Quick Update

A quick summary of what's been going on since the last post.

So it’s been quite a week since my last post and, unfortunately, I don’t have anything more substantive to write than an update as to why that is the case. At the time of the last post, I was at a hotel in Newark. I was midway through driving home from New Hampshire with my wife and daughter in a rental car. This was not, unsurprisingly, how I expected to return home.

On Wednesday the 13th, my wife Jen tested positive for COVID at my parent’s house. She and I immediately removed ourselves to a hotel, where we both wore masks and stayed as far apart as one suite would allow. I tested negative, despite having some muscle soreness and a sore throat (I have reflux and sore throats come from any number of things). We planned to head down to Washington on Saturday the 16th in a rental car and leave my daughter Elise with my folks (she seemed fine). However, Friday night Elise began showing symptoms of COVID - sore throat, cough, etc. In order to reduce the risk to my parents (though both had been exposed to Elise that. night), we decided to take Elise with us. That then meant that we could not get home in one day - a nine-hour car ride with a sick 3-year-old is not a reasonable thing for anyone. Hence the night in Newark.

We completed our drive down on Sunday the 17th and promptly split up - I isolated in our downstairs and Jen and Elise had the run of the rest of the house. Of course, it would be too simple to leave things there. Elise tested negative on an at-home test on Sunday, so I drove her to CVS for a full PCR test on Monday. On Tuesday night, it came back negative. So, a conundrum - Elise had now been exposed to Jen for about two days with no masking but seemed to not have COVID (my daughter’s symptoms had basically stopped by Monday morning).

So Wednesday morning, we switched - Jen was now isolated downstairs and I stayed with Elise, but to protect me (still stubbornly without symptoms, though I was hit by an awful stress headache on Tuesday that kept me in bed all morning), I would wear a mask when with Elise. Wanting to get a better handle on what was happening, we scheduled an appointment with Elise’s doctor. There, she received another test (negative) and the doctor said that either she had not had COVID or that it had cleared within the first 48-72 hours. This meant that by Saturday the 23rd I stopped masking with Elise.

While this was going on, Jen continued to test positive throughout the last week, meaning she had to keep isolating and we put on masks whenever she came up to see us. However, our doctor recommended that after ten days she would not be contagious enough to spread the disease. Friday she started interacting with us, though wearing a mask indoors out of a surfeit of caution. Finally, this morning, she tested negative and we resumed normal life.

Why do I write all of this?

After two-plus years of the pandemic, this was our first direct experience with COVID. We’ve had friends and family get it, but we had been able to avoid it. Overall the disease itself seems to have passed with blessedly few complications but the stress and strain of managing it was a lot. We are extremely lucky that we have the resources and ability to pay for significant unexpected expenses and to work from a variety of locations (or not work, given the benefits available to us). If one of us were working at an hourly job or one that required in-person performance, this would have been much more difficult.

That’s before we get to the issue of child care. Elise could not go to school even had she been symptom-free due to exposure. Luckily we were able to watch her and keep her reasonably entertained while juggling work, but for many parents, that’s not an option.

It’s easy to be judgemental about people who aren’t as careful as we are over these past two years, but from the perspective of people who would have to show up to work or couldn’t do without child care, it’s a lot easier to understand the desire to move beyond it quickly. While it’s clearly a dangerous disease, the latest variant seems to be less threatening and for folks with vaccinations and who lack pre-existing conditions, the risk/reward balance would look very different. My own experience this past week and a half has made me a lot more forgiving of the devilish calculus required to juggle managing sickness, work, and childcare. I’d hope that we’ll continue to show compassion and understanding to people put in difficult situations going forward.

Sports Note

I’ve been watching the Celtics more this past month and I have to say, the difference between the fall and now in their defensive play is just breathtaking. The whole team, from stars to bench players, seems fully committed and their rotation movement is just first-rate. Watching them shut down Durant and the Nets has been a highlight of the past week. Certainly more enjoyable than talking about Tottenham…