Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and False Fall is over—welcome back to summer. Today you can expect highs in mid 90s, plenty of sunshine, and NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says you should keep an eye out for brilliantly red wildfire smoke-induced sunrises and sunsets.
 

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This past Friday, RPS Superintendent Kamras announced that an RPS employee died from COVID-19: “This marks our second known fatality from the pandemic. Please keep this individual’s family in your thoughts and prayers. Please also take every possible measure to protect yourself, your loved ones, and our entire community. RPS students and staff spend most of their day outside of school, where the transmission rate is high among unvaccinated individuals. To be direct, our unvaccinated family members and friends are putting RPS students and staff at risk outside of school, and, in doing so, jeopardizing our ability to keep our doors open.”
 

I think it’s still too soon to expect VDH’s weekly-updating COVID-19 Outbreaks By Selected Exposure Settings dashboard to reflect anything useful about the first week back to in-person school. But, so we have context for the coming weeks: At the moment Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield report one, one, and two outbreaks in K–12 settings respectively. Both the Richmond and Henrico outbreaks date from before school started, while VDH was notified of both the Chesterfield outbreaks the County’s first week of school (remember Chesterfield schools kicked off a week earlier on August 23rd).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and today’s weather looks wonderful. Expect highs in the 80s, sunshine, and six or seven reasons to knock off of work early to spend some time on the porch.
 

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Yesterday evening, President Biden announced a six-pronged strategy to decrease the spread of the Delta variant and get as many people vaccinated as possible. The headlining prong is probably the Department of Labor requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to institute a vaccination mandate (or require employees to “produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work”). As you can imagine, this would impact a ton of employees, and will mostly likely lead to a ton of vaccine-holdouts getting jabbed up. Vaccine hesitancy become a lot less academic and a lot more cold-hard-reality when you have to find time in your schedule to get tested each and every week. The federal government will also require employer to give paid time off “for the time it takes for workers to get vaccinated or to recover if they are under the weather post-vaccination,” which should address another huge reason some folks remain unvaccinated—they just can’t afford to skip work for it. Other interesting presidential prongs: Requiring healthcare workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to get vaccinated, same for Head Start staff, asking large entertainment venues to require proof of vaccination, calling on states to adopt vaccine requirements for all school employees, and turning on the Defense Production Act to help make more at-home tests available (and more affordable). I love almost all of this stuff and appreciate the clever work that went in to developing a plan to move as many people toward vaccination as possible—even in the face of some obstinate, anti-science state governments.
 

Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an important monument update and one of the better headlines this week: “‘It’s not the void they hoped it would be': 1890 time capsule under Lee statue could not be found.” The chief comms guy for the Governor’s office, Grant Neely, also has one of the better quotes of the week: “After a long hard day, it’s clear the time capsule won’t be found—and Virginia is done with lost causes…The search for this moldy Confederate box is over. We’re moving on.” Also, a less fun update from this article, “The state hasn’t decided when it will remove the black perimeter fence it installed in January.” I’m pretty sure we were all told the fence was going up in preparation for the monument’s removal. Now that it’s removed, it’s entirely unacceptable to leave that horrible fence up permanently or even “temporarily.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and today you can expect highs in the upper 80s and a chance for storms later this afternoon. If you plan on spending some time outside, do it before cocktail o’ clock!
 

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After a jillion days, the majority of public school students in Richmond and Henrico are BACK in school buildings today! As a parent of an RPS middle schooler, it’s wild, stressful, exciting, and strange to think about. Who knows what this coming season—the Fall of Uncertainty—will bring, and I think families, in as much as they’re able, should prepare to be flexible and ready for change. Given the level of community transmission at the moment, COVID-19 will most likely find its way into schools right from day one. You should expect positive cases and you should expect quarantines, but you should also expect schools to work hard at implementing their COVID-19 protocols and layered mitigation strategies. I imagine this will play out unevenly, with some schools and classrooms completely and utterly disrupted while others quietly go on about their business. It’s good for students to be back in buildings with teachers and friends, but it’s scary, too—especially for younger kids who are still ineligible for a COVID-19 vaccine. We’ll learn a ton in the next couple of weeks, we’ll read dozens of shocking headlines, and then, with any luck, we’ll settle into some sort of rhythm. The Fall of Uncertainty is gonna feel real weird, and I hope that you’ll have grace and patience with the friends, family, and coworkers in your lives who have kids heading back to school this morning. If you want some more feels, watch this three-minute video from RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras to kick off this new season.
 

Yesterday afternoon, Style Weekly dropped this huge announcement on Facebook: “Style Weekly will cease publishing after the Sept. 8 edition. We thank our talented staff for their award-winning efforts and our loyal readers for their support. Thank you, Richmond.” I have personal, first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to shut down a local new biz, and, let’s me tell you, it sucks. I feel for the folks at Style and for what they’re processing this morning as their last issue goes out. It’s bad for Richmond to lose local media outlets, and the current environment doesn’t seem especially fertile for encouraging new ones to pop up. If you want to commiserate with folks, hop over into Style’s mentions on Twitter.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and we’ve got another—if slightly warmer—pleasant day ahead of us. Expect highs in the upper 80s and few clouds here and there.
 

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While it only updates on Fridays and Richmond and Henrico public schools have not yet returned to in-person instruction, it’s probably worth taking a look at VDH’s Outbreaks By Selected Exposure Settings dashboard. As of this past Friday, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield all posted exactly one ongoing outbreak in a public K–12 setting—and, remember, Chesterfield’s school year started back on August 24th. We’ll check back in this coming Monday to see how, if at all, things have changed.
 

The City sent out a press release on Saturday notifying the public that they’ll close a bunch of roads around the Lee Monument beginning tonight at 6:00 PM through 6:00 PM on Saturday. This means the work on taking down the Lee monument starts this evening! Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that fencing goes up tonight, the statue comes down on Wednesday morning, and plaques come off Thursday while crews replace a time capsule in the plinth. I have so many questions about what exactly they’ll take down, what they’ll leave up, and what the next steps are for MDP Circle and the entirety of Monument Avenue. Honestly, now would be a good time for the Reimagining Monument Avenue folks to start kicking things off (whatever those things may be).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and when was the last time we saw early morning temperatures in the 50s?? Today you can expect highs in the upper 70s, some gentle sunshine, and to find me in a hammock for at least part of the day.
 

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Frank Green at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Virginia Supreme Court has finally cleared the way for the Lee Monument to come down. As for the timing, “Removal will be a multiday process, and no action on the statue is expected this week, officials said.” I’m interested in the Department of General Services plan to remove this thing and really hope they keep the plinth as it stands today. I also wonder if, after the monument and fencing come down, the space will resume its role as a high-traffic gathering place for folks. We all saw how the community turned the bland grass circle into an actual place last year. So let’s use some of that ARPA money and make some permanent upgrades! Chris Suarez, also at the RTD, talks to a handful of local folks about the impending removal and has this interesting fact I did not know: “Georgia now leads the nation with 109 monuments standing. Virginia, which has removed or relocated more monuments than any other state in the country, led the nation before last summer.”
 

All that rain a couple days ago triggered a combined sewer overflow event, and the @rvah2o account (winner of a recent fake award I made up one morning) has a nice thread about the plans and funding required to make that sort of thing less frequent. Remember, combined sewer overflows happen when our centuries-old sewer system can’t handle the amount of stormwater gushing through it and discharges whatever its got at that moment into the river—which includes untreated wastewater (aka pooptown). @rvah2o points to state legislation that will fund some immediate fixes, plus longer term plans that will completely modernize our 19th century infrastructure (seriously, it’s centuries old). They estimate the total cost at around $850 million! You can sign up to get email notifications of every CSO event here, if that’s your sort of thing.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and when was the last time we saw early morning temperatures in the 50s?? Today you can expect highs in the upper 70s, some gentle sunshine, and to find me in a hammock for at least part of the day.
 

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Frank Green at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Virginia Supreme Court has finally cleared the way for the Lee Monument to come down. As for the timing, “Removal will be a multiday process, and no action on the statue is expected this week, officials said.” I’m interested in the Department of General Services plan to remove this thing and really hope they keep the plinth as it stands today. I also wonder if, after the monument and fencing come down, the space will resume its role as a high-traffic gathering place for folks. We all saw how the community turned the bland grass circle into an actual place last year. So let’s use some of that ARPA money and make some permanent upgrades! Chris Suarez, also at the RTD, talks to a handful of local folks about the impending removal and has this interesting fact I did not know: “Georgia now leads the nation with 109 monuments standing. Virginia, which has removed or relocated more monuments than any other state in the country, led the nation before last summer.”
 

