Pandemic, Week 65 (Bee's Knees)

This week, President Biden met with foreign leaders while attending the G-7 meeting in England. The President Biden also officially canceled the Keystone Pipeline, due to environmental concerns. Reports emerged that the Trump White House had subpoenaed phone records of two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. The FDA granted accelerated approval for the Alzheimer drug, Aduhelm, despite 10 of the 11 members of the FDA approval committee voting against it, resulting in the resignation of three of the committee's members. Simone Biles won the vault, balance beam, floor exercises and the all-around title at the U.S. Women's National Gymnastics Championships. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced the birth of their second child, Lilibet Diana, named after her great grandmother and late grandmother. 

The world reached 176.5 million COVID cases and 3.8 million deaths this week. The U.S. accounted for 34.4 million of the cases and 615,000 deaths. 173 million people in the US, 52 percent of the population have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 143 million, 43 percent of the population, are fully vaccinated. Despite these gains, US vaccination rates are slowing down, in part due to a misinformation campaign by vaccine opponents, including those that testified during a hearing at the Ohio statehouse that the COVID vaccine magnetizes people, resulting in their ability to stick spoons, keys and forks to their foreheads. (For the record, it does not.) 

We were busy as a bee this week, especially on Sunday when First Day School harvested honey from its beehives. The whole family participated as we de-capped, spun, funneled, bottled and even sold honey, but Owen really got into it and stayed late to finish bottling and clean up. In addition, Owen had his final cello jury of the year, Nora took care of Ducky (who's staying a few more days with us while Katherine takes John to Iowa, but then she's really going back), Allen had an article published in Nature on climate policy models, and Elaine happened upon a mariachi concert on the Hill. At the end of the long week, Nora and I met up with Mom Mom and Katherine for manicures and pedicures before meeting the boys for dinner where we extracted the following promise from Mom Mom and its corollary from Katherine:

Now you just have to wait five more year...

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