🗳️ Good morning, RVA: Medium again, special election, and a big federal grant

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and you can expect the day to warm up just a bit by this afternoon. Tomorrow, though, temperatures sink like a stone with lows near freezing and highs 20 degrees cooler than today—plus some rain, too. Wild! Megan Wise at NBC12 reports that yesterday’s high hit 83 °F, obliterating the all-time daily high and tying the all-time overall high for February set back in the 30s.
 

Water cooler

As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 65, 92, and 38, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 10.4. First, these numbers don’t scream “data issues” to me like they have for the past two weeks. Second, I think next week we might officially dip back into the cool, green waters of a low COVID-19 Community Level. While we wait for that, wash your hands for 30 seconds and read Katelyn Jetelina’s piece on this year’s norovirus season.
 

OK! We now have voting locations for this coming Sunday’s special election to fill Jennifer McClellan’s now vacant State Senate seat. Important note: You can vote in this weekend’s election if you live in the old 9th Senate District, aka Jennifer McClellan previously represented you in the Senate. If you’ve been redistricted into the new 9th Senate District from elsewhere you’ll have to sit this one out. It’s confusing, but, luckily, you can use this Who’s My Legislator tool to find both your old and new districts. If you’re a big fan of voting in elections, get excited because primaries for alllll of the General Assembly seats kick off this summer ahead of a very big and very important November election.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Em Holter reports that Richmond has won a $1.35 million federal transportation grant to continue working on the plans to cap I-95/64 over by Jackson Ward. This funding comes from the Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot program and is specifically designed to help undo some of the destruction caused by running highways through majority Black neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s. This is great news! While it’s not money for pouring concrete and building things (yet), I think winning the grant speaks to the project’s potential—especially since Secretary Mayor Pete himself was down here walking through the neighborhood a while back. Fingers crossed that the City’s team will put together a compelling plan and eventually win some actual infrastructure dollars! You can read more about reconnecting Jackson Ward and this original grant application here.
 

Ben Paviour at VPM reports on some embarrassing and mean-spirited text messages sent by Governor Youngkin’s recent appointee to UVA’s Board of Visitors. It’s yet another story about how the Governor appointed someone unfit for the job—a recurring theme over the past year. These appointments seem clumsy, since they inevitably stir up a negative media cycle or two, but I dunno. Appointing someone who says ridiculously things like it’s ”our only opportunity to change/reverse the path to Wokeness that has overtaken our entire University” lets the Governor spread damaging, Trumpian rhetoric throughout government while keeping himself and his moderate-looking fleece vest out of the fray.
 

Axios Richmond’s Ned Oliver reports on Virginia’s budget or, I guess, the lack thereof. From the piece: “The General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn Saturday morning, but first lawmakers have to resolve a standoff over $1 billion in tax cuts proposed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin…It doesn’t look like they’re going to make their deadline.” This where my understand of the General Assembly and its budget process breaks down, and I get confused about next steps (if there even are any).
 

Via /r/rva an interesting post tracking prices of take-out menu items since 2019. Unsurprisingly, the prices have gone up!
 

The Flying Squirrels have released their very long list of promotions, fireworks, and giveaways for the upcoming 2023 season (which begins on April 7th). This list is intense! It makes me thankful Richmond has a minor league team that leans fully into the weird and wonderful.
 

This morning’s longread

How a Drug Company Made $114 Billion by Gaming the U.S. Patent System

Do stories of massive companies extracting billions of dollars from vulnerable members of our society continue to shock me? Yeah, I guess they do.
 

One analysis found that Medicare, which in 2020 covered the cost of Humira for 42,000 patients, spent $2.2 billion more on the drug from 2016 to 2019 than it would have if competitors had been allowed to start selling their drugs promptly. In interviews, patients said they either had to forgo treatment or were planning to delay their retirement in the face of enormous out-of-pocket costs for Humira. AbbVie did not invent these patent-prolonging strategies; companies like Bristol Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca have deployed similar tactics to maximize profits on drugs for the treatment of cancer, anxiety and heartburn. But AbbVie’s success with Humira stands out even in an industry adept at manipulating the U.S. intellectual-property regime.
 

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Picture of the Day

A billion bins.