I am sad and agitated about the kids being back in school this week. Covid-19 cases went absolutely bonkers over winter break with Omicron + holiday get-togethers; and my kids go to a school where vaccinations and masks are not required, and the HVAC system is ancient and the town keeps deciding not to spend the money to repair/replace it, and nothing has been done for “social distancing” except to put up signs telling students to do it (they can’t: their desks are not six feet apart and can’t be moved six feet apart). The kids reported that there was a small uptick in mask-wearing among students, and that some of the teachers/staff who were wearing masks before (most of them were/are not) have switched to KN95s.
I have seen/heard people wondering why vaccinated people are so concerned. I will list my own concerns:
• I am worried that, because of his immunosuppressant medications, Edward’s vaccines didn’t Take, and he’s not actually protected.
• I am worried about long-term effects of Covid-19, which even mild cases can lead to.
• I am worried about the continued mutation of the virus, which is already leading to forms of the virus that are better at getting around vaccinations (AS ANYONE WHO WENT TO A SCHOOL THAT DIDN’T BAN THE TEACHING OF EVOLUTION WOULD EXPECT) and may in the future lead to other unpleasant forms.
• I am worried that maybe I can’t trust the people around me to tell me about their own infection/exposure. There are so many stories of infections happening because someone knew they were positive (or that a household member was positive) but didn’t think it was a big deal and so didn’t let other people know, and then put themselves near other people. This makes me feel like it’s exponentially harder to make my own informed decisions.
• I am worried that hospitals will be overwhelmed. My son Edward has a medical condition that means he needs medical care (both routine and emergency) more often than most people, and I worry that he’ll need care and not be able to get it—or at the minimum that we will need to factor ER overload/contagion into our decisions about what to do. But even aside from Edward, I am worried about any of us having illnesses or injuries and not being able to get medical care / needing to factor overloaded medical systems into our decisions.
• I am worried about other systems collapsing. Our country should have a better system of childcare, since literally everyone understands that parents can’t bring their children to work; but right now schools do a big chunk of that care. If schools (and of course actual childcare centers) have to close because they don’t have the staff to run them, a lot of parents are going to be in serious trouble; I am not one of those parents, but I can still worry and be scared for them, and understand what a huge problem that would be, and feel distressed for them.
• And I am worried about unvaccinated people. It is hard to figure out where the “Why do YOU care, when it doesn’t affect YOU???” point of view comes from. I have given this some thought, and I am forced to conclude that the people asking the question are confused because THEY don’t care about anything that doesn’t affect THEM personally, so it doesn’t make sense to them that other people would care. (But also: we ARE all affected by other people’s decisions/outcomes in this pandemic, so there must be additional levels of confusion going on here.)
At my library, a policy has changed. It used to be that if an employee had a Covid-positive household member, the employee could still come to work (masked, with a negative test, and staying at least six feet away from everyone else). The new policy is that an employee with a positive household member must be out of work a minimum of ten days; and that for planning purposes the absence will be assumed to be twenty days to allow for the possibility of the employee testing positive themselves on any day of those ten and needing to stay out an additional ten days for their own infection. Already two of our librarians are out, starting the day after the new policy. My supervisor is scrambling to find anyone to cover any of those hours. It feels like we are waiting for system collapse: just like the school, we can’t stay open without a certain minimum number of staff.
Also: most of us at my library don’t get paid sick time. Even the ones who do get paid sick time don’t get 10-20 days of it. The “stay away for 10-20 days” is a GOOD POLICY for limiting the spread of the virus, but it needs CORRESPONDING FINANCIAL UNDERPINNINGS to make it work. One of my co-workers said she literally can’t miss 10 days of work, let alone 20, and still pay her bills / keep her house. She said this policy was an incentive to lie, or to avoid testing.