All that rain a couple days ago triggered a combined sewer overflow event, and the @rvah2o account (winner of a recent fake award I made up one morning) has a nice thread about the plans and funding required to make that sort of thing less frequent. Remember, combined sewer overflows happen when our centuries-old sewer system can’t handle the amount of stormwater gushing through it and discharges whatever its got at that moment into the river—which includes untreated wastewater (aka pooptown). @rvah2o points to state legislation that will fund some immediate fixes, plus longer term plans that will completely modernize our 19th century infrastructure (seriously, it’s centuries old). They estimate the total cost at around $850 million! You can sign up to get email notifications of every CSO event here, if that’s your sort of thing.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and we did it. We made it through the heat and humidity to place of temporary relief. Today you can expect highs in the upper 70s and, more importantly, a break from the humidity. Temperatures will heat up over the weekend—but not to any of those triple-digit Feels Likes of the last couple of weeks.
 

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Not the best news morning to wake up to, with historic rain in the Northeast, flooding in New York City, and the Supreme Court gutting Roe v. Wade in the middle of the night.
 

It’s hard to be chipper up there in the weather paragraph when the same hurricane remnants that brought us a dip in humidity unleashed record-setting rain in Central Park, smashing an all-time record set way back in…last week when Tropical Storm Henri rolled through. The New York Times reports that the flooding has killed eight people, which, I think, is more than the number of people who died when Ida made landfall in Louisiana. All of this, while multiple wildfires in the west burn out of control, and Apple News just showed me a Wall Street Journal article about the best air purifier for ridding your home of wildfire smoke (whatever your budget!). Things are bad, and our legislators and other elected officials—at the local, state, and federal levels—remain unserious about climate change and continue to fund highways to the tune of billions of dollars. Locally, on September 13th, Richmond’s City Council will take up non-binding RES. 2021-R049, which would declare the existence of a climate and ecological emergency. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but it’s, by any measure imaginable, six or seven magnitudes of not enough.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and, along with the remnants of Hurricane Ida, cooler weather has arrived! You can expect highs in the 80s and a chance of rain pretty much throughout the entire day. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says, “This morning looks to be mainly dry but some storms this afternoon could turn severe.” Tomorrow and Friday look like real stunners.
 

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Oof, the Freelance Star reports that two Spotsylvania County schools have reverted to fully virtual learning for 10 days to stop the spread of COVID-19 among students. I didn’t even know that was allowed under the law passed by the General Assembly this past summer. Is this a sign of things to come in the Richmond region or the result of different mitigation measures and vaccine uptake rates? We’ll get to find out soon, I guess.
 

Yesterday, on National Overdose Awareness Day, Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on our region’s spike in fatal overdoses over the past year—2,308 people in Virginia died of an overdose in 2020. That’s a 40% increase from the number of deaths recorded in 2019. If you’d like an easy way to get involved, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts provide free in-person and virtual trainings on how to use Narcan to treat a narcotic overdose in an emergency situation.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 69 °F, and today looks the teensiest bit cooler than yesterday. Keep your eye out for potential afternoon storms, and then prepare for the remnants of Hurricane Ida to make their way through the region tomorrow. Cooler temperatures on Thursday!
 

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It’s Tuesday, and I thought I would take a look at VHD’s COVID-19 dashboard. The all-time graphs of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths still show me that vaccination works as a strong protection against hospitalization and death. While cases are way, way up (to late January levels!), if you’re vaccinated you should feel at least some, maybe small, sense of relief. If you’re not vaccinated, you should head over to your nearest pharmacy this morning, because…cases are way, way up. While I don’t (yet) see a bump in the new vaccinations graph due to full approval of the Pfizer vaccine, the number of new doses administered each day has increased since its low point in the beginning of July. Give those employee mandates time to work, though!
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Chris Suarez and Mark Robinson checked in on the local housing market and, according to the headline, it’s on fire. Look at this bananas stat: “Citywide, the average value of a home surged to $315,000, up from $277,000 this year and $266,000 the year before.” Robinson and Suarez also report that Councilmember Jones plans to introduce a newly retooled tax abatement program to help longtime residents who are hit by the increase in real estate taxes. That sounds like a way better plan than Councilmember Trammell’s, who wants to reduce the real estate tax rate which hasn’t increased—even to account for inflation—for years and years and years.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and the humid heat will stick around for another couple days. Relief arrives on Wednesday or Thursday, but, for today, expect highs in the mid 90s and plenty of sweat.
 

Scary but also weather-related, the Washington Post has a Hurricane Ida liveblog detailing the destruction and damage caused by the storm over the last 24 hours. They’ll continue to update this, I imagine, as the sun rises and folks get a better sense of the situation.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Sabrina Moreno reports on how Richmond’s racial and economic disparities play out into vaccine uptake disparities. Here’s the big takeaway: “Wealthier and predominantly white census tracts in Richmond and Henrico County have 2 to 5 times the vaccination rates of low-income areas with mostly Black and Latino residents.” I think a lot of overlapping issues contribute to these low vaccination rates, and there’s no magical sentence to say or program to implement that would suddenly see every neighborhood in Richmond vaccinated at the same rate as Windsor Farms. As Cotina Brake, outreach leader at the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts says, one-on-one conversations are critical moving forward—and that’s slow, methodical work.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and, yes, highs are back up in the burning-hot 90s. If you can make it past this weekend, through the seven levels of the candy cane forest, and to this coming Wednesday, you should get to relax in some cooler temperatures. I think we can do it!
 

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John Reid Blackwell at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that it’s getting harder to find a same-day COVID-19 tests. This matches with what I’ve heard anecdotally, too: multiple-hour waits at urgent care providers, sold out at-home tests, and booked-up testing appointments at pharmacies. If you need to get tested for work or travel reasons, I’d budget a couple of extra days to make that happen. And, remember, you can always walk up to one of the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts' free community testing events held a couple time a week across the region.
 

Also COVID-related and also in the RTD, Jessica Nocera reports that SOL passing rates dropped during the pandemic. I don’t think this is at all surprising, and I mostly link to it because I’m really interested in how we’ll have to asterisk 2020 and 2021 in all sorts of datasets. Test scores are just the top of the asterisk iceberg!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and, yes, highs are back up in the burning-hot 90s. If you can make it past this weekend, through the seven levels of the candy cane forest, and to this coming Wednesday, you should get to relax in some cooler temperatures. I think we can do it!
 

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John Reid Blackwell at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that it’s getting harder to find a same-day COVID-19 tests. This matches with what I’ve heard anecdotally, too: multiple-hour waits at urgent care providers, sold out at-home tests, and booked-up testing appointments at pharmacies. If you need to get tested for work or travel reasons, I’d budget a couple of extra days to make that happen. And, remember, you can always walk up to one of the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts' free community testing events held a couple time a week across the region.
 

Also COVID-related and also in the RTD, Jessica Nocera reports that SOL passing rates dropped during the pandemic. I don’t think this is at all surprising, and I mostly link to it because I’m really interested in how we’ll have to asterisk 2020 and 2021 in all sorts of datasets. Test scores are just the top of the asterisk iceberg!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and today looks like a repeat of yesterday. You can expect sunshine, highs in the mid 90s, and a powerful desire to pick up a milkshake.
 

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The New York Times has put together a nice map of states that saw the greatest summer increase in first doses, colored by percentage of total population vaccinated. As you may have guessed, in the face of Delta, states with the lowest vaccination rates saw the biggest increase in first doses. This dude running Arkansas’s vaccination effort puts it bluntly: “The reason why we’ve seen the marked increase in demand is fear, it’s the Delta variant.” I know it doesn’t feel great to make fear-based decisions, but, here we are and it seems like it’s working. Locally, we’re seeing a similar, if not as marked, increase in vaccine uptake in Virginia, too. How will return to school, a move back to more in-person working, employer vaccine mandates, and the coming of the Fall of Uncertainty impact the spread of both disease and vaccine? I don’t think anyone can know!
 

While you’re poking around the Virginia Department of Health dashboard from the link in the previous paragraph, make sure you stop by the recently resurrected COVID-19 Outbreaks by Selected Exposure Settings page. This table lists all outbreaks—active or otherwise—in a bunch of different settings, including, maybe most interesting at the moment, K–12 schools. According to VDH, “The dashboard is being reinstated because of the rapid increase in transmission of COVID-19 across the state spurred by the Delta variant. This has resulted in an increase in cases and outbreaks in congregate and communal settings. The publicly posted data will include all outbreaks reported to VDH since August 1, 2021, as these are the most relevant to implementing mitigation strategies and informing the public.” This dashboard updates on Fridays, so the data in there this morning are almost an entire week old. At the moment (well, as of a week ago), Richmond Public Schools had one outbreak, at Patrick Henry School of Science and Art; and Henrico County Public Schools had two outbreaks, one at Glen Allen High School and one at Highland Springs High School. I imagine you’ll hear more about this dataset in the coming weeks as our region’s kids head back to school.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and blah, blah, blah, hot, and humid. I think today and the next couple of days may be the hottest we’ve had this entire summer. Get out early, late, or stay inside if you can!
 

