Anyone Feel Guilty for Isolating Their Kids due to COVID???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, I'm not a troll and I don't mean to start drama (though maybe that's impossible when talking about COVID precautions).

I feel better about the decisions we made over the past year, but still really torn about what to do going forward. We will be doing camp this summer, it'll be starting in 2 months. But as for other things - playgrounds, playdates, outdoor classes, etc, all of that is with unmasked kids (and obviously not distanced). Some posters on here are saying that masks for kids are pointless/ridiculous, but others say they are doing masks. It's crazy to me that after a year of this, there still isn't a clear answer.

And I don't get how everyone is so confident in whatever choice they are making. If I put a mask on my kid and keep her away from the others, I'm freaking out that I'm isolating her. If I let her take the mask off like everyone else and play with someone on the playground, I freak out she's going to get COVID. All the contradictory comments are making my head explode.

OP, I work with environmental engineers who model aerosol spread (as in airborne viruses). Masked outdoors is very low risk. This is what we do, and we’re not especially fussy about distance. It’s difficult to maintain that while playing. But with masks and outdoors, you should be fine. Enough big particles are trapped in the mask and the smaller ones disperse due to infinite air volume.

Indoors, even masked, is a different story. It can be safe if your ACH (air exchange per hour) is very high but most schools don’t have the ability to do this with their HVAC. I would not do this with current community spread, unless you really have to... and then only with windows open and as much ventilation as you can create (such as a boxed fan blowing out). Knowing the science around this has helped us to make decisions we are comfortable with for our family.

Check on neighborhood lists to see if there are other families with kids your daughter’s age and a similar risk profile. We have been lucky to find several families who we socialized with throughout the year (outdoor/masked), and the difference between 0 friends and even 1 or 2 is infinite. We are now opening up to socialize (again, outdoor and masked) with more families so long as the adults are vaccinated. It’s been a long year and mental health is also a consideration. Don’t worry about what’s done — just focus on what is ahead and do your best. Vaccines for kids will be here within 6-7 months and hopefully that will relieve the stress and anxiety around all these decisions. Good luck!

DP. I would be interested in what you have to say about close play outdoors unmasked. There are sooooo many PPs on this site going on at length about how anyone who masks outside is an idiot. It has always seemed to me that it could be a good idea if you will be in close proximity for a period of time, including the playground, as opposed to just being near people only in passing. Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, I'm not a troll and I don't mean to start drama (though maybe that's impossible when talking about COVID precautions).

I feel better about the decisions we made over the past year, but still really torn about what to do going forward. We will be doing camp this summer, it'll be starting in 2 months. But as for other things - playgrounds, playdates, outdoor classes, etc, all of that is with unmasked kids (and obviously not distanced). Some posters on here are saying that masks for kids are pointless/ridiculous, but others say they are doing masks. It's crazy to me that after a year of this, there still isn't a clear answer.

And I don't get how everyone is so confident in whatever choice they are making. If I put a mask on my kid and keep her away from the others, I'm freaking out that I'm isolating her. If I let her take the mask off like everyone else and play with someone on the playground, I freak out she's going to get COVID. All the contradictory comments are making my head explode.

OP, I work with environmental engineers who model aerosol spread (as in airborne viruses). Masked outdoors is very low risk. This is what we do, and we’re not especially fussy about distance. It’s difficult to maintain that while playing. But with masks and outdoors, you should be fine. Enough big particles are trapped in the mask and the smaller ones disperse due to infinite air volume.

Indoors, even masked, is a different story. It can be safe if your ACH (air exchange per hour) is very high but most schools don’t have the ability to do this with their HVAC. I would not do this with current community spread, unless you really have to... and then only with windows open and as much ventilation as you can create (such as a boxed fan blowing out). Knowing the science around this has helped us to make decisions we are comfortable with for our family.

Check on neighborhood lists to see if there are other families with kids your daughter’s age and a similar risk profile. We have been lucky to find several families who we socialized with throughout the year (outdoor/masked), and the difference between 0 friends and even 1 or 2 is infinite. We are now opening up to socialize (again, outdoor and masked) with more families so long as the adults are vaccinated. It’s been a long year and mental health is also a consideration. Don’t worry about what’s done — just focus on what is ahead and do your best. Vaccines for kids will be here within 6-7 months and hopefully that will relieve the stress and anxiety around all these decisions. Good luck!

