
You will all think I am crazy: What we are doing to avoid COVID
Listen.. this is not a post I am deciding to write lightly about. The last thing in the world I want to hear about, or write about is COVID, but even people who are VERY CAREFUL, socially distancing, and doing all of these measures health officials say will help them, are catching it.
Long story short, there’s no magic solution that lets you go out and enjoy life to maintain mental sanity, whilst staying safe.
I am sorry. It’s the truth.
It is simply not possible. There is simply no other way around it because every time you step outside of your home, you are taking a risk.
Is it a small risk? Yes. But it’s still a risk.
Obviously you’re going to wear a mask… but droplets can enter via your eyes, and these mist-like, microscopic droplets are so fine that they hang in the air for hours. HOURS.
So you could arrive maybe 5 hours later, and catch the tail end of a wisp of a misty COVID sneeze of some sort that just happened, and poof. You are with COVID.
Even if you wear goggles like we do, there are spaces around the goggles, so unless you wear SWIMMING goggles that stick to your skin, there is a chance it could waft into your eyes.
The harsh reality of it is this:
You need to stay TF away from people as much as you can.
All people. Everyone.
Even if you wear a mask.
The virus doesn’t travel on its own. It travels on HOSTS. On PEOPLE. And a lot of them show zero symptoms so you can’t even tell.
From interactions, from ALL OF IT, if you want this rate of infection and your risk of catching it to be AS LOW AS POSSIBLE.
How far are you willing to go?
This is how far we are going, and even with this, we have a very slim chance of catching it, and I am writing all of this not to shame anyone or to be smug but because I am scared and anxious about catching it, and am putting it out there of how far I am willing to go to not get it.
Here goes:
- We meet no friends or family. Ever. I am refusing to meet up with anyone.
- No eating out in any place. Ever.
- No takeout of any kind – droplets can be on the packaging itself.
- No one leaves the house except for two reasons: (A) buying groceries and (B) medical appointments, period. My partner only leaves the house twice a month (bi-weekly) to get food.
- Mask AND GOGGLES when we leave the home. Mine are these cute ones that look like glasses… that I can use again when I work on things, so it isn’t just for COVID.
- Yes, this means Little Bun has not left our home since March.*
- All letters and packages stay in the hallway for 2 weeks so any droplets die in and on them.
- No more raw foods. Everything must be cooked or boiled, which makes me very sad right now.
- My partner disinfects EVERYTHING that comes into the home with rubbing alcohol.
- My partner finishes cooking, then disinfects THE ENTIRE KITCHEN. Every. Single. Time. So he cooks once a week and it takes 5 hours for what would normally take 2 hours because he’s constantly disinfecting and stressing.
- Travel is obviously out of the question.
- No in-store browsing or shopping for anything non-essential; I do it all online and I am loathe to shop at stores where I have to do returns in person (The Bay, BYE BYE.)
- Homeschooling, no question about it. Schools are a hotbed of infections.
Even doing all of this? We can still catch it.
We weren’t as strict as this at the start, but now we are FULL ON unable to take any chances with the rising cases, and more people getting infected because of the re-opening of schools and people going back to the office.
No more shortcuts.
There is hope
I am so… so… happy there is a hope of a vaccine.
Goodness knows WHEN I will get it, and when this will all be over (2022?) but there is hope. There is hope, and I am relieved that maybe things can go back to normal in a couple of years.
Think about how much worse it could be
During wartime, people had to stay inside with no lights to not give bombers any signal of a city or a place they could bomb.
People had to stay in attics and stay quiet, in fear of being found and hauled off to concentration camps, not to mention condemning those in the house to death for helping them.
These, are far worse scenarios than just staying inside, comfortable, with the internet, entertainment, home deliveries of things like books and so on, and being in a NICE apartment, to boot, not even one in the basement but high up so I have lots of natural light and a view.
Not to mention the lack of financial stress which is something I despair over when I see people talk about losing their jobs, not being able to cover bills, moving back home, divorcing, small businesses closing.
WE ARE SO LUCKY.
I have to remind myself constantly. I have been in a deep funk because of it like everyone else, I am not immune. I am stressed, I am slightly anxious all the time, and I feel even more stress when I have to leave, as much as when I come home “Did I bring it back? Will we all get sick?“…
In a way, I want to say: Deal with it, it could be worse and it isn’t permanent, to anyone who is complaining about basic measures, you know?
It will be over some day in the NEAR future, so… just need to breathe and make it through.
*Little Bun’s Confinement Note
He stays safe inside, and he is fine. Even mentally.