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Oakwood Arts worked with Richmond Public Schools to put together this video explaining the mitigation efforts the school district will take as they open to in-person learning for the first time in forever. If you’ve put off reading through that school safety protocol PDF I linked to last week, put off no further because this video goes down easy and I love a bunch of things about it (you can still read the PDF, if you must). First, it’s cool to see the hospital-grade air filtration boxes and hand sanitizer dispensers added to every single classroom. I also really like how Superintendent Kamras mentions that while the risk of catching COVID-19 from surfaces is real low, they’re still going to clean surfaces on the regular. Honestly, I’m pretty excited about how the new coronavirus mitigation measures will help cut down on the amount of non-COVID gross germs that typically get passed around in a school. It’s like universal design principles, but for disease!
 

How exactly does contact tracing work? Megan Pauly at VPM talks to Chtaura Jackson, an epidemiologist with the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts, about contact tracing in schools specifically, but I think most of the discussion applies generally. Everyone should get real familiar with the quarantine guidance, because as schools and employers reopen their buildings the risk for exposure and the possibility for quarantine goes way, way up. I hope if employers are dead set on returning to office buildings, they’re thinking through how to have extremely flexible work-from-home plans. They’re gonna need them!
 

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!
 

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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.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and, while we may avoid rain today, the heat continues! Expect highs in the mid 90s and triple-digit Feels Likes. Make sure you keep your plants—and your body—sufficiently watered.
 

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Late last week, the New York Times reported that the FDA “is pushing to approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose COVID-19 vaccine on Monday.” That’s today! When talking about vaccine hesitancy, I hear a lot of folks point to how the current vaccines are all administered under an Emergency Use Authorization, not full approval. While I definitely do think a non-trivial number of folks really have been waiting for full approval to get their shot, I also realize that many Hard Nos will just move the goal posts and find another reason to reject vaccination. Still, full approval is a big deal in my mind, mostly because I anticipate way more employers feeling comfortable with instituting vaccine mandates. “Full approval” is mostly an intellectual reason to get vaccinated, but losing your job is an incredibly practical reason to go ahead and schedule a vaccination appointment.
 

Reed Williams at the Richmond Times-Dispatch looks back in on the Belt Atlantic three months after a fatal shooting there killed a 3-month-old child. I feel emotions about the amount of supportive community involvement in the Belt Atlantic since the shooting—both public and private. However, this article also (obviously) underscores our broken gun violence laws in America, and (less obviously) our broken affordable housing policies in Virginia.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and, while we may avoid rain today, the heat continues! Expect highs in the mid 90s and triple-digit Feels Likes. Make sure you keep your plants—and your body—sufficiently watered.
 

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Late last week, the New York Times reported that the FDA “is pushing to approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose COVID-19 vaccine on Monday.” That’s today! When talking about vaccine hesitancy, I hear a lot of folks point to how the current vaccines are all administered under an Emergency Use Authorization, not full approval. While I definitely do think a non-trivial number of folks really have been waiting for full approval to get their shot, I also realize that many Hard Nos will just move the goal posts and find another reason to reject vaccination. Still, full approval is a big deal in my mind, mostly because I anticipate way more employers feeling comfortable with instituting vaccine mandates. “Full approval” is mostly an intellectual reason to get vaccinated, but losing your job is an incredibly practical reason to go ahead and schedule a vaccination appointment.
 

Reed Williams at the Richmond Times-Dispatch looks back in on the Belt Atlantic three months after a fatal shooting there killed a 3-month-old child. I feel emotions about the amount of supportive community involvement in the Belt Atlantic since the shooting—both public and private. However, this article also (obviously) underscores our broken gun violence laws in America, and (less obviously) our broken affordable housing policies in Virginia.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and you can expect slightly warmer temperatures later on today accompanied by more rain—which will probably continue into tomorrow, too. If you can find a gap in the rain, get out there and enjoy it!
 

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I don’t spend a ton of time following national news or news from other states, so reading this New York Times article about the Texas Education Agency’s pause on enforcing their governor’s mask ban makes me feel unmoored. It’s like the NYT’s editors accidentally negated all the verbs. For example: “In a reversal, the agency’s new guidance requires schools to notify their local health department if a student tests positive. The school must also notify students in the same classroom as well as those who share extracurricular activities.” In a reversal?? Before now, how did the local health department do contact tracing in schools if they…didn’t know about positive cases in schools? Sensible folks living in Texas right now must be terrified, which, maybe is old news and y’all are like “yeah, duh, Ross.” Still, though, I mostly share this story to point out, yet again, how much local and state elections matter. Even if you’re not thrilled at the prospect of a second helping of T-Mac, do you really want Virginia to elect a Republican governor who’d dabble in literally banning life-saving public health best practices?
 

WTVR reports that Hopewell City Public Schools, which already opened for the 2021–2022 school year, has canceled both in-person and virtual learning today "due to a staffing shortage." Seem ominous. I’m not saying that Richmond, Henrico, or Chesterfield Public Schools will see similar outcomes once they open up in a couple of weeks, but I do think parents across the region should prepare for this type of unpredictability throughout the fall.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 75 °F, and today you can expect highs up near 90 °F. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says to expect “tropical humidity” and a chance for severe storms—neither of which sound very pleasant!
 

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I dipped back into my old coronacounts spreadsheet this morning to compare the current coronanumbers to this past spring’s. Right now, according to VDH’s data dashboard, we’re seeing a 7-day average of 2,128 new positive cases per day. That’s a lot, and the last time we saw an average of new cases like that was back around February 20th. Similarly, right now we’ve got a 7-day average of 79 new hospitalizations per day, which we saw on March 3rd. However, VDH reports our current 7-day average of new deaths as seven, which is an astounding 31 times less than March 3rd’s 7-day average of 217 new deaths. I can’t remember if early March was particularly horrible or we were going through a data reporting issue, but, either way: Earlier this year we routinely saw new cases top 2,000 with new deaths peaking anywhere between 20 and 60. We’re just not seeing the same thing now. All of that was to say that the vaccines exist, they’re free, and they keep people from dying. You could probably stroll right in to your nearest pharmacy or grocery store and get vaccinated today—no appointment required!
 

I think there’s all sorts of interesting in this piece by the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Kenya Hunter about police officers in schools. Lacking School Board votes to remove police from schools entirely, the Superintendent has presented a plan to soften their presence and responsibilities in the short term and then revisit their role entirely in 2023. Fascinatingly, this issue splits the Board’s current 5–4 voting bloc. 3rd District member Kenya Gibson, who typically leads the majority opposition to the Superintendent, is on the same page with him about removing police from schools entirely. She, of course, doesn’t agree with the particular plan he’s presented, but it doesn’t seem like she can whip the votes necessary to pass an alternative. The School Board decided to take this issue up next month, though, which is plenty of time for ten other things to happen and change folks' minds.
 

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.
 

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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.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and, whoa, it’s rained a lot over the past 24 hours. You can expect more rain, too, throughout the morning. Cooler temperatures, though!
 

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This past Saturday, the CDC and VDH got their ducks in a row and now third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are available to folks with significantly compromised immune systems. The CDC has a list of folks who may need the additional dose, and it really is moderately to severely immunocompromised people: those who’ve received an organ transplant, those with advanced or untreated HIV, and people receiving active cancer treatment for tumors or cancers of the blood. VDH estimates that 3% of Virginians with two doses of an mRNA vaccine are eligible (124,322 total people). If you feel like you fall into a one of these significantly immunocompromised categories, if possible, talk to your health care provider.
 

Here’s your reminder that the Richmond Public Schools superintendent will present his recommendation for an employee vaccine mandate at tonight’s School Board meeting. From the aforelinked presentation: “Employees who do not meet the October 1 deadline (save for those who are granted an exemption) will be subject to progressive discipline, including loss of employment.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and, whoa, it’s rained a lot over the past 24 hours. You can expect more rain, too, throughout the morning. Cooler temperatures, though!
 

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This past Saturday, the CDC and VDH got their ducks in a row and now third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are available to folks with significantly compromised immune systems. The CDC has a list of folks who may need the additional dose, and it really is moderately to severely immunocompromised people: those who’ve received an organ transplant, those with advanced or untreated HIV, and people receiving active cancer treatment for tumors or cancers of the blood. VDH estimates that 3% of Virginians with two doses of an mRNA vaccine are eligible (124,322 total people). If you feel like you fall into a one of these significantly immunocompromised categories, if possible, talk to your health care provider.
 

