-sloping yellow line, as the primary support for reducing restrictions this coming Friday instead of in June as originally planned. However, I’ve got major skeptical face about that graph—especially after reading Leonor’s reporting. To calculate percent positivity you take the number of positive cases, which have continued to increase, and divide them by the total number of tests. To get percent positivity to go down, you either need to decrease the number of positive cases (the numerator) or increase the total number of tests (the denominator). Chucking a bunch unreliable antibody tests into the denominator is definitely a way to decrease the percent positivity while positive cases continue to rise. Not great.

Despite the clearly not great data, May 15th’s Phase One rapidly approaches, and the Governor has issued guidance for a bunch of different business and industries who can reopen on Friday should they so choose. Restaurants can open, but only 50% of their legal occupancy and only outdoor seating. Gyms can open, but only in outdoor spaces. Non-essential brick-and-mortar can reopen but only at 50% of their legal occupancy. Religious services can take place but only at 50% of their legal occupancy. The Governor has also included lots of distancing, face-covering, and sanitization requirements across the board. Particularly shocking to me is the faith group guidance. Given the size of some religious buildings, in our region alone we could see permitted gatherings of thousands of people. Note that sports, music venues, and other large gatherings are not permitted in Phase One. Maybe y’all have a different take than me, but, until we have better testing and a strong contact tracing infrastructure in place, Phase One absolutely terrifies me.

Speaking of contact tracing, Mel Leonor, again in The Most Important Coronavirus Piece Yet, says “…the state currently employs 325 tracers — far below the 1,275 workers Virginia would need under ‘normal times,’…and even further from the 2,550 workers they recommend now.” So not only are we failing to test an appropriate amount of folks, we don’t have anywhere near the infrastructure needed to track people down who may have been exposed to the coronavirus. I try not to link to random, unverified Twitter threads about things, but take a minute and read through this thread about an American’s take on South Korea’s tracing infrastructure. This is intense stuff!—Temperatures taken at every turn, mandatory apps installed on your phone, required self-reporting of symptoms for weeks, quarantine enforceable by a sizable fine, and the government checking in on your location multiple times per day. Listen to what the original tweeter says, though: “I feel pretty confident that the government knows everyone who has coronavirus and is tracking things very closely, which means I don’t have to worry as much.” We’ve got the exact opposite situation here in America, or in Virginia for that matter. Until we’ve got that kind of serious testing and tracking infrastructure, it feels like, to me at least, that I need to worry exponentially more.

City Council will hold what looks like their final budget hearing today. You can still weigh in this morning if you get an email into the City Clerk in the next couple of hours (cityclerksoffice@richmondgov.com). The marijuana testing resolution I wrote about last week has landed on their consent agenda, as well (RES. 2020-R030).

Whoa, Chesterfield County plans to rewrite their entire zoning code from scratch, and Jack Jacobs at Richmond BizSense has the details. I kind of love this idea, although its a herculean effort to get some of the more progressive land-use ideas codified into zoning through our region’s typically conservative local legislators. The County should read sentences like this, nod their collective heads in approval, and steel themselves for the inevitable outcry from homeowners: “county officials do have an interest in expanded by-right uses in residential districts, exploring ways the zoning ordinance can help keep suburban shopping centers viable and creating mixed-use districts (something the current ordinance doesn’t have).”

Oh man, I am incredibly envious of this old Richmond Dairy bottle someone posted on /r/rva!

This morning’s longread

I Have Seen the Future—And It’s Not the Life We Knew

Here’s what I keep trying to tell myself: There is no imminent Return to Normal. I don’t even really like the idea that we’ll figure out a New Normal anytime soon. I think we’ll not emerge forward from this pandemic, but slide sideways into a way of life that looks a lot different than things did this past February.

When he caught a taxi to head home, Suzanne had to present the driver with documents detailing his health status, which were checked and photographed. When he arrived at the gated community where he lives, a masked police officer wearing gloves scanned his wrist to check his temperature before allowing him inside. Suzanne carried a card, a kind of pass to the outside world, that listed his temperature each time he left the compound. “It’s not just for taxis. It’s to leave your community. It’s to go into the hospital. It’s to go to even those small restaurants that I just showed you. If I wanted to buy something from that kebab place, I would have [had] to scan a code or show them my paperwork,” he said.

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This morning’s Instagram