While I was writing this, the kids came home from school. Elizabeth reports that one kid in one of her classes went to the nurse mid-day, tested positive for Covid, and went home. She overheard another kid from another of her classes talking in the hallway to friends about how she was being sent home because of a positive Covid test. A friend has suddenly started wearing a mask after not wearing one, and it turns out it’s because the friend’s sibling tested positive. Another friend went home with a cough and a fever and a negative test. Elizabeth said a few kids just noped-out mid-day, calling parents and getting themselves dismissed because things are going too poorly.
I stress/comfort-ordered prism duct tape for sealing up care packages (FOR PEOPLE I MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO SEE IN PERSON), and some pretty green 10×13 envelopes for the next ten years of our tax stuff.
Holding space for you. I’m worried about my community, and I am in the best of all possible situations. I work from home. My husband’s able to work from home. My son is able to do his college classes virtually. But what if we need the ER and it’s not available? What happens about food supplies and and and and?
We’re two years into this and the people supposedly in charge are just saying, “do what you want”
The Ontario government, after making a series of bad choices, has decided to keep schools online for the first 2 weeks and see how things go. My older child is 2x-vaxxed; the younger one just became eligible for his first dose a month ago (I vaccinated him the first day his cohort was eligible) and his 2nd dose will be in a couple of weeks. When schools do re-open, the teachers will have N95 or KN95 masks, and there is a masking requirements for students also.
And yet.
I am so tired. I am a community pharmacist who has been working long shifts to vaccinate against COVID, administer rapid antigen tests, and answer endless questions/fight misinformation… and I’m tired. I am thankful that our community is mostly taking it seriously, and that we have access to vaccines and PPE which is more than a lot of the rest of the world. But I’m still tired and I feel like I want to take a break from being grateful for my privilege and just curse out the bunch of idiots keeping us in this pandemic.
I am SO GLAD my kids are teenagers and able to manage their own schooling from home! My heart goes out to those parents with young kids who have to help or at least constantly monitor their kids during online learning, and even more so to those parents who don’t have jobs that can allow them to work from home so are stuck at the last minute (because heaven forbid the provincial government try to give us more than a day or two of notice when making these “pivots”) trying to figure out what to do with their kids during the next couple of weeks.
Oh Swistle it is all so stressful. Thank you as always for expressing the frets in such a clear and straightforward way.
Wondering if you have a KN95 option that you like and feel comfortable sharing? I’m finding myself overwhelmed by the number of options, the mixed reviews and the expense.
I’ve had good luck with Powecom KN95 masks. We get ours from bonafidemasks.com. They and bona fide masks were recommended by some newspaper (sorry I can’t remember which one at this point, but I promise is was reputable and not bobsinsanerag.com or something) They’re (relatively) comfortable and my kids wear them all day at school.
I watched the Mask Nerd’s video and read his article in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/27/best-masks-covid-tests-cloth-surgical-respirators
and ordered the BOTN masks via Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/58DA02F6-0D09-4812-A96F-939CCCCBE574
It sounds like they run large, so I bought the youth size, as I have two sons. If they are large enough I will use them as well.
Thanks for the link to the Mask Nerd! After watching a video of his recommendations I splurged on a couple of boxes of gorgeous masks that pass his tests (Masklab from Hong Kong). If you had told me two years ago that I’d be buying high-performance disposable facemasks for my daughter for one of her sweet 16 birthday gifts I would have laughed in your face!
Awhile back I did a fretful post, and people made various recommendations, and these are the ones I’ve bought several times now: https://bonafidemasks.com/powecom/
I buy them in black and in white (and now in limited-edition pink!), and to my surprise I choose the black ones more often. I would have thought I’d choose white, but I guess white seems more medical while black has a little more COOL.
I have been overwhelmed and stressing about which ones to buy (and in the meantime have continued to wear my cloth masks because even if they don’t actually protect me, they at least show that I support mask-wearing? I don’t know) but I just ordered some of the Powecoms! Thank you!
Thank you all for sharing your mask success stories! I’ve just placed an order!
I ordered the model called “Aura 9205+” directly from the 3M site. They work really well, the first masks where my glasses don’t fog up. Follow the instructions for putting it on, because it’s not obvious at first.
