Good morning, RVA: 3,860↗️ • 52↗️; year-round school?; and potato wedges

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, and that’s cold. It was in the 20s mere minutes ago! However, today you can expect highs near 50 °F, and, as for now, you can still expect even warmer days ahead of us. This winter needs to make up it’s mind and get focused.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 3,860↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 52↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 352↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 160, Henrico: 144, and Richmond: 48). Since this pandemic began, 481 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new cases in the Commonwealth hit another all-time high at 3,238. The statewide number of new hospitalizations has exceeded 100 exactly five times over the last 10 months: on May 13th and this past Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Statewide percent positivity sits at 10.9%. These are bleak numbers, y’all. I keep getting the Governor’s public schedule email and expecting to see a previously-unscheduled coronavirus announcement press conference on there, but not yet! For now, we just sit, wait, and stew in all of this virus—and there’s a lot of virus out there!

As promised, and I probably could have pulled this yesterday, but here’s Superintendent Kamras’s presentation to the RPS School Board (PDF) about why he recommended fully-virtual school for the second semester. Also, while you’re in there, check out the information on year-round school on the last page of the presentation. It sounds like there’s some real momentum behind moving to that schedule, which sounds awesome to me (although, probably less awesome to my son). Look for opportunities to learn more and get involved between now and the third week of January when Kamras will present some options to the School Board. Year-round school is not free, so somehow this proposal and the engagement process around it will have to intertwine itself with the 2021 budget season, one of the very first parts of which is the presentation of the schools budget to the mayor. Also: Budget season is right around the corner, y’all!

It’s important/hard/confusing to hold the previous two paragraphs in your mind and then read this report from the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Sabrina Moreno about the mental health of Richmond’s Black and Latino kids. Virtual schooling has real, negative impacts on students, and those impacts, just like the impacts of COVID-19, are disproportionately thrust upon our Black and Brown communities.

A million coronamonths ago, the Mayor announced a small universal basic income program in Richmond. At launch, the program, dubbed the Richmond Resilience Initiative, gave 18 families $500 dollars a month for 24 months. Now, with an extra $500,000 from, no joke, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the program will expand to 37 more families.

Remember the CVTA? The Central Virginia Transportation Authority? That’s the body that will decide how the region spends millions and millions of new transportation dollars generated by a wholesale fuels tax and a sales tax. They and their various associated commitees have met dutifully over the last several months, and I just wanted to speak the Authority’s name aloud so we remember that this is a public body whose decisions will have a big impact on our region. They met last week with an interesting agenda item (PDF) to approve a scope of work for a study evaluating the governance structure of GRTC and the establishment of a transportation district. I don’t know what that means, but the final report is due March 31st, so keep an eye out. Their finance committee meets today with a mostly routine agenda (PDF). Anyway, nothing real to report, just remember that they exist and you may soon be called upon to public comment at them!

How awesome is this? The video projection art on the Lee monument at Marcus-David Peters Circle is the freaking cover of National Geographic Magazine. Amazing.

I’m just going to quote this headline from Gregory J. Gilligan at the RTD: “WATCH NOW: Customers wait in long lines to buy fried chicken, potato wedges and breakfast pizza at newly opened Ukrop’s Market Hall.” To quote Marc Cheatham, Richmond! We are who we are!

At some point today in Richmond, Governor Terry McAuliffe will announce that he’s running for governor…again. Dislike. Is now, literally right now, the time to have another old white guy rise up out of the past to overshadow the great, Black women who’ve been running this race for months? Sigh. Expect to see Mayor Stoney at this announcement, as the two men have a pretty tight relationship.

I’m going to keep reminding you: Please, if you haven’t already, email City Council in support of Richmond 300. Council will vote this coming Monday, December 14th, and the plan could use your public support. You can find all of the councilfolk and the liaison email addresses here.

This morning’s longread

The Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense

I love this visual! If there’s anything people can understand it’s stacking up layers of Swiss cheese until you have a single, delicious block of Swiss.

Take masks as one example of a layer. Any mask will reduce the risk that you will unknowingly infect those around you, or that you will inhale enough virus to become infected. But it will be less effective at protecting you and others if it doesn’t fit well, if you wear it below your nose, if it’s only a single piece of cloth, if the cloth is a loose weave, if it has an unfiltered valve, if you don’t dispose of it properly, if you don’t wash it, or if you don’t sanitize your hands after you touch it. Each of these are examples of a hole. And that’s in just one layer. To be as safe as possible, and to keep those around you safe, it’s important to use more slices to prevent those volatile holes from aligning and letting virus through.

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