Here’s your reminder that the Richmond Public Schools superintendent will present his recommendation for an employee vaccine mandate at tonight’s School Board meeting. From the aforelinked presentation: “Employees who do not meet the October 1 deadline (save for those who are granted an exemption) will be subject to progressive discipline, including loss of employment.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 76 °F already, and we’re under yet another heat advisory until 7:00 PM. Today you can expect highs near 100 °F, with a heat index near 110 °F. I keep saying this, but stay cool, stay hydrated, and stay inside if you can. Starting Sunday we can expect much cooler temperatures—just a little bit longer!
 

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The FDA has amended the emergency use authorizations for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine to allow a booster shot for immunocompromised individuals. Specifically, that means “solid organ transplant recipients or those who are diagnosed with conditions that are considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise.” Most likely this new authorization does not apply to you! So please do not rush out to CVS, or your primary care doctor, or the Health District and demand that they give you a booster shot. This—so far—only applies to folks with really seriously compromised immune systems, although Dr. Fauci said just the other day that booster shots for the rest of us are likely in our futures (just not yet). The CDC and its various committees will tackle this new authorization today and over the weekend.
 

Yesterday the Governor clarified his extremely unclear K–12 mask mandate by announcing a Public Health Order “requiring all individuals aged two and older to wear masks when indoors at public and private K–12 schools.” The subhead of the press release reads “Order reinforces state law SB 1303”, just in case you’d already forgotten his position that the Republican-introduced and bipartisanly-passed SB 1303 currently implies a mask mandate. So weird, but I’m glad we’re now all on the same page, I guess. The text of the Public Health Order carves out some exceptions for eating, exercising (which I think means sports), playing an instrument, and “sincerely held religious objections.” It seems pretty straightforward, and I’m most interested to see what the school districts, like Hanover County’s, who opted to ignore the Governor last week and implement mask-optional policies will do. Kenya Hunter and Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch report that “in response to the mask order by the state, a note to Hanover parents late Thursday afternoon said it was effective immediately for all students, staff and visitors.” If you can stand it, tap through and read some of the absolutely wild and unsurprising quotes from local Republicans. I don’t suggest it solely to make you mad and to get you to send some angry tweets, but to remind you that local and statewide elections have big and serious consequences. I did not vote for Terry McAuliffe in the primary, but I will happily vote for him in November over the republican candidate who—for stupid political reasons—actively argues against solid public health guidance and puts people’s lives at risk during an actual pandemic.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and things sure cooled off after last night’s storm. Yet here we are today with highs in the upper 90s and another heat advisory in effect until 7:00 PM. If you dare to go outside this afternoon you can expect heat index values up to 107 °F. That’s no joke, so play it cool if you’ve got things to do outside.
 

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Whoa! The New York Times reports that “federal regulators are expected to authorize a third shot of coronavirus vaccine as soon as Thursday for certain people with weakened immune systems.” That’s today! Today is Thursday! Since we all know way too much about the approval pathways a vaccine must work its way through, we know that after FDA authorization, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will need to put their stamp on it, followed by the CDC proper. These last two steps usually happen pretty quickly. According to the NYT, this time around immunocompromised is more strictly defined—like, people who have had organ transplants—so it doesn’t sound like folks will have to honor-system decide if they qualify. I don’t know that this puts us on a quicker path to general public boosters or not, so I’m not sure what this means for most folks. Honestly, the World Health Organization makes a pretty compelling argument for directing worldwide vaccine supply to other countries instead of sinking a signification portion of that into re-vaccinating rich countries with a third shot. I tend to agree!
 

While we’re reading the New York Times about the coronavirus, here’s their reporting on the CDC’s new, strong recommendations that pregnant and breastfeeding people get vaccinated. Here’s the short of it, straight from the CDC’s mouth/website: “COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for all people aged 12 years and older, including people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant now, or might become pregnant in the future. Pregnant and recently pregnant people are more likely to get severely ill with COVID-19 compared with non-pregnant people. Getting a COVID-19 vaccine can protect you from severe illness from COVID-19.” Also, and because I hear this a lot: “There is currently no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause fertility problems in women or men.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today’s gonna be hot. In fact, we’ve got a heat advisory in place from 12:00–7:00 PM warning of heat index values up to 106 °F. That’s too hot to mess around with, and, if at all possible, stay inside and stay cool. I mean, always stay cool, like, in a 😎 way, but today you should be really careful out in the heat.
 

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The New York Times has put together some data on breakthrough COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths—aka hospitalizations and deaths of fully vaccinated people. Before looking at this data, you should keep two important pieces of context in mind. First, this data only covers the beginning of the vaccination campaign at the start of the year to mid-June or July, so we are missing key data since the Delta variant started to spread across the country. Second, as vaccination rates go up you should expect more vaccination breakthroughs. An example: If 5% of people vaccinated experience a breakthrough, with 100 people vaccinated you’d expect five breakthroughs but with 200 people vaccinated you’d expect…10 breakthroughs. Math is weird sometimes! Anyway, here’s the spoiler for the entire data set: “Fully vaccinated people have made up as few as 0.1 percent of and as many as 5 percent of those hospitalized with the virus in those states, and as few as 0.2 percent and as many as 6 percent of those who have died.” You can also poke through VDH’s Cases By Vaccination Status dashboard for a more local look at this type of data. I like the way this stat feels to say out loud: Just 0.0047% of fully vaccinated people have ended up in the hospital with COVID-19.
 

OK, now this is fascinating, Jessica Nocera and Holly Prestidge at the Richmond Times-Dispatch report that last night the Chesterfield School Board adopted a mask mandate while the Hanover School Board “overruled the system’s superintendent and voted 4–3 against requiring students or staff to wear masks for the 2021–22 school year.” Hanover’s decision goes against clear guidance from the CDC, the Virginia Department of Health, and the Virginia Department of Education. I wonder if, as suggested by the Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Hanover School Board has checked with their legal counsel and insurance companies. Compare and contrast this Hanover situation with what’s going on Florida, where one local superintendent is moving forward with a mask mandate despite a mask ban from that state’s governor, “If something happened and things went sideways for us this week and next week as we started school, and heaven forbid we lost a child to this virus — I can’t just simply blame the governor of the state of Florida.”
 

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!
 

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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.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and is it hot again? I think it might be hot again. Today you can expect highs near 90 °F with temperatures increasing throughout the week. You know the deal: Stay cool, stay hydrated.
 

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I think this map from the CDC’s Data Tracker page tells you everything you need to know about the amount of COVID-19 out in our communities. Like almost the rest of the entire country, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield are all experiencing high levels of community transmission. Yesterday, Virginia posted over 1,800 new cases! I think getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a lot like planting a tree. The best time to do it was four months ago, the second best time to do it is today.
 

I had set a reminder to tell you about GRTC’s new passenger policies which took effect yesterday, but, unfortunately related to the previous paragraph, the only thing that’s changed is that GRTC will allow a bit more room towards the front for folks to stand. Masks are still (federally) mandated, rear-door boarding is required (although front-door boarding is available for folks who need assistance), and fares remain free. Give this summer’s trajectory, I think you can expect the currently policies to remain in place for a while.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and highs will creep back up to the near-90s today—still looks pretty nice out, though. Tomorrow, expect some rain and then you can look forward to a pretty lovely Sunday. Have a great weekend, y’all.
 

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Well, I got pretty close on predicting the contents of the Governor’s press conference! Yesterday, Governor Northam announced that, beginning September 1st, “Virginia will require its state workers to show proof that they are fully vaccinated or be tested for COVID-19 every week.” So, while it’s not a vaccine requirement (despite the press release’s headline), it does mean employees who choose not to be vaccinated have to get their brains swabbed, every. single. week. Not that I needed incentive beyond staying alive, but avoiding the hassle of a weekly test is a pretty good one. You can read the Executive Directive describing the requirement here, but it’s light on the specifics, which should come out later this month.
 

The Governor also, I think, mandated masks in public K–12 schools? During this same press conference, Northam called out the recently passed SB 1303—which mandates that public schools meet in-person this fall. But he specifically mentioned this bit of the bill: “each school board shall…provide such in-person instruction in a manner in which it adheres, to the maximum extent practicable, to any currently applicable mitigation strategies for early childhood care and education programs and elementary and secondary schools to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 that have been provided by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Since the CDC now recommends universal masking in K–12 schools in areas seeing a lot of community transmission, the Governor says Virginia’s schools are on the hook to follow that recommendation: “It’s the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I expect our districts to follow the law.” This obviously applies locally, where Henrico County Public Schools made the decision to go entirely mask-optional the same day the CDC announced their new mask-wearing recommendations. In an extremely sick burn, Northam pointed out that SB 1303 was patroned by none other Henrico’s Republican senator! I have no idea why the Governor just didn’t come out and say masks are required in schools and why he chose this convoluted path forward that will inevitable raise a ton of questions. Regardless, the Governor’s announcement is a big deal, and I think most school districts will fall in line. Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction said schools could face “significant legal pressure” if they don’t follow the mask-wearing guidance. This quote, also from the Superintendent, is wild: “Again, this is not a mandate from us. [School districts will] need to check with their legal counsel. They’ll need to talk with their insurance company whether they’ll even be insured if they don’t follow the CDC guidance.” This definitely feels like some shenanigans going on that I don’t really understand. But! Masks in schools! This is good!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today you should expect more of those same, cooler temperatures. Enjoy highs in the 80s from here to as far as the three-day forecast can see!
 

