We all had it before we knew to isolate. But with our kid being younger it would have been HARD. My parents did delta style isolation and shared it.
I will say that if you browse any birth board on baby centre you’ll see a lot of stories of getting it pregnant. In the US they seem to use antibodies which helps.
Yeah, I guess with the increased contagiousness of Omicron you have to go way above what they used to recommend. Maybe it’s doable in a temperate climate? It was -10 at our house last night though. I think if we opened a window and blew a fan in that person would freeze and the pipes would freeze.
It’s stupidly hard to find out what to do about anything. I’m a trained scientist and I spend far too much time reading up on this shit. And I can’t find the answers to the questions that I really need answering.
We didn’t bother when he was exposed because it had been many hours, including a shared meal and a shared bed, before we knew. I think that sort of situation is going to be common.
I calmed down a little. We’re going to our first OB appointment tomorrow and we’ll see if we can get any perspective. The Boy and I also discussed the possibility of ME isolating rather than the infected person, basically letting it burn through the rest of them but trying to avoid it getting me.
Thanks for the perspective, @Elle. I know several people have it in my first-trimester post-infertility chat group and none of them were very sick. I need to remind myself of all the reassuring anecdata out there!
We did a full-on isolation in our NYC apartment when my DH recently tested positive at the end of December, and the kid and I were both negative. We were only able to do it because our second bedroom is attached to a second bathroom (extremely luxurious by NYC standards). We had an air purifier with HEPA filter on high all the time in the main room outside the second bedroom, windows cracked to open depending on weather (it was in the 50s some days at the end of December here), and I brought DH food several times a day & he used paper plates and plastic utensils. Whenever he opened the door, I opened the windows wide, we both wore high grade masks, and I had my kid stay at the other end of the main room.
My kid & I tested repeatedly (PCRs and rapids) at the beginning of DH’s isolation; if at any point one of us was positive, we would have discontinued DH’s isolation, but we remained negative. All 3 of us were asymptomatic the whole time.
All that took a horrible toll on my neuroatypical kid’s mental health (and mine), and in retrospect, I’m not sure it was worth it. I wasn’t even particularly concerned about our health; we were mostly doing it to make sure my kid could return to in-person school when his break was over.
When I informed the school that DH had tested positive, they grilled me on all the details of his isolation; they most certainly wouldn’t have allowed him back in-person if we hadn’t done all that. My kid is required to do weekly PCRs (which caught 3 kids in my kid’s class on “gateway” testing before the first day back) in order to go in-person. The school’s updated protocols also say each kid should now wear an KN95 mask; short of that, then cloth masks over a surgical mask the school can provide. They have multiple temperature checks throughout the day, and if your kid is >100.0, they will be put in an isolation room, and you have 45min to get them. We’re also told to dress our kids warmly, because they will be opening windows and eating outside whenever possible. If the weather doesn’t permit eating outside, the kids have silent lunch, in which they eat as quickly as possible and then put their masks back on. My kid is in 1st grade.
I asked my kid, and he says they’re not actually doing everything the new protocol says. But weekly PCRs are a must: we had to bring a printed result to school this morning for him to be allowed in.
My bff’s kids in FL also went back to school last week: all I can say is, the culture is really, really different in different places.
Isolating only you is a great idea. An air purifier with HEPA filter would more than replace open windows with fan blowing.
I was going to say, your description sounds like a whole other world. My kid (also 1st grade) has been asking why he has to wear a mask and I know it’s because he sees other kids not wearing masks. His teacher has been out this past week, I know the substitutes aren’t going to remind him to wear a mask if he forgets. The only time he had to PCR test for school was when he had an exposure in October before he was vaccinated. I don’t think the schools are requiring proof of vaccination, come to think of it. Guess we’ll find out if we are ever informed of a possible exposure. I think the odds of exposure are high, odds of us being informed are low.
Has there been further science discussion about the effectiveness of rapid tests on Omicron?