Oh man. I am the manager for Youngest’s soccer team who are scheduled to play in a tournament this weekend. This is the kind of tournament that requires kids to “stay and play,” i.e. we are required to have all players stay in one of the approved hotels in order to play. This was all arranged months ago when things were looking fine because all players were vaccinated and things were rosy. I’ve just spent the last several days being barraged with texts and emails from (rightfully) concerned parents wondering why on earth (1) this tournament is still happening (narrator voice: money) and (2) why our team is still going. I funneled those concerns to our coach (who is currently abroad!) and then finally spent an hour this morning contacting soccer club management to get permission to take a poll to find out if a majority of parents still want to go – if they don’t, the club will pull us from the tournament, if they do I guess we’re going (unless/until players get covid this week or get exposed to covid this week and the whole thing just falls apart).
In short: in addition to being worried about school and other things, I’m so friggin’ tired of organizations not doing the right thing without being badgered into it by parents and I’m so tired of Covid making everything hard and complicated.
Yes to all of this, and when I went for my weekly trip to Trader Joe’s today, they were out of a LOT of random things. The most I’ve seen since the pandemic started. Many shelves filled with a lot of one or two products to fill space. Yikes.
I am in California, so we do have mask mandates (I have two in high school), and they are really pushing kids to wear surgical/K/N95 masks (the staff are wearing them). My 15-year-old daughter declared, “I just don’t want to grow up this way any more!” And while dramatic, it’s hard to argue with that. My other kid is a senior, and I was so hopeful that his last semester would be somewhat normal, but that optimism seems laughable now.
I hate the returned feeling of grimness in the air. I am beaten down by the decision fatigue (is this work/school/extracurricular/travel to see grandparents/college visit worth it??). Seriously, 2022, I wasn’t expecting a LOT, but this is a terrible beginning.
YES to all of this, especially the Trader Joe’s shortages, which really threw me for a loop today.
This is so stressful. I don’t understand why there are still counties who don’t require masking. I mean, I do “understand” it (Florida) but it is a recipe for disaster. I feel so very grateful to live in a deep blue area with vaccine and mask mandates in our public schools, and my heart is broken for those who live primarily among those who can’t fathom choosing slight discomfort
To help others. You can’t make people care about each other.
My Dad’s knee replacement surgery was scheduled for 1/12 and is now rescheduled for the end of February. And my mom is HOT. She’s so angry that there are so many people that refuse to get vaccinated that they are filling up the hospitals. And it seems to be holding steady that 80% of the people hospitalized with COVID are unvaccinated, so this problem should be easy to solve. Get vaccinated and then the hospitals will be available for those that don’t have immunity from the vaccine. They can take care of those people. And at least my Dad is missing a relatively optional surgery—it’s not like he has cancer.
I’m not sure that this is the place for a hopeful comment and I’m not really that hopeful, but sometimes I just have to have something to cling to. I do have some hope that this version of COVID is the first step into this morphing into a more cold like coronavirus. This version seems to be less hard on the lungs than the previous versions which is good. And it sounds like a lot of people that are testing positive are not that sick, which is good. But also bad because now if my nose is even slightly stuffy, I wonder if I have it.
Oh Swistle! I am fretting right alongside of you. The head of our local major hospital system is actively begging the local mayors of this county to reinstate a mask mandate. No response, so far.
We were supposed to “return to the office on a hybrid schedule” yesterday. I fretted over this all of last week until I finally saw the email delaying it until February…but honestly, I don’t even feel good about that right now.
These mutations…they scare me. Oh sure, some claim that Omicron is “mild” – mild is a relative term and cannot describe what each patient might experience. I’m exhausted and angry that we are still here.
Here in England they have mandated masks for high school students and they all had to test before returning to school. But there’s a real shortage of the home rapid tests so that’s caused issues. The government is holding off on any more sanctions than those imposed before Christmas even though the NHS is really struggling as are most transport and other vital systems.
