🦪 Good morning, RVA: More vaccine mandates, a budget to spend, and some monument history

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and you can expect hot highs in the 90s this afternoon. We’ve got a couple more days of this heat before things cool off—it is August, after all. Seek out shade if you can!
 

Water cooler

The Richmond Times-Dispatch talked to a bunch of public health experts—including Dr. Fauci, state health commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver, Virginia’s vaccine coordinator Dr. Danny Avula, local epidemiologist Rebekah Butterfield, and the Fairfax County health director—about what the heck is going on with COVID-19 lately. This is a good, level-setting Q&A that’s worth sharing with folks who may be newly interested in getting vaccinated (or newly required to) or are confused by some of the recent changes in guidance due to the intense spread of the Delta variant. Bottom line: The vaccines are safe, they work real good, they’re free, and they’re widely available.
 

Another vaccine-mandate domino falls: VCU will now require vaccination for all VCU and VCU Health System employees. Employees of the former have until September 1st to report their vaccination status (which aligns with the Governor’s Executive Directive for all state employees), and employees of the latter have until September 15th to get their first dose. Additionally, “effective immediately, masking indoors will be reinstated throughout the university and remains in effect for health system facilities.” With the State, the City, and now VCU all implementing some form of vaccine mandate, a big chunk of Richmond largest employers have turned decidedly pro-vax. Two things: 1) I wonder who the first large, private, non-health employer will be to require their employees get vaccinated, and 2) I sure am glad I ordered some new, cool-looking masks on a dark whim a couple weeks ago.
 

The General Assembly adopted a budget for how to spend upwards of $3.4 billion in federal aid. Here’s the Governor’s victory-lap press release, and here’s the RTD’s Michael Martz with some more details. Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury broke down the specifics of the spending last week, if you’re looking for the what’s what. This morning the most interesting part to me is the $761 million that “remains available for programming in light of the evolving pandemic,” which, as we see in the above paragraph, is definitely still a need.
 

Who are the kids depicted on the Arthur Ashe monument? One of them is DeMario Pitchford, who, at age 10, happened to live in Fulton near artist Paul DiPasquale. Richmond Magazine’s Harry Kollatz Jr. has the story of how that came to pass, plus some cool pictures and history of our one remaining Monument Avenue monument. Make sure you scroll down to the pic comparing the size of the bronze kids to the size of a non-bronze, regular human—those things are huge!
 

Yesterday’s longread focused on using oysters to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and I made some remark about how using oysters to help the enviornment is old news to Virginians. Then, today, I just opened up VPM and there was this article by Patrick Larsen about how the Harrison Lake National Fish Hatchery in Charles City is raising freshwater mussels to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. I had no idea! Also, I had no idea that freshwater mussel larvae must attach themselves to fish gills for a couple weeks! Fascinating. Anyway, mussels are delicious, and while I don’t know if you can eat these or not, getting more of them back into our creeks and rivers seems like a good idea.
 

This morning’s longread

Why are vaccination rates so low? We found the worst county in each state and asked the politicians

I found this particularly demoralizing! Enjoy!
 

“It’s a hard sell here,” said David Trujillo, the Democratic mayor of Lovington, N.M., the county seat of rural Lea County, where the former president won by 60 percentage points. Trujillo was among the first locals to be vaccinated in midwinter, when he secured a spot because vials were going to waste for lack of sign-ups. The rate for the county is now 20% — about a third of the rate statewide. Well aware that promoting vaccination could hurt his campaign for reelection in April, the mayor said he rarely mentions it anymore. “You could lose votes for pushing the vaccine too much,” he said.
 

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Picture of the Day

AI-generated pictures week continues! Here’s Virginia’s historic capitol building—designed by Thomas Jefferson himself.