Pandemic, Week 62 (Brood X)

This week a cease fire was reached in Gaza after 11 days of violence resulting in the deaths of 248 Palestinians and 12 Israelis. The House, including 35 Republicans, voted to create a commission on the January 6th insurrection, despite objections by its Republican leadership. The bill now moves to the Senate which would require 10 Republican to approve the measure, unless the filibuster is revoked. The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case from Mississippi banning abortions after 16 weeks in an attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade; meanwhile Texas passed a law banning abortions as early as six weeks. The New York state attorney general's office announced that it has widened its investigation into the Trump Organization to include criminal wrongdoing. The Great Eastern Brood of cicadas (aka Brood X) have emerged after 17 years en masse in the Washington area, only to fall prey to a "zombie fungus" which causes their butts to fall off. Actor Charles Grodin died.

This week the world reached 167.0 million COVID cases and 3.5 million deaths, of which the US accounted for 33.9 million cases and 604,000 deaths. For the first time in 11 months, the daily average of new COVID infections has fallen below 30,000. 49 percent of the US has now received at least one dose of the vaccine with at 39 percent of the population being fully vaccinated. DC lifted mask and social distancing restriction for vaccinated individuals and capacity restrictions on businesses this week, though masks are still required on public transit as well as hospitals, schools, and sporting events.

This week we added to our brood, with one lone cicada in the backyard and five new fish – Godzilla, King Kong, Test Subject 1, Test Subject 2 and Rutabaga (the kids named them). We had lost our last fish early on in the Pandemic and hadn't felt comfortable going to pet stores to replace them for until now.  So we ventured out a bit  more: Nora got a haircut (their first in seven months), we went to Meeting in person, and even made it to the Telfair-Chas to celebrate Megan's birthday with some dairy-free cupcakes that turned out a lot better than Nora and I thought they would, after several measuring mishaps. And so much like the cicadas, we are starting to emerge from our Pandemic cocoons.

I just hope our butts don't fall off.

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