My clinically vulnerable son had covid over Christmas, he’s double vaccinated and boostered and was eligible for a new antiviral treatment which for various reasons didn’t happen. He was pretty sick (so, so grateful he was vaccinated, would have been in icu last year) and now has a difficult to shift horrible chest infection. Testing negative for covid now.
I’m so sorry Alison, I worry endlessly about the people I know who are vulnerable – like one of my closest friends, who, like Edward, is on immunosuppressing drugs for an illness similar to Crohns. I’m in the UK as well as the less said about the government response to all this the better. My kids are too young to be vaccinated, and we have missed Omicron so far (my son had Delta last June but the rest of us didn’t get it somehow) – so I’m bracing myself for January!
I am trying to reach some peace about this. I live in Florida, so that probably tells you all you need to know about our current situation. We are all vaccinated, and the adults are boosted. My children wear masks at school, and my husband’s office is now requiring n-95 masks and limiting in person contact. We are all social distancing and wearing masks out in the world, staying outside as much as possible. Everything else is outside of my control. Reminding myself of this is helping me not to lose sleep. I have done what I can the rest we will have to take as it comes. And I will remember the choices made by my local leaders on election day.
What.A.Nightmare. I honestly don’t understand how there can’t be a mask mandate. I just don’t. I understand that there are logistical issues with distancing at schools, but masks do work and why, why, why. We have had many issues with hospitals being full during the pandemic, with surgeries being cancelled. One of my students had a massive open heart surgery rescheduled due to no room at the hospital/ no surgeon available. And that was considered a pretty urgent surgery. It’s so incredibly awful.
I am an ER physician. This is breaking us. We are routinely seeing people who have waited 8+ hours to be seen. Nothing is functioning well. And this feels like our new normal. I’m so, so tired of the futility. I am spending my days apologizing for something completely out of my control, and feeling like we are never going to control this.
“This feels like our new normal”. THIS. I’m a teacher and this is where I’m at right now and it’s making me so sad. We are in person, but some classes are having to go remote due to sick staff members. We were able to have one field trip this year, but the rest are looking shaky. And not even because of omicron, exactly. Apparently we don’t have enough bus drivers. We were able to have some in person visits from the public library and the performing arts people, but that’s back to zoom now. I miss having parents in my classroom, holiday potlucks for families and staff, shows in the auditorium, reading buddies…just so much of what made preschool fun.
And like everyone else, I’m glad that we are all healthy in my family, thanks to vaccines, boosters and masks, and I’m glad this variant is milder, but it’s still wrecking another year. My students don’t even know any better, but I do, and I’m sad for them. And tired of it all. And sooo grateful to healthcare workers- I don’t even know how you do it, when there’s no end in sight. Thank you!
My mind boggles at the idea that your school was allowed field trips and in-person visits from resources outside the school. Parents aren’t even allowed to enter the schools here without a school-sanctioned reason (like picking up their kid from the office when they’re sick). Our board let our kids have certain sports and musical instruments back recently, but those have been pulled back again with Omicron.
To be clear, the boggling is at the cultural differences between what feels cautious in one place, vs what feels daring in another. I don’t mean to imply criticism of your school.
I hate all of this and I don’t know what to do.
I feel like we are in a stalemate. Locked in to a 2
Year old normal. Every so often when I lay down at night I have some tears for my kids. They don’t understand how messed up this is to live like this. NYT had an apt article today talking about the harm being done to kids. 1 of mine is in virtual again, 1 is not. high schools sports continue.
I mostly feel lucky that our family is healthy and working tho (inflation is freaking me out tho). I’m not sure if I have perspective or am just numb now. I did have Covid over the holidays…it was mild but I’d say it’s lingering too and
My chest still doesn’t feel 100%.
You are spot on about other systems collapsing, not just schools and hospitals. Our trash pickup was delayed today for a worker shortage. Some reports from an outside vendor delayed today for the same reason.