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Yesterday, Mayor Stoney announced that he’ll require City employees to be fully vaccinated by October 1st or face some sort of HR disciplinary actions. Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has some more details and quotes. The mandate will apply to all City staff—including police and fire—but will not cover Richmond Public Schools employees. Although, Superintendent Kamras says RPS is noodling on their own mandate, and I’ve seen at least one School Board member share the City’s announcement on Facebook. I definitely wouldn’t be surprised to hear RPS make a similar announcement in the next week. Employees will be required to submit documentation of their vaccination status by August 18th, and I’m really interested to see particulars of how they go about doing that. If you’re a City employee and have already lost your vaccination card and are starting to freak out, don’t worry: You can request your immunization record online via this VDH form. I think this move by the Mayor will have a huge impact. Like I said yesterday, once a few high-profile places (like the City) break the seal, more and more employers will feel OK about instituting their own vaccine mandate.
 

Speaking of more and more employers, today at 2:00 PM Governor Northam has called a press conference to “provide updates on Virginia’s continued response to COVID-19 and vaccination efforts.” I’ve got three guesses as to what he’ll announce: 1) A mask mandate for K–12 schools, 2) A vaccine mandate for state employees, or 3) Nothing at all, but he’ll speak broadly about how employers and schools districts should strongly consider both mask and vaccine mandates. Tune in to find out!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today you should expect more of those same, cooler temperatures. Enjoy highs in the 80s from here to as far as the three-day forecast can see!
 

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Yesterday, Mayor Stoney announced that he’ll require City employees to be fully vaccinated by October 1st or face some sort of HR disciplinary actions. Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has some more details and quotes. The mandate will apply to all City staff—including police and fire—but will not cover Richmond Public Schools employees. Although, Superintendent Kamras says RPS is noodling on their own mandate, and I’ve seen at least one School Board member share the City’s announcement on Facebook. I definitely wouldn’t be surprised to hear RPS make a similar announcement in the next week. Employees will be required to submit documentation of their vaccination status by August 18th, and I’m really interested to see particulars of how they go about doing that. If you’re a City employee and have already lost your vaccination card and are starting to freak out, don’t worry: You can request your immunization record online via this VDH form. I think this move by the Mayor will have a huge impact. Like I said yesterday, once a few high-profile places (like the City) break the seal, more and more employers will feel OK about instituting their own vaccine mandate.
 

Speaking of more and more employers, today at 2:00 PM Governor Northam has called a press conference to “provide updates on Virginia’s continued response to COVID-19 and vaccination efforts.” I’ve got three guesses as to what he’ll announce: 1) A mask mandate for K–12 schools, 2) A vaccine mandate for state employees, or 3) Nothing at all, but he’ll speak broadly about how employers and schools districts should strongly consider both mask and vaccine mandates. Tune in to find out!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 66 °F, and we’ve got another day ahead of us with cooler temperatures in the 80s. I don’t know what’s going on with August right now, but I’m loving it.
 

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The New York Times reports that “the Food and Drug Administration has accelerated its timetable to fully approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine, aiming to complete the process by the start of next month.” I think this will be huge! Right now, all of the vaccines we have—vaccines which work stunningly well—are being jabbed into arms across American under the FDA’s “Emergency Use Authorization.” There’s still a lot of science that goes into granting Emergency Use Authorization, but the process to get to EUA is faster than the FDA’s full-approval process. And when you talk to folks about why they’re hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine, EUA vs. full approval comes up a ton. So while some folks are just a hard no on vaccination forever and ever, I do think there’s a nontrivial set of humans that really are waiting for full approval. I think this sentence from that NYT piece feels very, very true: “Full approval of the Pfizer vaccine will kick off a patchwork of vaccination mandates across the country.” Choosing not to get vaccinated will soon have a lot of real and tangible consequences—you know, aside from getting sick and dying.
 

Related, Holly Prestidge at the Richmond Times-Dispatch talked to a handful of restaurant owners who have either already implemented COVID mandates of some kind or are getting real close to doing so. My prediction: Once some high-profile places break the seal, require vaccination, and aren’t faced with an angry pitchfork mob, we’ll see these piecemeal mandates spread quickly (like a virus!).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and today looks cloudy and cool. Honestly, if we can avoid any sort of drizzle, you can probably find me in a hammock for most of the afternoon.
 

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I’ve got two interesting and contrasting pieces of COVID-19 news for you this morning. First, the Governor of Louisiana reinstated their statewide mask mandate yesterday (“indoors for all people age five and older”), and that state’s Department of Health has also recommended reducing the size of indoor gatherings, too. These new regulations and recommendations come as Louisiana has the highest rate of new cases per capita (99 per 100,000). The state also has the fourth highest hospitalizations per 100,000; third highest deaths per 100,000; and has the sixth smallest percentage of fully vaccinated people out of all U.S. States and territories (according to the NYT). I imagine that last thing and all of the other things are related. Other states currently experiencing relatively low—or at least not catastrophically high—rates of disease should take heed! Although, I’m not sure that as Americans we’re particularly good at taking heed. For some local context, Richmond and Henrico are experiencing “substantial” community transmission, and Chesterfield is experiencing “high” community transmission. Again, take heed! The second bit of contrasting news is that the U.S. reached President Biden’s goal of 70% of adults with at least one dose of the vaccine. It took a bit longer than expected, but we got here. I’m encouraged, because that means folks are still getting vaccinated, which, at some points, didn’t seem like something that would be true at this point in August. I mean, check out this graph of the daily vaccinations across the country. It’s on an upswing for the first time in a long time—definitely for the first time without having a new group of folks become eligible for vaccination. So there’s still lots of disease out there, but more and more folks are making the decision to get vaccinated. Positives and negatives, this morning.
 

Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on the General Assembly’s special session, which kicked off yesterday. The GA’s goal at the moment seems to be to pass a spending plan for all of the federal emergency aid money as quick as they can, and then get the heck out of Dodge. There is an election in just 91 days, after all.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 66 °F, and today looks like a stunner. Expect highs in the mid 80s, a dip in humidity, and every excuse in the world to spend some time outside. The cooler weather should extend throughout the week, so enjoy!
 

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The COVID-19 numbers coming out of Florida right now are deeply scary. The NYT’s COVID-19 data tracker reports a daily average of 15,818 new cases and 9,451 people hospitalized as a result of the virus. For them, that’s on par with the pandemic’s winter peak. In light of those terrifying numbers, I think it’s worth taking a few minutes to poke around in the VDH data dashboard this morning—or at least look at the all-time graphs of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Cases in Virginia are on a big upswing, hospitalizations on a lesser upswing, and deaths remain very low. Both of the latter two do, however, typically lag behind cases, so I don’t quite know what to make of them at the moment. Still, though, Virginia’s seven-day average of new cases is less than 700, and the seven-day average of new hospitalizations is less than 20. We’re nowhere near Florida’s situation, but our governor isn’t out there banning masks in schools, either.
 

I think this is new to Richmond: Longoven says, effective yesterday, that they will require all guests to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test. For the former, you can show your vaccine card or use the VaxYes or MyIR Mobile apps. I have done absolutely zero research into vax passport apps, so I’m not sure if one is better than the other. Regardless, I think you should probably expect to see more of this from private businesses who are doing their best to 1) make money and 2) keep their employees safe.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 79 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday—hot, humid, highs in the 90s. We should see temperatures drop a bit and some rain move in over the weekend, though!
 

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The Washington Post got their hands on an internal CDC document that, for the first time I’ve seen, says the Delta variant of the coronavirus “appears to cause more severe illness than earlier variants.” We’ve talked a lot about how Delta is more transmissible than previous variants, but I don’t think I’ve heard the CDC or other healthfolks come out and say that Delta causes more serious illness. The WaPo says the data behind that terrifying news should be published today. As we move into a space where the coronavirus is easier to pass around (as easy as chickenpox this internal document says!), I think we have to shift away from solely thinking about and tracking COVID-19 cases. There’s a huge difference between having a few sniffles and ending up in the hospital on a ventilator. Even with this new news, we know the vaccines help us prevent the latter. I super agree with this quote allllllll the way down at the bottom of the aforelinked article: “‘We really need to shift toward a goal of preventing serious disease and disability and medical consequences, and not worry about every virus detected in somebody’s nose…It’s hard to do, but I think we have to become comfortable with coronavirus not going away.’”
 