You have no idea how I am struggling with this.
I am distraught over him not going to school, not having interactions with other children (he was looking so forward to making friends in Grade One like the TV shows told him … LOL…), and I feel guilt each time I think of how he has to stay inside and not leave the apartment.
We have already had COVID cases in the neighbourhood and in the local school (yes, the one he would have gone to), and one in the building that I suspect no one wants to ‘fess up to but she suddenly had to take a leave of absence for a month…… which is very fishy.
Kids go to the parks all the time, spreading the COVID germs (I do not care what health guidelines say, if you are a living, sentient, moving and active being or animal, you are capable of spreading COVID no matter your age or physiology.)
Adults SUCK AT SOCIAL DISTANCING.
Adults SUCK at remembering to be careful.
How can we expect children to be any better?
We talk about the virus all the time, and he is mentally sound for now as he is a homebody.
I check in with him all the time. We have a book on anxiety called: The Worry (Less) Book that I think is wonderful for children and adults alike (great tips), that we got from a friend.
The only thing he misses are: Grandma in Toronto (we go every summer), riding the subway trains and parks. We have taken him out on the balcony when the weather was nice, and that was good.
I check in with him all the time. I talk to him like an adult about the virus, and I explain about how Mommy has a health condition (my lungs), and how we do not know how this virus will react. I tell him not to be scared, that HE will likely be fine, as he is still young and it doesn’t SEEM to be hurting children or killing them, but Mommy and Daddy (because of age) is high risk.
He understands, and is quite adult about it. I am sorry, but he jus has to learn that this will suck for a few years and then it is over and we won’t take things for granted, and get to see Grandma.
So, he’s resilient, and seems… fine. We don’t normally go out often anyway, so maybe that’s a relief.
Also, in Montréal, people are less careful and even give you strange looks when you’re wearing a mask and goggles.
36 Comments
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Xin
K and I are also up there as being pretty much the most cautious/conservative of people we know when it comes to COVID precautions. (No travel of any kind; leaving our apartment building an average of once every 3-4 weeks; primarily for doctor’s appointments or groceries; seeing no friends or family except for a few outdoor and fully masked curbside handoffs of goods to K’s parents where they didn’t exit their car. We also either sanitize products coming in from outside or segregate them by the door to quarantine for a few days. We’re not opposed to getting restaurant takeout, but haven’t had any because in the end we prefer our own cooking rather than taking that marginal risk.) I’ve definitely had a few moments where people, particularly from work, have clearly thought we were a bit crazy for having socialized with no one outside our household since mid-March. I’m a bit self-conscious about how introverted I am and how I’m actually quite okay with not seeing anyone outside my household socially for months on end , and this pandemic has made that hard to hide when people make small talk during work calls! If we lived outside NYC, we’d maybe be okay with taking walks and spending more time outdoors, but alas, we live right in the middle of the big city and every outing involves passing by many people, at least a few of them at <6 feet distance.
My personal view – as someone who can work comfortably from home 99.9% of the time and who lives in a place like the US that has profoundly mishandled COVID – is that I have a duty to my community to stay home as much as possible and to not expose others to added risk with my presence. Besides worrying about the risk to myself and K when we do things outside the home, the more I do outside, the more risk I bring to everyone else I encounter. Maybe this was a bit extreme a position in summer when things were pretty good in NYC, but even in NYC things are trending poorly again.Don't even get me started about how selfishly so many Americans are behaving, and about how bad people are with mask compliance, even in NYC. I lived in Hong Kong for a time and there, when a person wears a mask out – many people did in pre-COVID days as a wintertime precaution or when they had cold symptoms – it stays put, I literally never saw anyone fidgeting with theirs in public in the more than a year I lived there.
