I found your comments on the last post exceedingly reassuring and helpful—and I hope others in similarly financially-dependent situations found the comments section similarly reassuring. I found it helpful on so many levels. The reminder that there WOULD BE some money, and some time to figure things out. The stories about others who were financially dependent, and then had to and/or wanted to change that, and were able to. The specific ideas for classes/careers that might be good options. The reminder that there are quite a few of us in this situation, and HAVE BEEN quite a few of us in this situation, and that we, like so many before us, would figure something out, and that we don’t necessarily have to figure something out PREVENTATIVELY (though it wouldn’t be weird to do so, either, if we wanted to for other reasons).
It’s been awhile since I’ve written a pandemic-themed post. I’ve stopped marking the number of weeks of pandemic lockdown on the calendar, because we are no longer locked down: we are going to routine medical/dental appointments; we are going to work; we are seeing vaccinated friends and family. (Elizabeth’s sleepover went well!) I’m gradually using up the extra groceries and seeing space open up again in the cabinets and freezer. My intention is to send the children to in-person school in the fall, though at least one friend has chosen to homeschool for the stability of not having to wonder what might happen, and I wonder if later this will seem prescient.
I don’t have any kind of “the pandemic is over” feeling, only a feeling of “this is at least a temporary respite, and we should make a good effort to get caught up on things while we can”: routine appointments, new glasses, dental work, an updated MRI for Edward. I’m still wearing a mask into stores, though very few other people are; I avoid making eye contact with them, so that they won’t think I am thinking they should be wearing masks (I am thinking they should be wearing masks) and get confrontational about it.
I have seen others saying that they feel the way they felt in February/March of 2020, as things were starting to Look Scary, and that is roughly how I feel, though of course with differences all over the place: there is a vaccine now; we have some experience in what lockdown is like; we know how to use Zoom; we own masks; we know that a certain percentage of our community thinks pandemics are nothing to worry about, which is why this one is not over and can’t be over. I am trying not to overindulge in news, but I listen to the NPR briefing each morning, and the news about the Delta variant is not cheery. They had someone on the other day who said we can expect things to get pretty bad again this fall/winter. “Mostly for unvaccinated people,” these stories often add, as if we don’t all know and love some unvaccinated people. As if we have forgotten that people under 12 years old are unvacccinated people. As if schools and daycares, under pressure to go back to normal this fall, are not full of unvaccinated people.
I have been feeling pretty ok, until the schools said masks would be optional, and science is now saying even vaccinated people may spread delta. My brain is sort of shutting down, because I desperately want my 10 year old back in school, safely, but I am not confident her mask is enough, if no one else is wearing one. She is one of those kids that needs socialization. No idea what to do.
We are in the same boat. Our county has said masks are optional and I have two elementary aged kiddos, one of whom is immunocompromised. I just can’t imagine sending them to school in a classroom full of unmasked peers. We really wanted to send them back after a year of homeschooling last year but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. Deep sigh for those that live in areas
Iike ours where science isn’t a thing and CDC recommendations mean zilch.
Where I live in Canada we still wear masks in any and all indoor public settings, though I hear of some provinces planning to put an end to it in the near future. We are one of the most vaccinated countries in the world right now, and our numbers are encouragingly low, but we’re not at the 90% vaccination level we’d like to be for herd immunity for the Delta variant. But I have a confession…
I am so TIRED of the pandemic. I mean, I’m still fine with wearing a mask in indoor places, and I think schools should continue to require masks until a reasonable lag after the under-12s can be vaccinated has passed. But I’m just so tired of doing all the things I’m supposed to do according to science (not what’s allowed by the government, which is much more lax now) – socialize hardly at all and outside when I do, wear a mask, don’t travel even within the province, sleep in my own home every night, wear masks when I’m even near other people outside, don’t spend any time indoors with strangers unless I have to (i.e. getting groceries or other necessary items from retail places), and on and on it goes – and watching infections being driven largely by people who do whatever they can get away with and/or choose not to get vaccinated.
The temptation is to get out there and do more stuff we enjoy while the numbers are low and the weather is good (drive out of our immediate area and stay overnight somewhere, browse through cute shops in nearby small villages just for fun and not because we need anything, eat at restaurants, maybe even do these things with friends!), but of course it precisely this sort of behaviour that then results in variants spreading and the numbers rising!
I own my own business and I’ve decided not to work with vendors who are willfully unvaccinated. I can’t control everyone, but I can choose to work with people with whom I am in ethical and public
Heath alignment. Choices have consequences, and if my decision affects their bottom line (which it will) so be it. (To clarify, working with these vendors involves in-person contact.)
