And another quick point on this topic:
https://discuss.systems/@heather/109637673357545734
I wonder what the sheer magnitude is of people who just silently faded away or disappeared from whatever their big cool career was pre-pandemic
I feel like I know A LOT of these cases, but again, all of this loss appears not to be noticed or acknowledged
I mean, we sure as hell aren't doing anything to mitigate further loss
@heather I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home but as someone with multiple COVID co-morbidities, it adds another layer of marginalization to my life. I observed to my therapist that being COVID cautious kind of feels like being segregated (not the same obviously). My group had a group lunch indoors at a restaurant and I just didn’t feel safe going so it was just feeling like I was excluded (although in the end I had a conflict). But the same as I wouldn’t walk down a dark alley as a woman at night, I look people unmasked at restaurants and conferences and work and have the same sense of feeling slightly unsafe.
@heather I honestly have no idea how to approach the idea of having kids. They will probably have to go to day care or school and if I get COVID from them, do I have to worry about not being around for them? Our government has just failed in so many ways at this pandemic and supporting parents.
@irene Yeah so the one out that you could take on the illness + small kids front is: nanny
The frequency of illness is out of control when they're under 3, or so I'm told. But this seems limited to kids in daycare/preschool
Nanny shares are often max 2 kids, so if you do a nanny share with another set of parents, you can usually avoid a lot of illness that way
Downside of course is that it costs a fair bit more. But in your case, it sounds like it's probably a worthwhile thing to budget for
@heather @irene my wife and avoided COVID until January 2022, about 6 weeks after our baby started daycare (only twice a week!) and brought it home... and yeah, our 1 day of a nanny costs more than our 2 days of daycare (happily live near family and my mom can also cover us 1 day).
My wife just read that expected incidence of illnesses in daycare kids is like ~30 weeks in the first year, which, uh, checks out with our experience (😭).
@elfprince13 @heather Yeah, I totally agree. I think interacting with other kids is important but I also don’t want them to get long COVID (basically everyone in my family has asthma and allergies). Someone once told me that, asan adult, I can just avoid other people I don’t like, but I can’t as a parent.
@heather @irene our pediatrician was like "you can take them out of daycare and it's a little better, but then you're delaying social development, and their immune system is going to take the same beating in kindergarten anyway, might as well do it now"