Super related, yesterday the Governor tweeted this about the CDC’s new guidance to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status: “All Virginians should consider wearing a mask in public indoor settings where there is increased risk of #COVID19 transmission, as the new @CDCgov guidance recommends. This is not a requirement, but a recommendation.” This is…not the strongest possible language. Given the previous paragraph about the Delta variant, I still think its best to just shove a mask in your bag when you go out and put it on when you go indoors. It’s not a big deal, you’ll live, and you could help keep someone else alive, too. According to the CDC Data Tracker, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield are all experiencing “substantial” levels of community transmission.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and today’s looking hot. Expect highs in this 90s, and you should keep an eye out for afternoon summer storms, too. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says the potential for storms is low, but, if they do hit us, they could be severe.
 

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Two days after the CDC’s big mask-wearing guidance updates, and I’m still looking for changes to our local mask guidance or requirements (two very different things, of course). Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says the Virginia Department of Health and the governor’s office are still reviewing the CDC’s new guidance—she also says “the percentage of people testing positive has more than tripled from 1.3% to 4.7% in the past month.” As of this morning, the CDC Data Tracker reports the level of Community Transmission in Richmond as substantial, Henrico as substantial, and Chesterfield as moderate. I think this highlights the challenge of following the letter of the new CDC guidance: Yesterday, the guidance would have you wearing a mask in Chesterfield but not Richmond or Henrico, today it’s the opposite. In my opinion, the only practical thing for humans to do is put a mask in your pocket when you leave the house and wear it when you’re indoors at a public place. Meanwhile, in Atlanta their Mayor has reinstated a mask mandate for all public places within the City limits, Miami-Dade County now requires masks indoors at all county facilities, and most Apple stores across the country will also soon require masks.
 

I’m a big fan of the Richmond Public Library and Director Scott Firestine, so I think you should definitely read his column in today’s paper about investing in our libraries. I mean, how rad are libraries? “Our libraries are vital in helping community members get online for research and and job searching. We provide ladders to economic opportunity by providing first-time home buying assistance, homework help in Spanish and English, financial and personal bookkeeping classes, and tutoring, to name a few services. Library staff members often assist residents with low literacy who can’t find help elsewhere. We offer so much more than physical books. We deliver access to information, electronic books, computers, Wi-Fi, copiers and fax service desperately needed by an impoverished community that often cannot afford to purchase those items.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and you know the deal: hot, humid, sweat straight on through your undershirt. A bit of relief comes this weekend, though!
 

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Yesterday, the CDC updated their mask-wearing guidance for fully-vaccinated folks, recommending that if you’re in an area of substantial or high transmission you should wear a mask in public indoor settings—again, even if you’re fully vaccinated! This change in guidance comes after some new evidence suggests that the small percentage of fully-vaccinated people who do get infected with the Delta variant can possibly transmit the virus to others. First, and most importantly, all of the vaccines are incredibly effective against the Delta variant and still prevent severe symptoms in folks who experience breakthrough infections (which is great because we’re all trying to avoid going to the hospital or dying). Second, this is something new that we hadn’t seen in the other variants. There are still lots of folks who remain unvaccinated either because they simply are not eligible (children), cannot get the vaccine (some immunocompromised individuals), are grappling with legitimate vaccine hesitancy, or have fallen into some partisan anti-science black hole never to return. When fully-vaccinated people wear masks indoors, we’re helping to prevent the spread of this disease to others, which is something we should be 100% willing to do. You can check the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker for individual county-level transmission rates if you’d like, but, honestly, it’s probably easier to just wear a mask if you’re headed to an indoors public space. At this moment, Richmond and Henrico have “moderate” levels of community transmission, while Chesterfield has a “substantial” level of community transmission.
 

One other change to the CDC’s recommendations: “CDC recommends universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.” This, as far as I can tell, is unrelated to the level of community transmission in and around the school—just a blanket, universal mask recommendation. Richmond Public Schools had already announced their mask policy a while back, and it’s 100% inline with this new CDC guidance. I hadn’t heard anything about either Henrico or Chesterfield’s plans, but yesterday Anna Bryson at the Henrico Citizen reported that HCPS will not require masks for any students, teachers, or staff. 100% optional masking is pretty out of step with “universal indoor masking,” so I’m not really sure what’s going on. Maybe it’s a case of reporting getting ahead the school district finalizing their policies? Maybe it’s that HCPS thinks their other, non-mask mitigation efforts are good enough? Maybe it’s something less charitable? I don’t know. Keep an eye on this and on how other school districts in the region respond to the new guidance.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and the hot, humid weather continues today and for the next several days. You’re gonna sweat, so remember to stay hydrated!
 

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This is really terrible: Two different drivers hit and killed two people riding bikes, one in Henrico and one in Chesterfield, this past Sunday. NBC12’s Karina Bolster has the details. The first fatal crash happened near Turner Road and Hull Street. I don’t know the details of the crash, but the County just striped bike lanes on Turner Road last year. The second fatal crash happened out on Chamberlayne Avenue near Parham, which is just a rough place to get around by bike. Both of these incidents, and the very victim-blamey quotes from the Chesterfield police asking folks to wear bright-colored clothing to avoid being killed by drivers, point to the need for our region to build more and better infrastructure. It’s frustrating to read articles like this one and then remember how many tens of millions of dollars the region wants to spend on road widenings.
 

Chris Suarez and Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch report that City Council passed the resolution declaring racism as a public health crisis (RES. 2021-R039). Tap through to read some powerful stats on health inequity from Jackie Lawrence, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts' Director of Health Equity. Also on the City Council beat, Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense says Council passed the Greater Scott’s Addition rezoning AND the Pulse Corridor rezoning, unlocking denser, taller development back by the Diamond and along Broad Street. A+ work by Spiers for dropping a “Diamond District” mention into his piece.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and we’ve got a hot and humid day ahead of us. Plus, you need to keep an eye out for severe thunderstorms this afternoon. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says 3:00–8:00 PM is the window to watch!
 

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City Council meets tonight and will tackle a ton of interesting topics. Just a few to keep an eye on: The Broad Street rezonings that I’ve talked about for the past several months (ORD. 2021–151) sit on the consent agenda, as does the special use permit for the Airbnb tree house (ORD. 2021–195) and RES. 2021-R039 which would declare racism a public health crisis. Council has continued most of the regular agenda, but will discuss ORD. 2021–186, a casino-related ordinance that, from the staff report, is the official ordinance required to “petition the Circuit Court for a referendum” on November’s ballot. If you can believe it, we’re just 99 days out from the 2021 elections, when, among other things, we’ll all vote on whether or not to bring a casino to Richmond.
 

Get excited, because it’s time to take another bike lane survey! The Department of Public Works has detailed designs available for new bike lane projects on six different corridors across the city: Brookland Parkway, Colorado Avenue, Grove Avenue, Marshall Street, Walmsley Boulevard, and Warwick Road. If you’d like to share general thoughts on the corridors you’ll want to take this survey. If you somehow have the super power of grokking engineering diagrams, DPW has set up a Konveio for you to leave very specific feedback on the actual proposed schematics for each corridor! I will let deeper nerds than I dig into those documents and report back to the rest of us. You have until August 11th to submit your thoughts, feelings, questions, and concerns!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and I think we’ll have another reprieve from the boiling heat and humidity. You should expect highs in the 80s today, and then slightly warmer temperatures over the weekend.
 

Water cooler

This Friday morning, I’ve got three coronagraphs for you to look at: new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19 since middle of April. First, take a look at how much the number of new reported cases has grown over the last month or so; we’re almost back to early May levels (which was the end of the Long Dark Spring). However, the hospitalization graph doesn’t show quite the same increase, and certainly the deaths graph doesn’t at all. I think this is really important to keep in mind when we’re talking about how COVID-19 cases are on the rise. Serious outcomes like hospitalizations and deaths are definitely increasing, don’t get me wrong, they’re just not tied to the number of new cases in the same way they were earlier this year. Keep that in mind—especially if you’re fully vaccinated—as you work through how you and your family interact with the world. Also important to keep in mind is that those serious outcomes are almost entirely impacting unvaccinated people, and I’ve seen dozens of stories like this one about folks getting sick, ending up in the hospital, and regretting their choice not to get the vaccine.
 

Also vaccine-related, Alan Rodriguez at VPM has a short report on how VCU, UR, and VSU are each handling vaccination requirements for their students in a different way. I’m fascinated by the distinct approaches taken by these three schools, which I think you could say are all culturally distinct from one another as well. I don’t know that one approach is better than the other (although requiring vaccines as VCU has seems like a pretty effective incentive for folks), but we’re about to find out.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and I think we’ll have another reprieve from the boiling heat and humidity. You should expect highs in the 80s today, and then slightly warmer temperatures over the weekend.
 