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Kelly Lott
Oh, you’re not crazy. I’ve worked on pandemics for 15 years and you are totally sane. This will be a rough, rough, winter. And yes, if even brief exceptions are made in safety protocols, that can be enough. My dh knows *all* the things about this virus from me. We had hoped to have his dad come down for Thanksgiving since we lost my MIL in Sept. My dh has been very careful, staying home all the time, so that he can go see his dad. But last week? Last week he made one exception. Last week he dropped off a package at a courier then had to wait 4-5 hours until he could get his haircut (wanted to look good for a zoom meeting the next day). So he worked at a Starbucks for those 4-5 hours.. In a town that’s a dumpster fire of Covid. No one was near him, he swears. But he also got a new car recently, and forgot to replace his container of hand sanitizer. And he pumped gas that day too. A couple of days later, suddenly he felt like he was in Antartica at night – massive chills, fever. That acute phase lasted three days. He got tested on the third day, last Monday. Negative for flu. They told him it would take seven days to get his PCR test results. (It’s been 7 days, still no result…we are NYC metro). Clinician said there’s nothing else circulating, so assume it’s Covid (he needed to hear this from her, not me, since a prophet is without honor in their own country). He’s been completely isolated in the office/man cave ever since. BUT…he was thinking of going out and “doing errands” on day 4. (Nope, over my dead body). And now my SIL has been exposed to a positive case at work (she’s a massage therapist). My dh told me about it, asked about the quarantine protocols for them, and she LOST IT when she found out he had told me. She doesn’t want anyone to know. She says she’s not going to let it affect her business…. So… This is why you’re not crazy. People who have been exposed or infected will deny it to themselves, and do not want to be limited. They are taking YOUR health in their hands – trust is broken (or we wouldn’t have a pandemic). I understand that everyone is burnt out and tired of this, but it will be a dark winter (people have NO idea). Try to get in your supplies now – I have a feeling that delivery services that have been relied upon will be impacted. And homeschooling is great – I homeschooled my two girls from 3rd grade on. One graduated in 2019 with a degree in Finance & Economics and has a nearly 6-figure job her first year working while the rest of her cohort is lost. The other is graduating this spring from a top college with Latin Honors and will likely roll right into a top grad program.. LB will not be out of step with his peers – if i have one regret it is that I did not keep them home more, rather than less (so many programs to be involved with, with mixed results!). Check out the book “A Well Trained Mind – A Guide to Classical Education at Home.” Great ideas there. You’ll all be fine. You are rational and tres, tres, intelligent! And thankfully, you are an introvert – the extroverts are having a really, really, hard time with this. I get that, but they still have to follow the rules. And then there are my friends in places like TX who just don’t like any limitations. Canada is smart not to let us in! Hang in there – we’ll get through this!
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Maria
What’s up with your lungs?
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SarahN
Like EEMusings, I’m in a country and area with low cases. Australia had had 27,893 cases, and 907 deaths. Withing my state, there’s been 4,388 and 55 deaths – from 4.4 million tests! Today, there’s 9 reported infections found, all of them acquired overseas. There’s limits on flights/humans who can return to Oz.
So, I go to work every day. I buy items from the grocery store, and eat them on the way home (aka, no hand washing/wiping etc). We go out for dinner – we check in, we’re at socially distanced tables (some place are better than others, for sure). I have caught the train and buses. It helps to think there’s so few cases, and today’s are all in a hotel quarantine for 14 days. Gosh, I even went in a hospital waiting room on Sat night after dad was rushed in via ambulance (we were temp tested, filled in a survey on our phones, visit limited to two people per patient for a max of 2 hours, but overnight, well, they were relaxed with my bro who ferried mum home and later dad). The fear was there early on,but it’s gone now. For me.
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eemusings
This is such a hard time. I can’t offer much as we are fortunate by way of where we live and even then our lockdowns were hard enough… but so much sympathy. Hope is absolutely a ray of light and we all need it.
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Jenny/AdventuresAlongTheWay
We’re being very careful too and are the most conservative in our approach of all the people we know. We deliver groceries (and medicine and everything else) and store pantry goods and packages in our tambour for six days. We wash down all groceries that have to go in the fridge or freezer (with hot soap and water that we leave on them for 20+ seconds). Since the temperature is decreasing, I guess we’ll have to start washing all liquids (tomato sauce, shelf-stable rice milk, etc.) and storing them inside immediately. Also, once it’s too cold to wash outside in the tambour, I guess we’ll do it in the kitchen then clean the floor after? When we (very rarely) go outside for a necessary errand, we remove our shoes before coming in and toss the clothes in the washer, then shower. In the summer, I saw people 3 times (outdoors and distanced), one person at a time (except one time with two people who live together), Like in Montreal, people here don’t wear masks that much when walking around. It’s discouraging that we’re in red zone and the numbers are still rising so much and yet so many people act like things are normal (our downstairs neighbors have been having parties since July and even in red zone). I’m also planning to postpone all medical/dentist visits unless something happens that is urgent. Oh, in August, we did have to call an ambulance and go to the ER, but the immediate health scare was scarier than Covid. Later that night, after tests were okay, and we went home. We quarantined after and I cleaned *SO MANY HOURS* to disinfect the entire house the next day. Thankfully, the numbers were so much lower then.)