Really glad you’re doing this. I’ve been too timid to ask businesses whether their employees are vaccinated, or even just if they’re offering paid time off so that employees CAN get vaccinated…but it seems like it would be the right thing to do.
I live in a place where only 33% of people have been vaccinated, and I have two school aged children who are too young to be vaccinated themselves. Luckily, masks are required in schools state-wide…but it’s still hard because up until now I’ve been viewing masks as an extra layer of protection that we probably don’t even need because we never go anywhere crowded, and now my kids are going to be in a classroom with 30 or so other kids all day long, and I won’t even be there to make sure it’s not slipping off their nose. I’m coping by ordering better masks (which my kids are probably going to refuse to wear, because they like the ones they’ve gotten used to) and telling myself that we can change course if there does start to be a lot of cases in their school (another nice thing – the district has been very transparent about case rates, so I know that only one kid in the district tested positive during in-person summer school, and will know as soon as that number starts going up). I’m hoping for a couple of weeks of semi-normalcy, especially for my second grader. Enough time for her to warm up to her teacher a little bit and get contact information for at least one friend (one of the most heart-breaking things from the early pandemic…she thought she had her kindergarten best friend’s phone number that we could call to arrange a socially distanced meet-up like we were doing with her big sister’s friends, but it turned out to be a scrap of paper with 1s and 0s scribbled on it, exactly the way a kindergartner might). I’m also remembering that although I definitely don’t want my children to get sick, it’s not the same desperate urgency that NOTHING is more important than them not getting sick that I felt about my parents and grandparents before they were vaccinated. I read something reassuring from scientist about how it’s very unlikely that the virus could mutate enough to completely evade the vaccines, and so even though I worry about the vaccinated adults I know getting breakthrough cases, I don’t worry about having to go back the same level of worry as a year ago. So far, that’s helping me keep it together enough to be able to still cheerily answer the seven-year-old’s questions about how many days til school starts (10!). I did devastate the eight-year-old yesterday by letting her know that Disneyland by October is pretty much off the table though. So can people please just get vaccinated so my kids can stop having to live like this?
I am so sorry — I have high school aged kids who ARE vaccinated, and I really feel for those of you whose kiddos aren’t old enough. It’s not fair. I know it’s not the most environmental choice, but have you considered disposable masks for your kids? My son works at Target and he wears an Air Queen mask to work. We all (ages 15-48) find them by FAR the most comfortable to wear for long periods of time, and I feel really confident in their protection. They do sell a kids’ size as well. No, I don’t work for them! Just wanted to give a shout-out. We buy them 100 at a time. (And I look forward to the day when I never have to reorder!)
Youngest turned 12 this early summer and I was so relieved, but having spent time with a child too young to be vaccinated I get so angry at the blithe statements in various media that it’s “just the unvaccinated” who are at risk. Yes, unvaccinated adults who are not vax’d for any sane reason have none of my sympathy, but it’s like we’re just (ONCE AGAIN) not giving one single care about young children who cannot be vaccinated and who are at risk. I’m so angry at the CDC who decided to say vaccinated people didn’t need to mask up indoors as if they’re the only people who were going to stop masking, angry the COVID vaccine isn’t being required in more places of business, angry at the debate about whether we should require masks in elementary schools this fall, just so angry. Again. It’s exhausting to be mad all the time but I feel like this country isn’t giving me much choice.
RIGHT. Once everyone has been eligible to vaccinate for a couple months, I’m totally down with the “don’t want it? your risk of death, your problem!” philosophy, but I’m not cool with just totally discounting the value of any person under 12.
I live in area with a high rate of spread but also where masks are required indoors. We are in what we call lockdown lite. We only see friends and eat at restaurants outside and are skipping events we want to attend like art openings and music shows even though you mostly have to show a vaccine card to go. I had to call 10 (!) electricians recently until a found a vaccinated one. They go into people’s homes all day unvaccinated?! My husband is scheduled to go back into one classroom two days a week in the fall that has 30 people and no windows. He’s vaccinated but I still don’t want him to go. I am so tired of all of this. It’s so boring to talk about and yet we have to keep talking about it because the rules and risks keep changing. I feel lucky that at least we are vaccinated and the serious risk is mostly gone for us. My brother lives in a non EU country in Eastern Europe and the vaccine has not arrived there yet for people under 70.