Water cooler

This Friday morning, I’ve got three coronagraphs for you to look at: new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19 since middle of April. First, take a look at how much the number of new reported cases has grown over the last month or so; we’re almost back to early May levels (which was the end of the Long Dark Spring). However, the hospitalization graph doesn’t show quite the same increase, and certainly the deaths graph doesn’t at all. I think this is really important to keep in mind when we’re talking about how COVID-19 cases are on the rise. Serious outcomes like hospitalizations and deaths are definitely increasing, don’t get me wrong, they’re just not tied to the number of new cases in the same way they were earlier this year. Keep that in mind—especially if you’re fully vaccinated—as you work through how you and your family interact with the world. Also important to keep in mind is that those serious outcomes are almost entirely impacting unvaccinated people, and I’ve seen dozens of stories like this one about folks getting sick, ending up in the hospital, and regretting their choice not to get the vaccine.
 

Also vaccine-related, Alan Rodriguez at VPM has a short report on how VCU, UR, and VSU are each handling vaccination requirements for their students in a different way. I’m fascinated by the distinct approaches taken by these three schools, which I think you could say are all culturally distinct from one another as well. I don’t know that one approach is better than the other (although requiring vaccines as VCU has seems like a pretty effective incentive for folks), but we’re about to find out.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and cooler temperatures are here! Today, you can expect highs in the mid 80s—which I don’t know if I’d call “cool,” but it’s something.
 

Water cooler

Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Department of Education announced their mask guidance for the 2021–2022 school year. Here’s the important bit: School divisions will be given “the ability to implement local mask policies based on community level conditions and public health recommendations.” Basically, it’s up to the individual school districts, which should sound familiar because it mirrors last year’s guidance for returning to in-person school. VDH does, however, recommend that unvaccinated individuals remain masked (which, at this point, means allllll elementary school students), and also points to this CDC list of reasons why districts may want to require masks regardless of vaccination status. Richmond Public Schools, via the superintendent’s email, has already announced that they’ll “be maintaining [their] 100% mask-wearing policy for all students, staff, and visitors.” I haven’t yet seen announcements from Henrico or Chesterfield. If I were to prognosticate a little, I would guess that not every school district in the region will follow RPS’s lead. I think we’ll probably even have a majority of regional school districts only requiring masks for unvaccinated individuals, with vaccination status checks left up the honor system. We’ll have to see how this plays out at some of these school districts in areas with lower vaccine uptake—especially as the Delta variant spreads and we learn more about it. Also, for context, via the VDH dashboard, the percentages of 12–15 year olds and 16–17 year olds vaccinated in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield respectively are: 33.4%, 42.0%; 47.5%, 63.1%; and 42.5%, 54.3%. This data would have looked nicer in a table.
 

Take a minutes and read this piece from Mark Robinson in the Richmond Times-Dispatch highlighting the nine winners of RRHA’s Tomorrow’s Promise scholarships. These nine students will each receive $4,000 dollars toward their college degrees, and, for at least one, they’ll be the first person in their family to go to college!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 69 °F, and today looks hot and humid with sticky highs in the 90s. Hold on tight, though, because (slightly) cooler weather shows up tomorrow.
 

Water cooler

A quick update on two papers floating around during yesterday’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meeting! First, the Richmond 300 amendments resolution (RES. 2021-R026) which I say bad things about was recommended for continuance, and, second, Councilmember Jones’s resolution to ask the CAO for a report on how to evenly distribute affordable housing across council districts (RES. 2021-R043) was recommended for approval. Stoked on the latter, and wondering if the former is in the process of death by a thousand continuations. Introduced back in April, RES. 2021-R026 is now one of the older items on Council’s agenda. Shoutout to current Methuselatic Ordinance titleholder, ORD. 2019–275, which was introduced way back in October…of 2019!
 

There’s not a ton of new information in this article by VPM’s Alan Rodriguez about the School Board’s decision to issue their own RFP for a George Wythe replacement. However, I do think it’s worth reading to squeeze out a little more of the situation’s flavor. With School Board now having drawn a end-of-August line in the sand for issuing an RFP, how do we react when the RPS administration fails to meet that possibly (probably?) unrealistic deadline? Or what do we do if the administration somehow crushes it out of the park and pulls off getting an RFP out the door in the next 41 days—while also reopening in-person school for the first time in over 400 days?
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 66 °F, and highs today should stick around in the upper 80s. Honestly, looks like a pretty pleasant day ahead of us! NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says a cold front will come through tomorrow, setting us up fro some excellent Thursday weather. Get excited!
 

Water cooler

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Kenya Hunter has the update from last night’s RPS School Board meeting during which they…actually, I’m still kind of confused on what they decided to do. It sounds like the Board (well, the same five-member voting bloc of boardmembers) has now required Superintendent Kamras to issue an RFP for the design of a school to replace George Wythe High School by the end of August, despite RPS not having the staff hired to do so until October. If you’re a resident of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th Districts, your school board rep is part of the voting bloc that refuses to compromise, continues to delay action, and sets unrealistic goals for the school district and its staff. It’s embarrassing and doesn’t give me a whole lot of hope for the next three years of this Board’s tenure. If you’d like to drop your rep an email, you can find all of their contact information here. Honestly though, they’re so dug in at this point I’m not sure what you’d say to change any minds. Maybe it’s worth copying your councilmember and taking a screenshot of your email to post publicly on social media? I dunno, like I said, I’ve got a real dark feeling of hopelessness.
 

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today with a packed and interesting agenda. Up first, they’ll, once again, consider the Richmond 300 amendment resolution (RES. 2021-R026). I wish this resolution would take its jumbled list of inappropriate and conflicting changes to our award-winning master plan and just go away. Second, Councilmember Jones has introduced RES. 2021-R043, which asks the CAO to prepare “an affordable housing plan for each Council District that distributes as equally as possible affordable housing options across the Council District.” I think this is an interesting resolution! From the background section of the paper: “As detailed in the Affordable Housing Plan and Biennial Real Estate Strategy approved by Council, there are 76 [city-owned] parcels dedicated to affordable housing. However, a majority of the parcels are concentrated in the 6th District.” 31 parcels, in fact, are in the 6th—16 more than in any other district. This is probably the result of a million things: Land and housing values, zoning, the incredibly successfully efforts to prevent dense and new housing by folks in the more affluent parts of our city, racism. It is, of course, harder and more expensive to create affordable housing in the 1st District than it is in the 6th District exactly because of all of those things. However, I like how the summary section of this paper frames it: Each district bears a responsibility to address the affordable housing crisis. That’ll mean different strategies in the 1st than in the 7th, but it’s our responsibility to figure out those strategies. Finally, if you still don’t believe there’s an affordable housing crisis, tune in to today’s meeting to catch a presentation from Javon Burton, Director of Implementation for the Partnership of Housing Affordability. Across our entire region—in Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover—rent increases have outpaced income increases, and 32% of households are cost-burdened. Think about that next time you hear councilmembers and public commenters wringing their hands about building 10-story buildings on literal Broad Street.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 66 °F, and highs today should stick around in the upper 80s. Honestly, looks like a pretty pleasant day ahead of us! NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says a cold front will come through tomorrow, setting us up fro some excellent Thursday weather. Get excited!
 

Water cooler

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Kenya Hunter has the update from last night’s RPS School Board meeting during which they…actually, I’m still kind of confused on what they decided to do. It sounds like the Board (well, the same five-member voting bloc of boardmembers) has now required Superintendent Kamras to issue an RFP for the design of a school to replace George Wythe High School by the end of August, despite RPS not having the staff hired to do so until October. If you’re a resident of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th Districts, your school board rep is part of the voting bloc that refuses to compromise, continues to delay action, and sets unrealistic goals for the school district and its staff. It’s embarrassing and doesn’t give me a whole lot of hope for the next three years of this Board’s tenure. If you’d like to drop your rep an email, you can find all of their contact information here. Honestly though, they’re so dug in at this point I’m not sure what you’d say to change any minds. Maybe it’s worth copying your councilmember and taking a screenshot of your email to post publicly on social media? I dunno, like I said, I’ve got a real dark feeling of hopelessness.
 