DP. I would be interested in what you have to say about close play outdoors unmasked. There are sooooo many PPs on this site going on at length about how anyone who masks outside is an idiot. It has always seemed to me that it could be a good idea if you will be in close proximity for a period of time, including the playground, as opposed to just being near people only in passing. Thoughts?

PP here. There are several known cases of outdoor transmission, even outbreaks, with the new variants. Definitely if you’re in someone’s face talking for more than a few minutes it would be possible to transmit a significant amount of virus — and what makes the variants more contagious is that much less virus is needed to get sick. Some cases of viral transmission with the new variants involve being indoors and masked for two minutes... just think about that.

What I think about in these scenarios is also the relation between viral load and severity of infection. Being masked just makes it that much more likely that your immune system will be able to get a leg up on any infection. The situation with long haul COVID is poorly understood, but it’s possible it has something to do with immune response not taking care of the virus before it latches on to all the different receptors in various organ systems — hence causing lingering, multi-system inflammation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, I'm not a troll and I don't mean to start drama (though maybe that's impossible when talking about COVID precautions).

I feel better about the decisions we made over the past year, but still really torn about what to do going forward. We will be doing camp this summer, it'll be starting in 2 months. But as for other things - playgrounds, playdates, outdoor classes, etc, all of that is with unmasked kids (and obviously not distanced). Some posters on here are saying that masks for kids are pointless/ridiculous, but others say they are doing masks. It's crazy to me that after a year of this, there still isn't a clear answer.

And I don't get how everyone is so confident in whatever choice they are making. If I put a mask on my kid and keep her away from the others, I'm freaking out that I'm isolating her. If I let her take the mask off like everyone else and play with someone on the playground, I freak out she's going to get COVID. All the contradictory comments are making my head explode.

OP, I work with environmental engineers who model aerosol spread (as in airborne viruses). Masked outdoors is very low risk. This is what we do, and we’re not especially fussy about distance. It’s difficult to maintain that while playing. But with masks and outdoors, you should be fine. Enough big particles are trapped in the mask and the smaller ones disperse due to infinite air volume.

Indoors, even masked, is a different story. It can be safe if your ACH (air exchange per hour) is very high but most schools don’t have the ability to do this with their HVAC. I would not do this with current community spread, unless you really have to... and then only with windows open and as much ventilation as you can create (such as a boxed fan blowing out). Knowing the science around this has helped us to make decisions we are comfortable with for our family.

Check on neighborhood lists to see if there are other families with kids your daughter’s age and a similar risk profile. We have been lucky to find several families who we socialized with throughout the year (outdoor/masked), and the difference between 0 friends and even 1 or 2 is infinite. We are now opening up to socialize (again, outdoor and masked) with more families so long as the adults are vaccinated. It’s been a long year and mental health is also a consideration. Don’t worry about what’s done — just focus on what is ahead and do your best. Vaccines for kids will be here within 6-7 months and hopefully that will relieve the stress and anxiety around all these decisions. Good luck!

DP. I would be interested in what you have to say about close play outdoors unmasked. There are sooooo many PPs on this site going on at length about how anyone who masks outside is an idiot. It has always seemed to me that it could be a good idea if you will be in close proximity for a period of time, including the playground, as opposed to just being near people only in passing. Thoughts?

PP here. There are several known cases of outdoor transmission, even outbreaks, with the new variants. Definitely if you’re in someone’s face talking for more than a few minutes it would be possible to transmit a significant amount of virus — and what makes the variants more contagious is that much less virus is needed to get sick. Some cases of viral transmission with the new variants involve being indoors and masked for two minutes... just think about that.

What I think about in these scenarios is also the relation between viral load and severity of infection. Being masked just makes it that much more likely that your immune system will be able to get a leg up on any infection. The situation with long haul COVID is poorly understood, but it’s possible it has something to do with immune response not taking care of the virus before it latches on to all the different receptors in various organ systems — hence causing lingering, multi-system inflammation.

There are other studies out there but here’s one that discusses masks/ viral load:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.03.20243063v1.full

[Anonymous]

The reason there are conflicting opinions is that these are risk assessment decisions. We all make many every single day. The consequences vary and the level of impact they have to you is usually the guide.
So the reality is you make the call. That’s the end of it.

