I'll start this post with the asterisk I added to my last post. Ashton did end up eventually testing positive for covid. After six days in quarantine with our family, he tested positive. No symptoms. Maybe a slight runny nose but it's hard to tell because Ashton's nose is runny much of the time. But here's the kicker. Because he didn't test positive until six days after quarantine started, and unvaccinated kids need to stay home ten days after their positive test, Ashton is out of school for 17 days this month. And he was never ever sick. I get it. I know we need to slow the spread of covid and I can't send him back infectious to a classroom of unvaccinated 3-5 year olds, but 17 days of quarantine does feel... long.
Today is the 16th day of quarantine, and I've had a lot of time to think about covid, the last two years, and how our family adapts to covid moving forward now that every one of us has some level of immunity ranging from my own "super immunity" (booster + infection) to Ashton's recent infection. These last two years have been hard and made so much harder due to the politics and polarization of covid. I don't know if I've walked the tightrope of balancing physical safety with mental health perfectly, but I did my best. Even in the earliest days of the pandemic, I took my kids outside everyday to parks and hikes. We did more arts and crafts at home than I had done in my 14 years of parenting prior. When restrictions loosened in May 2020, we started gymnastics at Little Gym again. I remember Ashton's first class back, we were the only people there and every class was like a private class for a month. I kept buying merchandise from Little Gym like leotards, water bottles, and masks because I was genuinely worried they wouldn't stay in business. Not long after, maybe July 2020, we started swim lessons at SwimKids. They were one on one, the teachers were masked, and, again, hardly anyone was there. My rationale was that based on data, my kids were far more likely to die by drowning than covid. We did lessons for almost a year and by Summer 2021 started just swimming at Uncle Rob's twice a week. There were a lot of things the kids and I did freely: parks, Red Butte Garden, hiking, This is the Place, Hogle Zoo, sledding, outdoor playdates. There were other things we did more sparingly when cases were low: trampoline parks, movie theaters, the aquarium, indoor playdates (post-vaccination). At each stage of the pandemic, we've moved towards normalcy, which, of course, got a big bump when everyone we knew over 18 was vaccinated. Grandparents coming back at Easter 2021 was one of the most meaningful steps towards post-pandemic life. Aidan and then Harper getting vaccinated were two more big ones.
And now we're here in January 2022. Vaccines have been universally available in the US for almost a year. You can get a booster at the drop of a hat if you want one. Every one of us in my immediate family has antibodies of some sort. We've had Omicron and it was even more mild than I thought it would be.
Yet when you start considering whether it's time for your individual family to start moving forward, you get a giant giant lash of "just because you're done with covid, doesn't mean it's done with you!" Okay, probably not. It's an endemic virus. I'm not saying go back to 2019. We're better at washing our hands and staying home when we're sick. When required or appropriate, we'll wear a mask. When Ashton can get vaccinated, and when we're eligible for boosters we'll get them. But... what else? How much more life and joy should we sacrifice in the name of a virus that we are, quite simply, just going to have to learn to live with?
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