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.
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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!
 

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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!
 

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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.
 

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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.