[Anonymous]

OP, you're not a terrible mom, and you're also not alone in exaggerating the risks of COVID vs. other risks to your child specifically. Moving forward, take your daughter to the playground, please. If *she* wears a mask, even if other kids don't, the risk to her is extremely low. Risks to children are low anyway, but especially outside.

Moving forward, pay attention to biases and how you think about mental health. Social isolation to the degree you describe isn't healthy, especially for children, and it's also not necessary given the very low risks COVID poses to children.

I've been following Emily Oster's framework for thinking about COVID risk, which takes into account risk in context. Too many people are considering only absolute risk and ignoring the risks they take daily for other things, and minimizing risks to mental health (kids are resilient!!!!!). I understand that COVID is novel and scary, but we've known for a long time that kids are less impacted *and* that being outdoors is reasonably safe, particularly when masked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, I'm not a troll and I don't mean to start drama (though maybe that's impossible when talking about COVID precautions).

I feel better about the decisions we made over the past year, but still really torn about what to do going forward. We will be doing camp this summer, it'll be starting in 2 months. But as for other things - playgrounds, playdates, outdoor classes, etc, all of that is with unmasked kids (and obviously not distanced). Some posters on here are saying that masks for kids are pointless/ridiculous, but others say they are doing masks. It's crazy to me that after a year of this, there still isn't a clear answer.

And I don't get how everyone is so confident in whatever choice they are making. If I put a mask on my kid and keep her away from the others, I'm freaking out that I'm isolating her. If I let her take the mask off like everyone else and play with someone on the playground, I freak out she's going to get COVID. All the contradictory comments are making my head explode.

OP, I work with environmental engineers who model aerosol spread (as in airborne viruses). Masked outdoors is very low risk. This is what we do, and we’re not especially fussy about distance. It’s difficult to maintain that while playing. But with masks and outdoors, you should be fine. Enough big particles are trapped in the mask and the smaller ones disperse due to infinite air volume.

Indoors, even masked, is a different story. It can be safe if your ACH (air exchange per hour) is very high but most schools don’t have the ability to do this with their HVAC. I would not do this with current community spread, unless you really have to... and then only with windows open and as much ventilation as you can create (such as a boxed fan blowing out). Knowing the science around this has helped us to make decisions we are comfortable with for our family.

Check on neighborhood lists to see if there are other families with kids your daughter’s age and a similar risk profile. We have been lucky to find several families who we socialized with throughout the year (outdoor/masked), and the difference between 0 friends and even 1 or 2 is infinite. We are now opening up to socialize (again, outdoor and masked) with more families so long as the adults are vaccinated. It’s been a long year and mental health is also a consideration. Don’t worry about what’s done — just focus on what is ahead and do your best. Vaccines for kids will be here within 6-7 months and hopefully that will relieve the stress and anxiety around all these decisions. Good luck!

DP. I would be interested in what you have to say about close play outdoors unmasked. There are sooooo many PPs on this site going on at length about how anyone who masks outside is an idiot. It has always seemed to me that it could be a good idea if you will be in close proximity for a period of time, including the playground, as opposed to just being near people only in passing. Thoughts?

PP here. There are several known cases of outdoor transmission, even outbreaks, with the new variants. Definitely if you’re in someone’s face talking for more than a few minutes it would be possible to transmit a significant amount of virus — and what makes the variants more contagious is that much less virus is needed to get sick. Some cases of viral transmission with the new variants involve being indoors and masked for two minutes... just think about that.

What I think about in these scenarios is also the relation between viral load and severity of infection. Being masked just makes it that much more likely that your immune system will be able to get a leg up on any infection. The situation with long haul COVID is poorly understood, but it’s possible it has something to do with immune response not taking care of the virus before it latches on to all the different receptors in various organ systems — hence causing lingering, multi-system inflammation.

Thanks, PP!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The reason there are conflicting opinions is that these are risk assessment decisions. We all make many every single day. The consequences vary and the level of impact they have to you is usually the guide.
So the reality is you make the call. That’s the end of it.

There's still a lot the medical community doesn't know and understand about Covid. It will take a few more years to reach a good level of vaccination taking new variants into account, and discover and market effective and reliable treatments. In the meantime, we have to accept that true normalcy isn't around the corner. Some of us can sit this out and homeschool and play Rip Van Winkle masked up in pods and rejoin the world fully when we're more or less 100% safe; most of us can't because let's face it, living this way is abnormal, and our kids need true socialization and the opportunity to develop life skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not in this self-righteous liberal city!

