Pandemic, Week 50 (To suffer fifty weeks of the year...)

This week, President Biden ordered flags flown at half mast this week in honor of the 500,000 that have died in the U.S. from COVID. The House passed its $1.9 trillion COVID-relief package, despite every republican and 2 democrats voting against it. The Senate Parliamentarian ruled that a minimum wage increase could not be passed through budget reconciliation. The Senate held confirmation hearings for the first transgender nominee. President Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria in response to rocket attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq. Despite a declassified intelligence report stating that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman directly approved the brutal murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the U.S. will not directly sanction the Prince. The state of Virginia voted to abolish the death penalty. Golfer Tiger Woods suffered multiple injuries from a car accident in LA. Conservative outrage erupted when Hasbro announced it was dropping the "Mr." from its Potato Head brand to be more inclusive.

The total number of COVID cases reached 114.4 million this week as well as 2.5 million deaths, with the U.S. accounting for 29.2 million cases and 525,000 deaths. More than 70 million vaccine doses have been administered in the U.S. reaching 14.2 percent of the population. That includes Grandpa and Grandma Z, who got their first does this week and Grandpa Don, who got his second. Ghana was the first country to receive doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through a United Nations initiative. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, which requires only one dose and can be stored in a regular refrigerator, has been approved for emergency use by the FDA.

We had a pretty quiet week. The cold snap abated and so we managed to venture out a bit, at which point we realized Owen's feet had grown 3.5 sizes since September and quickly ordered new shoes. Nora and I belatedly delivered Valentine cookies and unicorn keychains to some of her friends. We met up with the Telfair-Chas as the Arboretum in order to visit the only Capitol columns we can get to these days, since the barricade erected after the January 6th insurrection is still up 53 days later. And then we headed up to Katherine's for a lovely family dinner before Grandpa Fawcett flew off to Texas (which is now a balmy 76 degrees), roughly one year after he originally planned to visit Jacqui there.

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