Pandemic, Week 93 (A Holly, Jolly Christmas)

This week Joe Manchin announced that he would vote "no" on the Build Back Better bill, despite months of negotiations with the White House. In response, the United Mine Workers of America have asked him to reconsider his position. Stop the Steal organizers provided the January 6th Special Committee with communications with GOP members from the time, including Representatives Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks. In response to an increase in extremism in the military, the Pentagon has announced that they will hold service members accountable for their views expressed on social media. President Biden announced that the pause on student loan repayments will be extended to May 2022. The James Webb Space Telescope which is designed to capture infrared light, from galaxies far, far away, was launched into space. Santa came.

The world reached 279.8 million COVID cases and 5.4 million deaths this week, of which the US accounted for 53.0 million cases and 838,000 deaths. 242 million (73 percent) Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine while 205 million (62 percent) are fully vaccinated. Omicron is now the dominant strain of COVID in the US, accounting for 73 percent of all new cases. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser reinstated the mask mandate while DC Chancellor Lewis Ferebee announced that Winter Break would be extended two days in order to distribute rapid tests so that all students can be cleared before returning. The DC council then passed a law that all eligible DC students – including those in private and charter schools – must be vaccinated by March 2022. Meanwhile, President Biden held a press conference where he announced the White House would mail as many as 500 million at home tests beginning in January.

We headed to Iowa this week, but not before the kids finished school. Well, sort of. DCPS announced that Nora's school would be remote starting Tuesday due to the number of positive COVID tests. Meanwhile, Owen, who has to ride the metro and bus to school where he's surrounded by COVID-spewing instrumentalists, was open for the whole week. So we decided we needed to verify we were all negative before exposing ourselves to the midwest. Despite a dearth of COVID rapid tests in the DC-metro area, Allen was able to find some abandoned rapid tests in our bushes, which we dutifully took and verified we were all negative and then packed up the car Wednesday night.

We left DC around 5:40 on Thursday morning (we may have had to circle back to pick up a forgotten item which delayed our initial departure) and made it to Iowa on Thursday night, where we were able, after two long years, to reunite our kids with their cousins (who spent the visit talking loudly, playing games and having various jam sessions). Kara wasn't able to make it in person due to a sick kitty, but Dave was able to represent the Colorado Zimmermans. We ate lots of goodies, drank probably more wine that advisable, and just generally enjoyed everyone's companies, for the first time since 2019. Hopefully, we can all (including Kara) do it again for Thanksgiving 2022.

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