Good morning, RVA: 12+ boosters, an exciting PDF, and a horrible secretary

Remember how a bunch of people thought Governor-elect Youngkin was a chill
and moderate guy because he’s tall and wore a fleece vest?

Good morning, RVA! It's 35 °F, the streets are dry, the forecast is clear, the temperatures are headed into the 50s, and the kids are back in school. Life in snow-adverse Richmond resumes!...a day before the forecast calls for another round of snow overnight. NBC12's Andrew Freiden says we can expect one to three inches to fall tomorrow before the sun comes up, and, as long as the entire region doesn't shut down again, I'm all for it.

Water cooler

Yesterday, a CDC advisory committee met and recommended those three changes to Pfizer booster eligibility I wrote about earlier this week: Kids 12-and-up can now get a Pfizer booster; anyone who got Pfizer originally should get a booster five months after their second shot; and children 5–11 who are immunocompromised can get a third Pfizer dose 28 days after their second (which is not a booster). The Virginia Department of Health adopted those recommendations last night, which means, as of this morning, middle schoolers can get out there and get boosted. Here's the list of Richmond and Henrico's walk-up vaccination events, but I'm sure you'll be able to make appointments on local pharmacy websites, too. Boosters do good work against Omicron, and, if you're eligible, you should go get one!

Speaking of middle schoolers, mine is back in school today for the first time since December 17th. I'm thankful for that, even though it sounds like we should expect 2022's first day back to be a little rocky. In last night's newsletter, RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras said "as a result of Omicron, we anticipate about 160 teacher vacancies." Additionally, they expect a bunch of bus operator vacancies and note that "families should expect delays on many routes." The decision to open up schools and return to in-person learning in the face of skyrocketing COVID cases and increasingly-stressed hospitals is a freaking tough one that I would not want to make. Kamras lays out the case well, though: "Even with Omicron, we are in a very different place than last year. Vaccines are widely available for all staff and nearly all students – and have been for quite some time. We have very robust mitigation strategies in place, and the data shows that they're working. And while Omicron is more transmissible than previous variants, it's leading to milder cases of COVID-19. When you balance the risk of serious disease from in-school transmission (very low) against the risk of further academic and social/emotional harm (very high), I believe our charge is clear: keep our doors open." Tangentially related side note: Should it snow tomorrow and close schools, Friday will be a virtual learning day for students. This is consistent with the District's COVID goal of minimizing lost instructional time, although, I'm sure it's a huge bummer to kids everywhere.

Yesterday, I briefly mentioned Richmond's revamp of their citywide transportation plan, and today the City posted a draft version of "Path to Equity: Policy Guide for Richmond Connects." I just opened the website and there it was! Path to Equity, which I've decided to italicize as if it were a book, is not the full, updated transportation plan we've all been waiting on for the last decade or so. You should think of Path to Equity as the order of nachos before your full burrito-meal of Richmond Connects—the updating of which beings this spring. In the City's words: "This document is intended to lay the framework for how to achieve an efficient transportation system while highlighting and resolving problematic inequities in the City’s transportation network. In other words, it will help decide what improvements are needed for transit, walking, biking, driving and other transportation modes over the next 5 to 10 years with equity in mind when making all decisions." I haven't had time to dig into the 63-page document yet, but I really enjoyed the Equity Factors and Guiding Principles also found on that same page. It makes me incredibly happy to see things like "transportation investments will equitably increase the safety and comfort of cyclists and pedestrians, connecting communities of concern to opportunities" and "transportation investments will improve reliability of transit and other non-car services to increase access and remove barriers to opportunities for communities of concern" written down in a City-produced document. All three of those documents are open for public comment through January 31st via Terrible Konveio, and you can join a January 10th webinar to learn more about the process moving forward. Expect more thoughts from me on this soon! Related: If anyone knows how to free a PDF from Terrible Konveio or has PDF versions of these three documents, please let me know!

Remember how a bunch of people thought Governor-elect Youngkin was a chill and moderate guy because he's tall and wore a fleece vest? Well, he just named Andrew Wheeler, coal lobbyist and former Trump EPA head, as Virginia's Secretary of Natural Resources. The Virginia Mercury's Sarah Vogelsong has the sad details. This was always going to be the case as Youngkin is a Trump in fleece clothing! We should prepare ourselves for strong and fast attempts to rollback much of what Virginia accomplished over the last four years and new demoralizing attempts to deny climate change, reject racial justice, and do whatever possible to increase the power and influence of the wealthy. I'm not stoked on it, I'll tell you what!

After that paragraph, it's hard to feel a single feeling about President Biden's speech today, on the anniversary of the insurrection, that will "warn democracy is at risk." Yeah, duh, guy.

Palate cleanser: Pictures of foxes in the snow near Texas Beach via /r/rva.

Finally, nothing beats a game-winning three set to Titanic music! Here's VCU's Ace Baldwin with the dagger to beat Dayton on the road by one last night.

This morning's longread
The Rise of the Tabulated Self

I don't use any of these specific second-brain apps, but I do believe deeply in collecting interesting information and putting it in a place to find later (aka my civic PDF library).

Watching Notion evangelists describe their systems, I was reminded a bit of those devoted to Marie Kondo’s methods of tidying up. But rather than emphasizing removal as an antidote to chaos, the answer lies in the act of continued accumulation: every book you’ve ever read, every glass of water you drank for months, every inchoate hunch or feeling. I wondered, Do we really need all of that information? Rao thinks we do; you never know when something will turn out to be valuable, so capturing anything you can is a boon. It’s tantalizing to consider: the idea that the answers to all of our questions are searchable in our own history and experiences, so long as we’re able to save everything (and arrange it in an orderly manner).

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.