I feel so much of this. We are as careful as we can be with masking and all immediate family members are vaxxed, thank goodness. I took some calculated risks over the holidays to travel to see my dad and sister. We did a few outings, like seeing a theatre show which required masks and showing vax cards. Ticket buyers had to agree to both when purchasing them and I felt OK about going. Despite saying they would follow the rules, there were STILL people taking off their masks in the theatre. The ushers tried to enforce it, but stopped short of kicking people out. So baffling and maddening! (My sweet, elderly dad kept insisting it was the best show he’d ever seen and we’re all healthy…so it was worth it? I don’t know any more.)
It’s all so stressful again.
My family got Covid this week. We took a gamble and it didn’t work out. My husband–fully vaccinated and with a booster shot received on December 7th, so as protected by the vaccine as a person can possibly be–went to a memorial dinner for a friend on December 23rd. We knew that an indoor dinner party wasn’t a great idea with omicron spreading, but the hosts didn’t call off the event and it was for a very close friend so my husband felt obligated to go and we decided together that it was worth the risk. After all, if you can’t be protected by the vaccine and a booster (all Moderna, no less, which I understand to be the most effective vaccine) then what is the other option? Stay isolated indoors forever? I guess I just feel like at some point this is going to go from pandemic to endemic, which means the risk will always be there. I was never a “let’s just live our lives” person, and I still wouldn’t say that’s my opinion (I definitely believe there should be mask mandates and vaccine mandates and I am so grateful my kids go to a school where masking isn’t optional) but the past two years have worn me down, I have to admit it. All we can hope now is that the Covid mutations get less dangerous as time goes by, not more dangerous.
Anyway, the good news is that so far our virus is very mild. One of my kids is still negative and asymptomatic, the other two had mild symptoms (headache and sore throat) for just one day and are now asymptomatic (even the one who is under five and thus not yet vaccinated). My husband and I both have mild symptoms more similar to allergies than a cold: itchy throats and slightly runny noses (all those “Is it allergies or Covid?” memes ended up being pretty accurate in my case). It’s definitely an upper respiratory tract thing only. So I think–I hope–the vaccines are doing their job and keeping severe illness at bay.
In a weird way I feel almost glad that this happened. After two years of going to extremes to alter our lives to avoid Covid, to finally have to face it head on and have it not be terrible is a relief. And I think now that we’ve had it AND we’re vaccinated, we should have, like, super immunity for a while. So I feel like if we get over the rest of this hump then I can send the kids to school for the rest of this winter indoor season with significantly less worry than I was feeling before (assuming their schools manage to stay open).
I hope I’m not being insensitive. I acknowledge how very fortunate we are that nobody in my family has risk factors or underlying conditions or compromised immune systems or has a situation where we need to spend time with vulnerable people. And that we were fortunate enough to not have the bad luck of getting sick until after we’d had the good luck of getting vaccinated. I’m glad that other than the dinner we didn’t do anything irresponsible. The kids were on break and we spent the holidays alone and went nowhere and did nothing for the past two weeks other than my husband going to that dinner party (makes it very easy to tell what the source was, and also reassures us that this particular infection ends with us and won’t be spread beyond our household).
Anyway, it is definitely NOT a gamble to take because there’s no telling how Covid will go. But I guess what I’m saying is the one and only upside to getting Covid is that now that the worst case scenario has happened I can at least stop worrying about my own family getting Covid. I can put aside all the decision fatigue (“Is this worth getting Covid for?”), which really was beating me down, and instead, for a change of pace, focus my worrying on all the other things you mentioned above.
I am really feeling this comment. I’ve never been a proponent of “We have to LIVE our LIVES!” as an excuse to indulge in whatever behaviour I want but that ultimately puts society at risk, but well, at some point we do all have to adjust to the new risk level of this disease that will never go away. And I’ve actually found myself wondering if omicron is our chance to make that adjustment, whether we want to or not: it’s highly contagious, and supposedly milder and shorter-lived compared to previous variants.