Everywhere else, yes.

Why do you think the mass media stopped publishing how low symptomatic positives or hospitalizations are? or how all the catholic schools in the country have been open since August 2020? Or how all the day cares of essential workers have been open since April 2020 with no real issues?

Our Catholic school closed three times due to covid cases, about ten kids in total got it, and two teachers got it so badly they were hospitalized for three weeks and a month. All the kids are masked, plexiglass shields are between the desks and they eat lunch sitting three feet from each other outside or in the gym. No afterschool activities and no parents in the school. The drop off is timed with military precision with teachers getting the kids out of the cars.

And we still had three dangerous outbreaks. Public schools didn’t have the funds to take these precautions.

My nieces daycare closed for two week intervals several times and a kitchen worker died.

No one is hiding facts but they were Not publicized.

If your school had multiple "dangerous" outbreaks, why on earth didn't you pull them??

OP, exhibit A of why you've been doing the right thing. Don't go crazy and throw all caution to the wind, but do enroll your kid in some outdoor masked camps for the summer to get them some socialization! And if you have a parents or neighborhood listserv, maybe post something about how you'd like to pod up with another cautious family. I know of families who did that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, I'm not a troll and I don't mean to start drama (though maybe that's impossible when talking about COVID precautions).

I feel better about the decisions we made over the past year, but still really torn about what to do going forward. We will be doing camp this summer, it'll be starting in 2 months. But as for other things - playgrounds, playdates, outdoor classes, etc, all of that is with unmasked kids (and obviously not distanced). Some posters on here are saying that masks for kids are pointless/ridiculous, but others say they are doing masks. It's crazy to me that after a year of this, there still isn't a clear answer.

And I don't get how everyone is so confident in whatever choice they are making. If I put a mask on my kid and keep her away from the others, I'm freaking out that I'm isolating her. If I let her take the mask off like everyone else and play with someone on the playground, I freak out she's going to get COVID. All the contradictory comments are making my head explode.

It's hard OP, it really is. I have a couple friends who have confided pretty similar feelings of damned if I do / damned if I don't. The longer this goes on, the harder it is to rip the bandaid.

I think part of the reason we feel fairly confident in our decisions is because 100% isolating was never really an option for us. DH has worked in person this entire time. We have two young kids that we could have kept in daycare because he is an essential worker, but we managed to keep them at home until last July. But I just couldn't manage trying to work and care for a 1yo and 4yo indefinitely. So back to daycare they went and it's been fine, knock on wood. And because they were with kids all day at daycare, playing on the neighborhood playground just didn't seem like a big deal either. Having those outlets made it easier to refrain from other activities, we still aren't really gathering inside with anyone except our vaccinated parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you're not a terrible mom, and you're also not alone in exaggerating the risks of COVID vs. other risks to your child specifically. Moving forward, take your daughter to the playground, please. If *she* wears a mask, even if other kids don't, the risk to her is extremely low. Risks to children are low anyway, but especially outside.

Moving forward, pay attention to biases and how you think about mental health. Social isolation to the degree you describe isn't healthy, especially for children, and it's also not necessary given the very low risks COVID poses to children.

I've been following Emily Oster's framework for thinking about COVID risk, which takes into account risk in context. Too many people are considering only absolute risk and ignoring the risks they take daily for other things, and minimizing risks to mental health (kids are resilient!!!!!). I understand that COVID is novel and scary, but we've known for a long time that kids are less impacted *and* that being outdoors is reasonably safe, particularly when masked.

OMG please not Emily Oster... she is not respected among economists, let alone public health folks. Her early work had some serious issues with data and she was a spousal hire at Brown who later went on to write popular books on the mommy wars. She has no business weighing in on COVID.

[Anonymous]

OP, I work with environmental engineers who model aerosol spread (as in airborne viruses). Masked outdoors is very low risk. This is what we do, and we’re not especially fussy about distance. It’s difficult to maintain that while playing. But with masks and outdoors, you should be fine. Enough big particles are trapped in the mask and the smaller ones disperse due to infinite air volume.

Indoors, even masked, is a different story. It can be safe if your ACH (air exchange per hour) is very high but most schools don’t have the ability to do this with their HVAC. I would not do this with current community spread, unless you really have to... and then only with windows open and as much ventilation as you can create (such as a boxed fan blowing out). Knowing the science around this has helped us to make decisions we are comfortable with for our family.