Bloody hell. My aunt, who got COVID back in March 2020, just tested positive again. She had been vaccinated with the coronavac vaccine in Brazil and we had been joking that she was super duper protected due to vaccine plus early natural exposure. She’s headed to a friend’s airbnb to isolate with her housekeeper who likely has it too. We were all joking around on the video all, but I’m really worried about her. She was a lifelong smoker, only stopped in the past 10 years and her last bout of COVID had her in the ICU for a couple of weeks. She didn’t get intubated, but was on heavy oxygen.
I hadn’t even thought through one of us isolating from the rest of our household. Shoot.
Its maybe not convenient. But my house is available, I live alone and can go stay with my mum plus I’m away 8 nights a fortnight with work
my house has been used a few times in 2021 for friends who isolated after returning interstate.
I feel like my kid’s school may be a bit TOO draconian with covid protocols. I mean, since omicron has already passed through our household, some of this is just covid theater for us. Before the current surge, they were PCR testing 25% of students and staff every week. Now, they’re testing 100% of the school every single week. With the delays in PCR testing, 15-25% of students (including my kid) didn’t have results on the first day back, and they weren’t allowed in the building. I’ve repeatedly emailed the head of school asking if they’ll take the results from a home rapid test, and he’s said no. I think there are harms with that, too. My kid doesn’t do well with zoom and tends to fall apart without school / structure / routine. On top of the school disruption, his OT and speech therapy were also cancelled last week because his providers were sick.
If his school weren’t so strict, we probably wouldn’t have done all that for isolation. Maybe just had the HEPA filter on high to mitigate the viral load blowing all around.
We get detailed reports of exposures multiple times a week. I do like the school’s policy that unvaccinated kids have to quarantine at home after an exposure, but fully vaccinated kids can continue to come to school, while monitoring for symptoms & continuing to submit to weekly testing. In part because of this, 90% of the 5-11 and 96% of the 12 & older kids are vaccinated.
The small private school my kid goes to is significantly more draconian than the public schools around here. The public schools are passing out rapid home kits to every kid, and they’ve increased testing to ~20% of those who opt in; 2/3 of students have so far not signed up for testing, so I don’t know how meaningful that is. There is universal masking at public school, though.
My aunt who is “I’m not antivax, I’m just waiting for Novavax” has covid 
She has changed her tune on PCR tests. Previously it was “I will never get a PCR test so the government can’t try to force myself or the people I’ve had contact with to isolate”, now it’s “I’m getting a PCR test so I can try to use the record of a prior infection as support for a medical exemption for vaccination”.
I hope her case remains mild.
Goodbyyyye toilet paper, helloooooo not being able to buy enough milk for the week.
Yesterday my work (government agency) postponed re-entry again. They opened up voluntary re-entry on 1/4, so anyone who wants to go into the office can. Mandatory re-entry was supposed to start on 1/31 but now it has been postponed until TBD. We’ve had one full week of voluntary re-entry and my region already had to sent out a notice that someone who has tested positive was in the office on 1/6. I’m glad they postponed the mandatory re-entry.
Ok, question for my US bureaucracy minded friends. I just got one of those phone alerts from the Colorado department of public health that I had a COVID exposure. My sense of that chain is that someone I was near tested positive in a CO lab, right? We were in Washington for four days, and before that we were hunkering down in CO pretty intensely, so my guess is that it would be something like a grocery store exposure in CO before our trip?
We’re already planning to hunker down after the trip and will give it some time before we start seeing people again, so it won’t really change our behavior.
My parent got the result of a December 24 covid test! Ours might come eventually (December 30)
I don’t know why, but this gave me “Someday My Prince will Come” Disney song vibes
Husband’s clinic is down another technician and they are now having to talk about what are the options for staying open if they don’t have enough staff. Cancelling surgeries is on the table, as is dropping down to single doctor days to limit exposure to one doctor at a time. The tech who tested positive was asymptomatic and we have no idea how long she’s been positive at work where a lot of the staff don’t wear masks in the building.