At the back of my mind there’s a niggling “What if we all do everything we can to avoid this variant, but the next one is much worse and we won’t have gotten the antibodies from this one to fight it?” Maybe the contagiousness of this variant is going to force us into the much-vaunted “herd immunity” (which would stop it enough in the community to help protect the most vulnerable)? Maybe I’m trying to make myself feel better about the fact that the word is that we’re all going to catch it no matter what we do?
But of course, with not much known about the long-term effects and the fact that they don’t know why some people have no symptoms and some people end up in the hospital, it would be foolish to not try our best to avoid it.
I’m actually kind of jealous of you Ashley, for having gone through it with only mild symptoms for everyone and for not having to deal with that conundrum anymore. Your situation is exactly what I hope mine turns out to be when we finally end up getting it.
Herd immunity doesn’t happen with getting it. Folks have gotten it 2 or more times.
What Liz said and also, we cannot afford for everyone to get it *all at once* and collapse the healthcare, education, and other essential systems. Flattening the curve buys time to avoid triage, approve and distribute new early treatments, develop next gen vaccines …
I hate that the burden of this is so unfairly distributed and some are doing more than their fair share of the sacrificing and I’m sick of the decision fatigue (Can 14 take transit to go skating with friends?) but it’s not time to let it rip.
The virus itself doesn’t trigger good long term immunity as it evades B cells pretty effectively. Only the vaccine provides long term immunity – even if that immunity isn’t a perfect match for the current circulating viruses.
Infection post vaccination, in theory, should be like a “lite” booster. Less effective than an actual booster shot because of the viruses immune system evasion, less effective than the actual booster shot because the current circulating virus is not a “match” so it doesn’t boost the vaccine as well as the vaccine does.
But thank the vaccine for your mild Covid symptoms!
The virus itself doesn’t trigger good long term immunity as it evades B cells pretty effectively. Only the vaccine provides long term immunity – even if that immunity isn’t a perfect match for the current circulating viruses.
Infection post vaccination, in theory, should be like a “lite” booster. Less effective than an actual booster shot because of the viruses immune system evasion, less effective than the actual booster shot because the current circulating virus is not a “match” so it doesn’t boost the vaccine as well as the vaccine does.
But thank the vaccine for your mild Covid symptoms!
You’re all right, calling it “super immunity” was too much. But, truly, vaccine+vaccine+booster+infection does make me as immune as a person can possibly be. Which is to say, not entirely immune. But I’m more protected now than I was before, and having been through it now I’m significantly less anxious about it than I was before (although of course I also know if we get it again it could be different/worse).
I also agree that we don’t all want to just throw our hands up and get infected all at once. But I hope that this truly is the last really bad wave and it continues to morph into something less and less lethal each time. That’s probably too much to hope, but it’s what I’m hoping for anyway because all of the other alternatives really suck.
I am worried about all those things as well, although I live in a province where mask mandates were never dropped and I feel dreadful for anyone who lives where people don’t have to mask. I work in a school, and I’m also grateful that I don’t have to be in for the next couple of weeks, because not all of them are vaccinated yet and I can’t socially distance from them while tending to their bleeding knees and noses and bumped heads (it is icy and they are all so clumsy – so. many. bumped. heads). But I feel for the parents who are trying to work and manage online school, or who can’t miss work. Selfishly, I am scared that my son’s last college baseball season will evaporate like the second one did, or that if it happens we won’t be able to see any of it (across a border). And I am grateful that we had some respite before the Omicron wave – things opened up a little, we could see some friends, it was all less dreadful and dread-inducing – but right now I’m fighting hard to keep the optimism generated from that.
We went to a restaurant tonight which I didn’t especially want to do, but did anyway and it was SO CROWDED and maskless. I was SO anxious and now I’ll be anxious for days, I’m sure. I’m vaxxed and boosted, but Omicron does not seem to care, and I am also terrified of long term effects. I’ve been seeing a little about the not-only loss of taste and smell but making everything taste/smell awful, for months on end in some cases, and insurance companies honestly are probably just like “eh people probably need to stop eating and lose weight anyway”. I saw a comment suggesting a feeding tube, and I thought well that seems like a great solution, but imagine trying to get insurance to pay for it.