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today with a packed and interesting agenda. Up first, they’ll, once again, consider the Richmond 300 amendment resolution (RES. 2021-R026). I wish this resolution would take its jumbled list of inappropriate and conflicting changes to our award-winning master plan and just go away. Second, Councilmember Jones has introduced RES. 2021-R043, which asks the CAO to prepare “an affordable housing plan for each Council District that distributes as equally as possible affordable housing options across the Council District.” I think this is an interesting resolution! From the background section of the paper: “As detailed in the Affordable Housing Plan and Biennial Real Estate Strategy approved by Council, there are 76 [city-owned] parcels dedicated to affordable housing. However, a majority of the parcels are concentrated in the 6th District.” 31 parcels, in fact, are in the 6th—16 more than in any other district. This is probably the result of a million things: Land and housing values, zoning, the incredibly successfully efforts to prevent dense and new housing by folks in the more affluent parts of our city, racism. It is, of course, harder and more expensive to create affordable housing in the 1st District than it is in the 6th District exactly because of all of those things. However, I like how the summary section of this paper frames it: Each district bears a responsibility to address the affordable housing crisis. That’ll mean different strategies in the 1st than in the 7th, but it’s our responsibility to figure out those strategies. Finally, if you still don’t believe there’s an affordable housing crisis, tune in to today’s meeting to catch a presentation from Javon Burton, Director of Implementation for the Partnership of Housing Affordability. Across our entire region—in Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover—rent increases have outpaced income increases, and 32% of households are cost-burdened. Think about that next time you hear councilmembers and public commenters wringing their hands about building 10-story buildings on literal Broad Street.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and today looks hot and dry—well, super humid of course but no serious chance of rain. Expect temperature near 90 °F today and for the rest of the week.
 

Water cooler

Welcome back, to myself! I had a lovely and much-needed break from early-morning emails but am now ready to dive back in. I am, however, using my two-week vacation as a reason to stop updating my coronacounts spreadsheet each and every day. I started updating that thing way back on March 14th, 2020 and did so every single day for 475 days! It’ll live on as a historical record, and, if you’re still after current data, you can always find the most recent statewide numbers on the VDH dashboard. I imagine I’ll pull updates from said dashboard from time to time—and even reserve the right to revive the spreadsheet should the need present itself (fingers crossed it will not). Finally, of note to fellow datawatchers, the aforementioned VDH data dashboard has a new update scheduled and will no longer update on weekends.
 

The City’s Planning Commission has a packed agenda for their meeting today, which you can scroll through here. Most interesting to me are the plans for a proposed newly temporary GRTC transfer plaza. This new temporary transfer plaza would replace the current temporary transfer plaza that has taken up the eastern side of 9th street for a bunch of years at this point—a location that’s about to become a demolition site as the City tears down the old Public Safety building. The new plaza would replace most of the weirdly sunken surface parking lot across the street, which seems like a much better use of that space. As I’ve said many times before, I have a real hard time understanding engineering diagrams, but it looks like the new proposal includes shelter from the sun, benches, trash cans, and a bathroom for bus operators. It also includes a fence “at the request of DPW Parking Services to prevent bus patron access to the [remainder of the] parking lot,” which as this public comment points out, seems unnecessary. Also of interest on CPC’s agenda: Getting rid of a small Confederate monument pedestal in the triangle park at Meadow, Park, and Stuart; and permitting an accessory dwelling unit that’s a treehouse (love this quote from the staff report: “a Special Use Permit is necessary because the short-term rental regulations do not pertain to accessory structures such as the tree house”).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and, as foretold, highs today should top out around 80 °F—but you gotta deal with all of this rain in return. Decent trade, I think! This weekend’s weather looks pretty great, with steadily increasing temperatures until we’re right back on the surface of the sun by the middle of next week.
 

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 176, 25, and 5.9, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 20.3 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: -5.9; Henrico: 21.4, and Chesterfield: 4.7). Since this pandemic began, 1,359 people have died in the Richmond region. 46.8%, 58.6%, and 55.1% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s nearly half a million people in the region (496,085) with at least some protection from this disease! That’s great, but having even more folks vaccinated would be greater. Here’s this week’s stacked chart of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths across the Commonwealth, and you can see slight upticks across the board. And, if you’re not yet vaccinated and need something more convincing than a couple of charts, read this terrifying piece in The Atlantic about what the darkest of winters could look like due to the delta variant.
 

Yesterday, the Governor’s state of emergency expired and that brought with it some confusion about where and when masks are required, recommended, or not needed at all. VDH has a helpful press release laying the whole thing out. Here’s the gist: people older than five are required to wear a mask “while indoors at a public or private K-12 school” and on planes, buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation. People who are not yet full vaccinated—including children under the age of 12—should still wear masks while indoors, following the current CDC recommendations. At the moment, the CDC and VDH are not recommending that fully vaccinated people need to wear a mask, but you totally can if you would feel more comfortable doing so. The VDH press release also includes this slightly ominous line: “Masks may be especially important now that recent cases of the “Delta variant” (B.1.617.2) have been identified in Virginia.” Don’t throw out all your favorite masks yet, I think.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 77 °F, and you should expect more of this week’s hot weather until this evening—and then you should expect some rain to roll through. Highs tomorrow, though, look like they’ll stay below 80 °F!
 

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 172, 16, and 6.7, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 17.1 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: -2; Henrico: 15, and Chesterfield: 4.1). Since this pandemic began, 1,359 people have died in the Richmond region. 46.7%, 58.4%, and 55.0% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Yep, Richmond is once again reporting a negative 7-day average of new cases. VDH reports that the city now has had 17,139 total cases of COVID-19—the exact same number they reported back on June 10th (and again on June 14th and June 17th). Perhaps if you’re trying to get a feel for the amount of community spread of the disease (something Emily Oster recommends as a starting point to assess the risks of various coronadecisions) you’re better off using the regional case count.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and you can probably guess today’s weather forecast: More highs in the 90s with triple-digit Feels Likes. Cooler temperatures move in tomorrow afternoon, though! A reprieve is in sight!
 

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 165, 8, and 6.4, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 14.4 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 0; Henrico: 11.9, and Chesterfield: 2.6). Since this pandemic began, 1,359 people have died in the Richmond region. 46.6%, 58.3%, and 54.9% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
 

The conversation and coverage of the delta variant and WHO’s recent decision to recommend that fully-vaccinated people wear masks indoors continues. The timing is particularly noteworthy, as the Governor’s state of emergency ends tonight, which, technically, makes wearing a mask in Virginia (to conceal one’s identity) illegal. Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on a bunch of local folks' thoughts and recommendations which basically boil down to “we need to learn more, but, in the meantime you should definitely get vaccinated.” Alan Rodriguez at VPM has some quotes from Dr. Danny Avula on the subject, too: “I think the context domestically — given our much higher rates of vaccination than many countries because of access and the efforts people have made to get vaccinated, paired with relatively low, or extremely low, rates of COVID — I think we can still cling to the guidance of: If you’re fully vaccinated, you do not need to wear a mask.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 90s with Feels Likes above and beyond 100 °F. We’re deep in dangerous heat territory, and if you’ve got to go outside, be smart about it! We’ve got at least a couple more days before temperatures cool down.
 

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 165, 7, and 6, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 15.4 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 2.1; Henrico: 10.1, and Chesterfield: 3.1). Since this pandemic began, 1,358 people have died in the Richmond region. 46.6%, 58.2%, and 54.8% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
 

The big COVID-19 news this morning is that a WHO official urged the public to continue wearing masks indoors—even if fully vaccinated—as a precaution against the delta variant of COVID-19. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health quickly followed suit and issued the same recommendation for its residents. I’ve seen this new variant-related mask recommendation framed a couple of ways in the media, mostly as “we don’t know enough about the delta variant, and wearing masks helps keep you—even if you’re vaccinated—from spreading this highly transmissible variant to folks who may be unvaccinated.” But I’ve also seen the actual quote from the WHO official, taken out of whatever context it may have originally been in, and it reads way more intense: “People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves…Vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission.” According to the NYT, yesterday the CDC “pointed to [its] existing guidance and gave no indication it would change.” So, here we are again with seemingly conflicting mask guidance, and I don’t love it! To give you some context on the local spread of the delta variant, the VDH Variants of Concern dashboard reports 48 total cases in Virginia, with zero in Richmond, 14 in Henrico, and three in Chesterfield.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and today looks like another hot and humid scorcher. You can expect temperatures in the 90s and Feels Likes closer to 100 °F today, tomorrow, and, honestly, straight on through until Friday. As always: Stay hydrated.
 

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 169, 7, and 6.6, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 16.1 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 1.7; Henrico: 10.3, and Chesterfield: 4.1). Since this pandemic began, 1,356 people have died in the Richmond region. 46.5%, 58.1%, and 54.7% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
 

We reached some big vaccination milestones over the weekend: Over five million Virginians have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 50.4% of the entire commonwealth is now fully vaccinated, and more than nine million total doses have been administered since late last December. Those are big numbers! Great work, everyone. The daily rate of new folks getting vaccinated looks like it has started to level out, which you can see in this graph. Leveling out is better than continual decrease, but, at this rate, it’d take more than a year to vaccinate the entire population of Virginia. That’s not a reasonable goal, though, as some folks will never choose to get vaccinated.