@edwina958 My son is 4. We luckily live in an area where we can do things outside all year round, there’s a 85% vaccination rate for 5 and older, and masks are required for everyone 2 and over for indoor activities. My son goes to preschool, all students and teachers wear masks. He goes to swimming (pool is open on two sides to the outside), he does gymnastics class, masks required. He has play dates outside. We have been cautious since the beginning but we also realize he needs to socialize. While I’m really upset with the vaccine news today, the only thing that will affect us is we are not going to be taking a trip home cross country to see my parents/in laws like we were planning to this spring (in laws haven’t seen our son in over 2 years). He turns 5 in September, so worse case scenario is he’ll be vaccinated in less than a year.
@edwina958 Enough kids have gotten it at this point and while we can’t be certain of the long term effects, the likelihood of hospitalization and/or death is extremely low.
At 3.5 years old I wouldn’t be that concerned. I’d be more cautious regarding kids < 1yo as the hospitalization rate is higher. But at some point there’s not much we can do, the trade off between living under a rock and having no socialization vs Covid risk is IMO erring more towards socialization, assuming the kiddos are healthy
@edwina958 We cancelled our Christmas plans that involve large groups of people--we'll celebrate with grandparents the few days leading up to Christmas, but are going into lockdown mode after that. I need more information on Omicron before I go the "it's inevitable at this point so let's toss in the towel" approach (although no judgement for those who feel that way--this blows). Right now I'm hoping that if we can manage staying somewhat isolated through January, there's a chance we'll escape the worst of Omicron. Some additional context: my kid has GERD, and gets more severe symptoms from respiratory viruses than other kids. I think covid would be a rough go for him.
@edwina958 It makes me even more happy we were able to get into the Moderna study. I think my oldest got the vaccine and my youngest the placebo. We're restricting inside activities as much as we can again.
@edwina958 We don’t have anyone in our lives who’s immunocompromised or unvaxxed, so we’re continuing with school and occasional masked indoor events but avoiding indoor dining out of the house.
I figure we’ll probably get it and, given everyone’s behavior and risk profile, have very minor symptoms. The odds of something serious happening are low enough that I’m not going to panic.
@edwina958 We're both mostly SAHP at the moment, both doing college mostly online. Hoping my partners next semester keeps the online up, mine is fully online. I was taking her to a playgroup but I stopped taking her a week or so ago as we got close to Christmas to reduce chances of getting something or passing to the grandparents. Lucky in that I don't have to make a real choice until 2years 8 months, she'll be going to an outdoor preschool, which at the moment outweighs risks in my opinion.
@edwina958 We have a vaccinated 7yo and a 2yo. 7yo goes to school and has had 4 colds (with accompanying negative Covid tests) since August. I feel like that’s enough of a risk to the 2yo already.
Our governor is not a whacko so masks are required at schools and activities. 7yo is in masked activities, 2yo only sees people outdoors or vaccinated family if indoors.
I was hoping to resume swimming once they were both vaccinated, but that’s delayed now.
@edwina958 I think they need to close sports venues and only do takeout again. Allow all retail store to operate not just Costco and Walmart but encourage social distancing and capacity limits.
@edwina958 We are going to hunker down a bit more with our 15 mo through the holidays to see what happens (aka not going in stores or indoors much if at all avoidable.) We know the new variant is insanely transmissible and I do think a lot of healthcare systems are going to be very overwhelmed, which is a problem for our kiddos not only in terms of COVID but also all the other normal childhood illnesses they can get that they would need to see a doctor for (strep or ear infections, for instance).
The one TINY piece of good news from that otherwise incredibly disappointing report is that the vaccines in little ones didn’t show any negative effects so far! So that’s great!
@edwina958 Even if the trials were still on pace it would be unlikely that you’d get shots for your kids before omicron took over, so in that regard nothing has changed.
The good news is that omicron does not look to be any more deadly among kids as delta or prior variants. It’s very much star status quo as far as they are concerned.
It’s the unvaccinated among vulnerable populations that we need to be most worried about.
@edwina958 Not much is changing. Kid still has to go to daycare unfortunately, so pulling him isn’t an option. If it was, that would probably be the one big change we’d make. Otherwise he still hasn’t been going anywhere unneeded and doesn’t go around unvaccinated relatives. I had just started taking him to target right at opening when it wasn’t crowded, so that will stop again. His speech therapist thinks she’ll have to go virtual soon for therapy.
@edwina958 I thought maybe I could take my baby to baby classes and meet other moms . All my friends are child free here and we have no family. But it seems like this plan will just have to wait. On the bright side I don’t have to see my in law for a long time.
Other than that still same. No social gathering just home except for doctor appointment or grocery and park outdoor.
@edwina958 I'm going to try to get my 8 month enrolled in the Pfizer trial. We only ate indoors maybe 5x since the pandemic started and only when numbers were low in the summer/fall, but we will be rolling back to takeout only until patio dining weather comes back. We haven't been doing big gatherings, and we haven't been hanging out indoors with unvaccinated people. That won't change. We will continue to see vaccinated and booster friends and family but on a smaller scale (which is how we've been anyways). We had been taking baby out to the grocery store or shopping periodically, but we've decided to roll that back until cases go down.
I'm pretty sad about the trial results, especially since the data for 6-24mo look promising but there's no way they roll out the baby vaccine before 2-5 so we will have to be patient. It sucks a lot but clinical trials are not a guaranteed timeline, this is why we do the work. We have to trust the science and trust the process, which will ensure a safe and effective vaccine continues to be the minimum standard for approval.