I’ve got a K & 3rd grader and they went back today. Even knowing they have been excellent with their masks (and upping them to KF94s from Happy Masks since the wait list is so long and theirs reached EOL), that their school requires masks for everyone, and that the school has had HVAC consultants out to meet the CA guidelines for air filtration, I still hesitated sending them back today. Covid is no joke and death is not the worst/only outcome. Could you imagine being 5 and losing your taste/smell for how long? Months? Years? Decades? Forever??? No thanks. My sister and two nieces (who were vax eligible)(all unvaxxed) all got covid last year, I think either pre-delta or early on in the delta wave. They all lost their taste and smell and still don’t have it back. Can’t season food when cooking levels of loss. A friend who had covid at the beginning of the pandemic still has issues with things not tasting right almost 2 years later.
I don’t need to never get covid (although that would be nice), but I’d really like to hold it off long enough that there are other treatments approved and available for the not-high-risk people. I just bought new half mask respirators (our fire “season” ones have a valve 🙄) for us and Flo masks for the kids for when we’re inevitably trying to keep half the household from catching it from the other half.
The severity thing is super obnoxious. Yes, omicron is less severe than delta. But delta was 4x as severe as “original”.
I am so angry and frustrated that our pandemic response has become “reduce quarantine measures because you have to go back to work even if you’re sick”. If the CDC had been recommending high quality masks (N95/KF94/FFP2 or heaven forbid the N95 masks that were specifically created for the public for pandemics back in 2009) since the beginning instead of clinging to useless cloth masks long after the N95 shortage for healthcare workers was resolved and emphasizing that this is an airborne, aerosolized virus, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this position now. No one decided to become teachers or medical staff or school bus drivers because they wanted to die for their job. It is utterly ridiculous that we are expecting those workers to work regardless of whatever their employer and the government are/aren’t doing to support their continued health. Teachers don’t make enough as it is.
The “but think of the chiiiiiiiildreeeeen” argument is absurd. When does anyone care about kids from a policy standpoint? Is IDEA fully funded? No. Do we increase school funding? No. Do we do anything after any of the multitude of school shootings? No. Did we extend the child tax credit that expired in December? No. No one cares about kids (because they can’t vote) until they can use that care in service to something else.
For as much as the new CDC guidelines about 5 days to quarantine and have “improving” or no symptoms while not requiring a negative antigen test is totally underwhelming, the library having people out for 10 days after any positive test is way overkill. I think it’s the U.K. that requires improving/no symptoms and 2 daily consecutive negative antigen tests before coming out of quarantine and that guidance seems to be threading the needle of balancing public health and virus containment.
“The “but think of the chiiiiiiiildreeeeen” argument is absurd. When does anyone care about kids from a policy standpoint? Is IDEA fully funded? No. Do we increase school funding? No. Do we do anything after any of the multitude of school shootings? No. Did we extend the child tax credit that expired in December? No. No one cares about kids (because they can’t vote) until they can use that care in service to something else.”
YES YES YES. I am so furious that so many people in my area are using children, especially poor children, as the reason to go back to living the way we were before the pandemic, when life sucked for those kids but not the complainers. How’s that magical bootstrappy gumption serving you now, huh? We need a social safety net that isn’t just schools and teachers stepping in to fill the many many gaps we’ve been enduring.
I am also mad that the entirely reasonable observation that COVID has become endemic leads so many people to announce that we should just give up and do whatever we want. How about figuring out how to cope by developing various strategies to deal with surges and outbreaks? How about that? No, of course not.
Responding Imalinata’s post. I’ve been trying to do the right thing throughout and I JUST learned a few weeks ago that the cloth masks are basically useless, or at least that’s what they are saying now. I thought I was being better for the environment by using cloth. :-( so many messaging failures.
Hoping your family gets their sense of taste back at some point; how awful.