I’m still pretty much staying home and continue to wear a mask. I am so frustrated by the belligerence of those who refuse to get vaccinated and refuse to believe the science. I’m flabbergasted by the CDC’s recommending that vaccinated people don’t have to wear a mask….and now they are walking that back. This kind of flip flopping certainly isn’t helpful in the whole situation. I’m really concerned about what this fall/winter is going to look like.
I should follow your lead and get my doctor’s appointments squared away in the event things start heating up again.
I have 1 child under 12 — in CA kids are required to wear masks in school when indoors, which I think is a good call. The increase of delta is a bit unnerving & disappointing, but in healthy kids under 12 the risks from covid are really vanishingly small. And household transmission is much more likely than school transmission— since the rest of us at home are vaccinated, I feel good about sending my 11 yo to in person school. (He was in person full time last year in CA at a private school—his class never had to quarantine.)
I mainly wish that we had a virtual option for school at this point. I’ve been watching the local data, and case counts have–with a bit of plus/minus for the exact numbers– doubled in the last 2 weeks. The last time we had this steep of a curve, it was mid-October.
It is so weird to be someone who looks at the data and then looks at Facebook/the news/school plans. I feel like I’m living in some bifurcated reality in which the facts of the pandemic exist, but don’t matter to so many people’s actions and plans. I don’t know if they don’t know, don’t want to know, or don’t want to believe…but it’s an emotionally struggle-filled place to be.
“As if we have forgotten that people under 12 years old are unvacccinated people. As if schools and daycares, under pressure to go back to normal this fall, are not full of unvaccinated people.” I live in Florida. The current positivity rate among children under the age of 12 is 18%. Our schools will not be offering remote school and masks are optional. We were (maybe?) making headway with our local school board on that issue when our governor – who has decided just to ignore Covid – announced an executive order to prevent schools from mandating masks. We are just desperately trying to keep our children safe until the vaccine is approved.
PS I most adamantly plan to have my 11 yo vaccinated as soon as possible. But I take comfort from the fact that the US is the only country even considering vaccinating kids under 12, and one of the few vaccinating teens. And not only from the point of view that we should vaccinate older/higher risk people in low/middle income countries before kids in high income countries (an ethical point but not one that will dissuade me from vaccinating my 11 yo ASAP) but because the risk/benefit analysis of covid vaccines and kids under 12 really is different.
I have a rising first grader and a preschooler. They’re in daycare now after being home (with us, while we worked) for a full year. My husband and I have been nervously reading the Delta variant news and worriedly weighing whether we need to lock down again. That year was SO HARD and it wasn’t good mental-health-wise for any of us. I’m desperate to not do that again. But they’re unable to be vaccinated yet and our toddler has a history of breathing issues during common illnesses. Now that we know vaccinated people can catch and transmit the delta variant, I’m pretty freaked out. When my kids started seeing their peers again last spring, the difference in their mental health was extreme. I didn’t even realize how much they were suffering until I saw them thriving. And my mental health improved too. It’s hard to leave all that behind again. I don’t know what we’ll do.
I could have written this exactly- my kids are the same ages and have had similar challenges. I am currently planning to have them in school., and here in TX that means my first grader starts Aug 12! She’s and extrovert, so homeschooling last year was not ideal, though she did learn all requisite kindergarten academics. My three year old has been asking and asking about “my school” and I *think* she can handle one type of mask we have (her preschool says kids have to be able to put masks on themselves). SIgh. A few weeks ago I felt so much better about all of this.
Meanwhile, TX Gov Greg Abbot is a big jerk who only cares about children still in the womb. I left a very civil phone message with his office, respectfully requesting that he allow school districts to require masks for unvaccinated people. FYI for anyone else in TX or anywhere, when you call a govt official, all you need to do is briefly make it perfectly clear where you stand on the issue at hand. The people answering the phones/checking the messages just log the number of calls pro/con, so you don’t need to have a perfect statement or anything.
Oof there’s so much to unpick with this subject. I’m in the UK, and well… the less said about our government’s handling of all of this, the better.
One thing I would say is that schools and daycares have *mostly* been open this year (and in fact even when they were shut my daughter was attending part time as the child of an essential/key-worker) and in elementary schools masks have never been a thing for the students. A lot of the children have had Covid, a lot of others have been exposed quite a bit and have not. I think I’d feel very different if I had a kid with an underlying condition or auto-immune condition, but it does seem as though very nearly all children who contract Covid get it mildly and recover fast (my toddler son included). So that’s something I feel at least a little reassured by, seen as I can’t see 2 year olds or 5 year olds being vaccinated in the near future.