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steveark
I don’t think you are crazy but in a way you are only attacking the small insignificant risks while ignoring the biggest risk you face by locating your family in a crowded urban environment where you are constantly only separated from potentially infected people by porous walls. We are far safer in our rural environment with an air gap of a quarter mile between us and the closest family. The odds of contacting Covid from a contaminated surface are nil, the CDC has determined as much. The odds of having infected people living above your ceiling, below your floor and on all four sides of you are pretty high. Sharing the same stairwells and elevators and parking garages, all that is significant and only exists because you choose to live in a city in a pandemic. Get the heck out, find an isolated rural Airbnb with no neighbors and wait this out and you’ll be far far safer than you are now. You work remote, so its not a problem. Drive your car once a month to a Walmart or Whole Foods in a nearby city and have them put your preorder in the back of your car. You’ll have virtually zero chance of infection. Distance is vastly better than a face mask, but with both you are as safe as you can be. Sure a virus laden particle can exist for hours but there is zero evidence anyone ever got infected that way. There is overwhelming evidence that somebody breathing out pathogens somewhere near you is the cause of virtually 100% of the infections. You can’t avoid that risk in the city just by staying in your apartment unless there is a big air gap in every direction. And that isn’t the case for most city dwellers. The other thing is that should you still get sick you won’t risk others outside of your family because they’ll be too far away for you to infect. And in the meantime you’ll all be free to run, walk, hike, or just sit outside and enjoy breathing in virus free air and sunshine. Get out and get safer.
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Dublincalling
I believe that you have to do what you feel is important for you to feel safe. I am so happy that most of my doctors were able to do phone consults but I have had to go in person for things that could not be postponed like injections and blood tests and an upcoming mri because of medical issues that I have. I am sorry u were given side eye for wearing masks and goggles. In my neighbourhood I have not encountered any issues with that. I have even see people with masks ,googles and face shields and everyone just goes about their day. Yes to a vaccine hope soon. And as you mentioned it at least we are not in a bunker with very little food fearing that the bombs will hit our home. I believe once this is behind us so to speak we will appreciate everything we take for granted and never really thought about. Take care
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Dawn
We all have to make the choices that are best for us and our families. I personally am not going to lock myself away from my friends and family over a virus that has a 99% survival rate. But I don’t have health issues that would contribute to further complications. The important thing, in my opinion, is that we have a choice.
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Gail
This is true except that you are possibly putting people other than yourself at risk, people who are in that 1% due to health issues and/or age. Invisible carriers have caused illness and death.
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Gail
You are behaving in the best way for your family. We are about the same. We accepted take-outs twice, gifts from others. We have groceries delivered, yet I know there is a contamination risk, still, from the shopper and deliverer. We go on the elevator to get the mail and take out the garbage–a risk even with masks, and disinfectant wipes covering our hands. People do not wear masks when I walk in the park, and I try to cross the street, but there again there is When infection rates were lower, my husband had two medical appointments that we had postponed–some risk again. So, like you, we are minimizing but not eliminating risk. Zoom Thanksgiving was a mixed experience, and I miss the kids and grandkids. If we are careful, maybe next year will be a year of closeness, hugs and shared meals (for which I will have chosen my own produce, not the rotten ones we sometimes receive!)
Your LB will be fine because you do not ignore him; he is young enough to have Mom count as a best friend. He will be fine. Personally, I am fine with just my husband–no mental problems here, either. Being an introvert has its perks, I guess. We will be glad we were restrained and will get to open up soon in good health.
Anne
Most of what you do sounds reasonable to me, especially for a person with a lung condition – you need to be extra careful. But I’m curious about the reasons behind some of the things you do. Like keeping letters and packages two weeks in the hallway. In the Australian study recently published in Virology Journal, the corona virus could stay alive for 14 days on porous material, but that was in laboratory conditions, UV light kills it faster. No one’s been reported gettimg infected through post and there’s no evidence that a virus that’s been outside of human body for a long time would be contagious. If you don’t touch your eyes, nose or mouth after touching the packages and before washing your hands, there’s no risk.
Also wondering about the no raw food rule – do you do it to avoid the risk of food poisoning so you don’t need to visit a doctor/hospital? There is no evidence of food or even food packaging being associated with transmission of COVID-19.
The third thing I am wondering about is the disinfecting of the kitchen for three hours – after already having disinfected everything that comes to your home with rubbing alcohol and only eating cooked food. What is it your partner is doing that takes so long time and why is it that the kitchen gets such a massive attention?
I am not criticising your choices and in no way an expert of this area, everything I wrote is based on what I read. But at the moment, so many papers are published on this that it is not possible for a single person to keep up with everything. So I really am interested to know more about your reasons to do as you do.