Omg the messaging!! It is SOOO bad! Why do I have to go to Twitter as the best source of current fact based information?!? That is so counter to everything you would expect, and yet… *headdesk*
This is my issue. I’ve watched, read, listen to podcasts with doctors, consumed all I could and still didn’t know what to do when my son tested positive. It was the week before Christmas, he lives in nyc and had close contact with someone who tested positive. He didn’t have symptoms but in order to come home he needed to know if he was positive. He stood in line for five hours (whole other issue) and was positive. He never had symptoms, felt completely fine and is vaxxed and boosted. I had no idea how long he needed to quarantine as it was changing during that time. He ended up quarantining for 7 days from the positive test, came home and took the home test I had (thank goodness I picked one up a few weeks prior) and was negative. Just a needlessly stressful week when we’ve been at this for two years.
Yes, yes, yes. Sent my kids back to school yesterday with the feeling of sending them to war…super dramatic, I know, but that’s where my anxiety is. But I can’t just keep them home until…what? What’s going to be next? Our school district got new board members sworn in end of November and their first order of business was to do away with masking in schools. It’s 100% political and 0% based on anything other than voting, and I wish we could just move away. Now we’re just waiting for a few days while we lose teachers (and students) and they won’t be able to be open anyway. So frustrated and tired, and we have it better than so many…
Oh Swistle, I am so sorry. I don’t know you in person, but our children are close to the same ages, and I’ve followed your blog since the early days when I was also a young mother. All that to say, I’ve been thinking about Edward’s health and safety – in a general sense of immunocompromised people in my orbit, and I’m just… sorry and very Jeremy Bearamy with all the emotions. A quick trip to the local Walgreens last night for a card really launched me into hot mess territory when I saw only 3 worn out sympathy cards left in the rack. I burst into tears in the car thinking of all the people receiving those purchases cards. When will all this sadness and grief and politically motivated hate and ugliness be over? My stockpile of resiliency is quickly eroding. I will continue to keep you and yours in my thoughts. Take care Internet friend. For me, your honest writing is certainly one of the few bright lights of this entire mess.
For me, one of the biggest frustrations is the financial underpinnings piece, as you so correctly put it. It would be SO EASY for us as a society to add financial underpinnings to jobs (paid sick leave, paid family leave, etc), to healthcare, to EVERYTHING. I absolutely do not understand the corrupt, for sale leadership in this country that actively wants to see more people in poverty and failing to thrive in our society.
I am a vaxxed and boosted person, everyone in my household is vaxxed and boosted if possible, we are not particularly risky in our covid behavior (wear masks, no big indoor activities, kids do go to in person school but it’s mandatory indoor masks) and 4 of 5 of us have covid right now. Luckily very mild, thank you vaccines. But I’m not sure if it has sunk in to the general public just how incredibly transmissible omicron is. Anyone not taking significant precautions is going to run a pretty big risk of getting it. I’m telling the vulnerable people in my life to quit going out for most everything this month because it’s going to get hairy.
I think of you sometimes because of your son and I imagine it must be stressful to be in your shoes. Im not the praying kind of person but I will continue to send good thoughts your way.
You’re absolutely right – I’m in the UK and Omicron is INCREDIBLY transmissable. We managed to avoid it during December and over Christmas, through a combination of luck and caution. But now my 6 and 2-year-olds are back in school and daycare and I can’t see any way they’re not going to bring it home in the next few weeks, especially as we don’t vaccinate under 12s here. The great news is that it does seem to be super mild and most people I know who’ve had it have felt ok – and that might be a good thing for eradicating Delta, which is much more severe. The bad news, as you’ve said, is that I worry constantly about vulnerable people. There also seems to be very little data – that I’ve seen so far at least – about Omicron and long Covid. Mask wearing in shops etc is supposedly mandatory here… but it seems that most 20-something people are just completely ignoring that and my rage is still burning strong a week after my last trip to the supermarket.
I just purchased some galaxy duct tape and some with little whales on it and I think it did help marginally.