B HaasJan 22, 2023

Three years in, the #pandemicIsntOver. My spouse and I tested positive for COVID today and I’m pretty sure my kids have it too. (Swabbing a toddler’s nose is up there with giving pills to a cat as a difficult and dangerous task)

I’m so mad. We’ve said No to so many things, we’ve kept on masking, we’ve been cautious and asked the people in our lives to be cautious too. And still we got it

Show threadB HaasJan 22, 2023
I wear a mask on campus even though almost nobody else does. Even though the administration FORBID faculty from requiring masks in classrooms. I’ve eaten every lunch alone and avoided in person meetings when remote options were available. I’ve skipped events that might have helped me form on-campus networks because the risk of exposure felt too great
Show threadB HaasJan 22, 2023
My 6 year old wears a mask to school even though almost nobody else does, and even though I worry that it visibly marks her as “different” from her class. Her school no longer reports COVID cases, and the county has long since stopped contact tracing
Show threadB HaasJan 22, 2023

My 3 year old has some special needs and gets quite a lot of in-home therapy. All the therapists wear masks (at our request), and we do too. The 3 year old recently joined a playgroup for kids with developmental delays. It hasn’t met for long, but already it’s been so helpful for working on social skills

BUT Almost nobody masks at playgroup (and most of the kids, including ours, can’t). And now we all have COVID

Show threadB HaasJan 22, 2023

My 3 year old spent the first week of life in the NICU, including a few days on a ventilator. It was the scariest week of my life. Since March 2020 I have been terrified that COVID could bring me back to that hospital room, with a precious little one struggling to breathe.

I have done a lot and sacrificed a lot to keep my kids safe from COVID, and it makes me so angry that it still wasn’t enough.

Show threadB Haas

It shouldn’t be this way. Public health is not just a collection of individual choices. Leadership should be making choices and policies that serve all of us. Promoting the general welfare, you might say

#WeBeforeMe
#PandemicIsntOver

Jan 22, 2023 at 4:04pmWeb