So then I opened the Covid thread…
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Legitimately curious if people who engage in these endless back-and-forth things are like that IRL.
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good job good effort to whoever took off the 15 min thing.
jlawok.gif
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This lady mistook lint for a microcomputer when examining moderna under a microscope.
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I have been pretty much locked down since March 2019. I have been doing this because I have a 20month old. I let her go around vaccinated people but she has never been around kids her age. Speaking with her doctor and everything I have read tells me she needs to start socializing with children her age. Part of me thinks just go back to normal and let her live life. At the same time it’s really hard for me to do that when I was taking so many precautions for the last year and half.
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That’s such a tough spot. Any chance you can find another lower risk family with a little one? Are you in a decent fall climate for trips to the park?
There should be a medium position between freewheeling and isolation. I agree that no socialization is not good and probably warrants considering adjusting risk tolerance.
Also remember that at this age socialization is more along the lines of understanding self and non-self-introducing sharing, not whacking your playmate. There usually isn’t much cooperative play, more side by side or mirroring play.
So they likely won’t be in each other’s space as much as 4 year olds.
Strategic ventilation would help as well.
Good luck.
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Some thoughts:
- If I understand you correctly, you’ve spend the last 19 months locked down with a 1-month old baby. Just…go find someone to give you a hug.
- Your daughter is not at significant risk from COVID. Over the course of the pandemic, 63 children aged 1-4 have died from COVID, which is a rate of about 40 per year, in a population of maybe 15 million in the same group. To contextualize that, COVID accounts for 1% of all deaths in that group.* This is the lowest COVID death share for any age group except infants, who died more of COVID but have a much higher death rate. (By contrast, 9.4% of deaths in the 35-44 age group were from COVID.) For 1-4s, COVID was less than 20% of deaths just from respiratory viruses during a period when respiratory viruses were heavily suppressed by anti-COVID measures. (To the extent that one of the big strains of flu may have been driven to extinction!). In a normal year, the CDC estimates that RSV, a virus which most people have never heard of, kills between 100 and 500 children under 5. This source has some more ideas about contextualizing risks to kids in the context of school and childcare. Flu, RSV and COVID are still big deals for kids, but if you’re not locking your kid down because of a bad flu season, it doesn’t make much sense** to do it for COVID.
- More important though, do you have a good relationship with your pediatrician? Parents need and deserve a medical expert who can help them understand medical risks and make the best decisions for their kids, and that person is their family’s pediatrician, not the internet. If your pediatrician isn’t that person for your family, then you need to find someone else. And if your pediatrician is giving you good guidance and you’re having trouble following it because of your anxiety around the pandemic, you need to talk to a mental health professional about how to deal with those feelings (which are absolutely expected if you’ve been cooped up with a baby for almost two fucking years jesus!) more effectively.
- When my kids (3 and 5) started preschool/kindergarten after being locked down with us since March '19, I was really struck by how ecstatic they were to be around other kids all day. Zero separation anxiety, zero complaints about being bored, just lots of excited babbling about their new friends. Your daughter will be totally fine bouncing back from this whole thing, but it really is important for kids to socialize. If you don’t end up choosing daycare or something similar, you really do need to find a regular play group (outdoors or with a small group of similarly cautious parents?) to get your daughter some socialization.
Very, very best of luck. Please PM me if you ever want to talk about anything.
*This is a little bit biased because the CDC reports numbers since 1/1/20, so there are a couple months of pre-COVID death data.
** From the perspective of what’s best for your child. Even young children do transmit COVID to some degree, and it is much worse for older people than flu and RSV, so suppressing COVID in younger kids has social benefits.
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Before both parents working and daycare became a thing, how often did little kids socialize with other little kids before entering kindergarten or first grade? (I was going to say we all turned out ok, but then again…)
When all the moms stayed home we were always out in the yard with other kids or going to someone’s house or hosting for coffee.
The symptoms are mostly the same even if the Moderna booster is half the size. It is less severe for me this time.
24 hours after the booster, I don’t have a fever unlike last time. The chills were mild and lasted just a couple of hours. The pain is just around my upper arm rather than my entire shoulder. My range of motion is better than shot 2. The physical and mental fatigue is the same for both.
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I got my moderna booster on Sunday, had similar symptoms as shot#2, slight fever, sore arm and felt tired. Arm still sore 3 days later.
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Stay home parents with kids tend to hang out with other stay home parents with similarly-aged kids during the day.
KSR,
I’d look into an in-home day care that takes the pandemic seriously and expects the other parents to take it seriously, too (vaccinated, not going into the house to pick up kids, temperature checks, a policy for when kids develop symptoms, etc.). Expanding your bubble modestly with other cautious people is not a huge increase in risk for you and your girl.
With approval of the vaccine for 5-11 year olds imminent, have any of you heard of places starting to schedule appointments for that age range?
Seems that chills come back when Tylenol wears off.
Haven’t registered a fever level temperature yet though
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probably would have one if you took the most accurate temp:
rectal
Although that’s technically not true, I think a bladder temp or ng tube temp is more accurate.
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Doesn’t everyone use a rectal?
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yeah, but then your thermometer starts to taste funny.
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Apologies if I’ve told this story before.
When I was about 5, my 10 year old brother had a Mercury, rectal thermometer break. Mom had to take him to the Dr to be sure nothing leaked inside.
Our older brothers thought this was hilarious when they got home and this really upset the 10 year old, “Tim”. So Mom told them to knock it off and basically threatened their lives to stop teasing.
Fast forward to dinner. 13 year old waits for a silent moment and deadpans “so Tim how was your day?” With no specific mention of the incident.
Both my parents were angry but trying not to laugh. Dad had to leave the room to compose himself.
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I’ve worked in an ER around 5 years now and I’ve never had a real foreign body case. Only had ones where they thought it was there but it wasn’t.