Pandemic, Week 47 (Happy 46th)

The House stripped Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green of her committee assignments this week, after videos emerged of her calling for Nancy Pelosi's death, harassing school shooting survivors, claiming the Pentagon wasn't attacked on 9/11, and posting that the California wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers clearing the way for high speed rail. Congress passed the budget plan for Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, though the final legislation will likely exclude the increase to minimum wage. President Biden declared that Trump should not receive classified intelligence briefings. Smartmatic, filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit for defamation regarding its election technology naming Fox News, its anchors, Rudy Guiliani, and Sidney Powell among others.  Newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay, Senate-confirmed cabinet member. A coup took place in Myanmar after its military seized control of the democratically elected government. Russian sentenced opposition leader Alexei Navalny to two years in prison for violating his probation while recovering from a poison gas attack. Hal Holbrook, Christopher Plummer, and Dustin Diamond (Screech from Saved by the Bell) died. 

The world reached a total of 106.3 million COVID cases and 2.3 million deaths this week. The U.S. hit 27.5 million cases and 474,000 deaths. The U.S. reached 2.1 million vaccines administered in a single day with nearly 10 percent of Americans having received the first dose. Meanwhile, Soul Cycle faced a backlash after one of its premier instructors bragged on social media about receiving the vaccine in New York because she was an "educator." Russia's Sputnik vaccine has demonstrated a 92 percent protection against COVID-19 in its trials.

For us, the big event this week was Allen's birthday. As a special present, the District's two-year snow draught finally ended after back-to-back storms resulted in over four inches of snow in DC (we're expecting even more this weekend). DCPS, which was scheduled to begin limited in-person learning on Monday (our kids are still all-virtual), delayed the start a day and implemented a 2-hour delay even for remote school on Tuesday. Allen, who is scheduled to participate in a Polar Bear Plunge next week to raise money for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, used the optics to promote the fundraiser (to donate, click here). Mom Mom baked Allen's favorite childhood dessert, a pineapple upside-down cake (he was a special kid), and dropped it off on his birthday eve. On his actual birthday, Grandpa Fawcett and the kids had take-out from Ben's before Allen and I had a lovely dinner from Rose's at Home, which was even lovelier after they gave us a couple of bottles of wine for Allen's birthday after a minor delivery snafu (who knew there would be multiple birthday dinner orders requested by Zimmermans in the DC metro area on the same night).

Hopefully, it's all a sign of better things to come.

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