Check on neighborhood lists to see if there are other families with kids your daughter’s age and a similar risk profile. We have been lucky to find several families who we socialized with throughout the year (outdoor/masked), and the difference between 0 friends and even 1 or 2 is infinite. We are now opening up to socialize (again, outdoor and masked) with more families so long as the adults are vaccinated. It’s been a long year and mental health is also a consideration. Don’t worry about what’s done — just focus on what is ahead and do your best. Vaccines for kids will be here within 6-7 months and hopefully that will relieve the stress and anxiety around all these decisions. Good luck!

Do you have any real world data that shows masks effectively mitigate spread outdoors? Not looking for models...the models aren’t really translating to the real world. I am not finding they make a difference outdoors even with contact sports.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.18.21251986v1

Would love to see your data on this.

[Anonymous]

“Emergency Use Authorizations for child vaccinations can make sense for children for whom the benefits are greatest, and thus for whom it is clearest that the benefits outweigh any unknown harms. In the near-term, EUA’s should be considered for children at genuinely high risk of serious complications from infection. It is also worth considering whether emergency use could be authorized for children whom especially concerned caregivers are sheltering from school or social interactions. The small risk posed to children by COVID-19 does not merit restrictions on any normal child activities in a context where adults are protected by vaccines, but individual children who find their lives curtailed in this way may obtain significant benefits from vaccination.”

https://medium.com/@wpegden/covid-19-vaccines-in-children-6cdff15b2415


First of all, COVID didn’t spread as much among children due to widespread school closures. Comparing absolute numbers in this context is meaningless. Second, death is not the only parameter. Rates of pediatric long haul COVID are significant and may increase with the new variants. It is frankly understandable to be conservative with your child’s health, especially because as more is known better treatments will become available.

No evidence that school closures helped at all. In fact, closing schools put elderly caregivers at risk. In Wisconsin, when positivity rate was 40%, open schools did not contribute to spread. Study after study has shown kids (and teachers) actually contract Covid outside of school in most cases.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN29V2CD

And for what it’s worth, kids did not mask outside at recess when they were with their cohort.

[Anonymous]

OP here you go! You are not alone in not knowing when to stop precautions.


“ olicy makers’ decisions about how to fight the pandemic are fraught because they have such an impact on people’s lives. But personal decisions during the coronavirus crisis are fraught because they seem symbolic of people’s broader value systems. When vaccinated adults refuse to see friends indoors, they’re working through the trauma of the past year, in which the brokenness of America’s medical system was so evident. When they keep their kids out of playgrounds and urge friends to stay distanced at small outdoor picnics, they are continuing the spirit of the past year, when civic duty has been expressed through lonely asceticism. For many people, this kind of behavior is a form of good citizenship. That’s a hard idea to give up.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/05/liberals-covid-19-science-denial-lockdown/618780/

[Anonymous]

No, I don't feel "guilty." Both dh and I have preexisting conditions that could possibly result in us having long Covid or be hospitalized for a time. Not worth risking that for a couple years of socialization in person. The kids wouldn't be better off if we were even more disabled than we already are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shrug. You did what you thought was best. Don't beat yourself up just because you now know you probably overdid it.

We never limited our kids' socializing. It was pretty clear early on that this virus wasn't a meaningful risk to kids, so we just kept their lives as normal as possible. And we find plenty of people who were comfortable doing the same in our social circle.

We never hid this from anyone. Some people may have disapproved, but I don't care.

OP, congrats to you on looking out not only for your family but for your community. It's hard to do (I know because we were similar, though also very lucky b/c our kids did have in-person school with lots of safeguards), and it's especially hard because of people like the above PP. There is a tendency to push back, ridicule, and dismiss those who have been extremely cautious this year. At best, the very cautious folks are helping everyone else; at worst, they are having little effect on viral spread and making only their own lives more difficult.

Try to get your child out to the playground and enjoy some masked, outdoor playdates. We've also found that little things--getting the kids a treat from a coffee shop, for example--are extra exciting these days. Your child will re-acclimate and I truly believe she'll be fine. You sound like a great mom.

You are not similar to OP. Our kids were also in person (private) and those “safeguards” were a joke, so no need to be a sanctimonious s**t.

DP. I don’t know if they’re a joke but if your kids were in in person school I don’t think you can be sanctimonious about how low risk you were.