On the other hand, when Covid is rampant in elementary school communities (or among the unvaccinated population) it gives the awful virus more opportunity to further mutate, and that’s what keeps me up at night at the moment. I’m struck anew at the selfishness of so many people around me on a daily basis. People who don’t seem to appreciate that by having a vaccine, they’re not only helping themselves but protecting all the people around us who can’t be vaccinated for health or age reasons, or who aren’t given immunity from it (like people who’ve had certain cancer treatments for example). Or maybe they just genuinely don’t care about those people? Urggggh, again, things that keep me awake at night.
But still. Everything is opening up here, so we’re taking it one risk assessment and one lateral flow test at a time and trying to give the kids a little normality in the safest way we can.
I feel you. I don’t feel this is over, by a long shot. Our provincial government just decided that quarantining is no longer mandatory, it’s just recommended, EVEN IF A PERSON TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID. I mean. I don’t even know. It’s part of a decision to treat Covid just like any other respiratory virus which, what. This goes against everything that we have learned in the past SEVENTY-TWO WEEKS, yes, I am still counting. Anyway, it’s depressing as hell but at least I have lots of pretty masks and my family is fully vaccinated. I have nieces who are under twelve who are not, which is very concerning. “Fuck the children” seems to be the theme here.
We live in a county where 70% of over 12 population is vaccinated, and still we see cases climbing. I mean we are about 1/10 the case level of Florida but still climbing at a scary clip. My under 12 kids will likely be the only mask wearers when they start school this week. One teacher sent a note asking we pack school supplies in a way that minimizes touching which makes me think she may wear a mask. The other teachers have made no mention of covid protocols.
I flew last week and watched people not even pretending to wear masks yell at TSA agents about “freedom.” I don’t get why people think their freedom from a small inconvenience is more important than my kids lives. Was there this much anger when seatbelts became mandatory?
On the other hand I’m angry at my friend right now. She is restricting visitation between her vaccinated in-law (who only has weeks to live) and her under 12 kids. She wants the dying grandparent (lung cancer so labored breathing) to wear a mask around her kids and no visits over meals because eating requires unmasking. She doesn’t get along with the grandparent and has lots of anger about it all. I just think the risk to her kids is small, and the time is short. If there is ever a time to make an exception, take some risk it is now before the grandparent goes to hospice and they may not be able to visit at all.
It just sucks to have to make these choices.
Give your friend as much of a benefit of the doubt as you can? I think for some people the risk to kids feels small but to others, too big. Especially if they know of kids who have gotten it and have gotten very ill or if they’ve seen their own children struggle with respiratory viruses in the past.
(I also think that with delta, the official risk analysis for children is going to change as more data is collected. I know of four kids under 5 who have gotten covid19 in the last 1.5 months. Kids are not necessarily safer right now just because they’re kids.)
I’m so angry at everyone who CAN get a vaccine and WON’T. HULK LEVEL RAGE. And same for folks who are not masking up.
I can’t imagine what the folks who worked so hard to make the vaccines are feeling.
Big virtual hugs to everyone. 4/5s of our immediate family is vaccinated but my 10-year-old is going to start the school year wearing a mask at school, and I’m just hoping he’s not the only one – but we live in a red county in blue state and it’s so, so ridiculous that THAT has an impact on matters of public health. But here we are. I’m frustrated at people who’ve decided that mask wearing – or any mitigation – is the hill they’ll die on, and I’m sad to report that I really hope they actually die on it at this point. My patience is gone.
For what it’s worth, here in the UK Delta has been the main variant for months now and there is no evidence that kids are more at risk than they are from the other variants. (By at risk I mean at risk of getting seriously ill, not at risk of getting it mildly/asymptomatically.) I caught it a month ago (I’ve only had one vaccine shot and my symptoms were very mild), my 2.5 year old had it as well I think although his test came back inconclusive as his nose was so snotty, he basically had what seemed like a cold. My 4 month old didn’t show any symptoms so either didn’t get it or it didn’t affect her.
The thing that worries me about not having kids vaccinated is less the risk to them, which really is minute, than the risk of mutations and the fact that school transmission contributes to household transmission. But again, younger kids are much less likely to transmit than teenagers and in general primary schools and early years settings haven’t been major transmission hotspots despite being open all the way through our massive third wave last winter/this spring.
I would really like our government to approve vaccines for teenagers although the ethical issues are tricky – young people are at so little risk of serious illness from covid that the risk of serious side effects from the vaccine may actually be higher. Which, given they are really only being vaccinated to protect older people/society as a whole, seems like a lot to ask.