Pandemic, Week 39 (A Different Kind of Tea)

By Wednesday of this week, all 50 states had certified their election results, formalizing the projection that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Subsequently, on Friday, the Supreme Court rejected the Texas Attorney General's petition to void 20 million votes from four states (that doesn't include Texas) in order to overturn Joe Biden's win. The Texas case was supported by 17 other state Attorney Generals as well as 106 republican members of Congress. Its loss culminated in another "Million MAGA March" involving a few thousand people protesting the election results. The federal government and 46 states filed anti-trusts suits against Facebook this week, regarding its acquisition of Instagram and WhatApp. Hunter Biden announced that he is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney for tax fraud. Congress passed a Continuing Resolution or CR to keep the government open for another week. The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed objecting to Dr. Jill Biden, Ed.D using the title "Doctor," instead referring to her as "kiddo" and suggesting she instead use "Madame First Lady." Chuck Yeager, who broke the sound barriers in 1947 using an X-1 aircraft, died.

This week the world reached a total of 72.1 million COVID cases and 1.6 million deaths. The U.S. hit 16.5 million total cases and 305,000 deaths. Great Britain began administering the Pfizer vaccine and its first recipients included a man named William Shakespeare. The FDA finally approved the Pfizer vaccine and vaccinations in the U.S. are expected to begin Monday. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell refused to bring a $900 billion bipartisan COVID-19 relief package to the floor for a vote because republican senators don't support $160 billion in aid to state and local governments.

This week we worked on Christmas cards and Christmas presents and Christmas goodies. We planned our costumes for a Pineapple House LARP game of Clue over the holiday as part of our quest for the Pineapple Prize. We worked on science projects and science homework. We even modeled the official t-shirt for H.A.N.A. (the not-so-secret society of Harper, Anais, Nora and Audrey). But the most important event of this week, was our annual tea with Jacqui. Normally we linger longer and the outing doesn't involve masks, but given this is 2020, we took what we could get (and did so abiding by all safety precautions). While it wasn't quite the same as previous years and it was a little weird eating inside an establishment (we haven't done that since March), it was really nice to be able to celebrate what has become a treasured tradition. 

Now I just need to get tested...

(To see all of this week's photos, click here.)