By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – At the start of this calendar year, Omicron was starting to really blaze, our schools seemed not to have an effective plan to deal with the surge, so my wife and I made a difficult decision—we would pull our kids out of school.
For nearly two years we had avoided COVID and we wanted to continue in that direction. We thought if enough students were pulled they would at least go to some hybrid program—but they didn’t. They merely sent home school work for our kids to work on. After two weeks, things appeared to calm a bit and, fearing we would put the kids way behind, we relented and sent the kids back to school.
That turned out to be a big mistake.
Last week, my daughter came into our room in the middle of the night, ran to the bathroom and threw up. We administered the home test: negative. As the symptoms persisted, we took her into the doctor, Kaiser had her do a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test—negative. On Thursday, our ten-year-old seemed to be coming down with something, so we kept him home, but he recovered quickly.
Finally on Friday, I was starting to feel it. Given that my daughter had two or three negative tests, I figured it was a cold, not COVID. I went to work on Friday, prepared to get out on a day when I wasn’t feeling great, but I quickly felt worse and worse, and 
slowly canceled all my appointments before going home at just 11 am.
By the time I got home, I could barely move. Couldn’t taste. Stomach was in bad shape. Chills and fever. Took the home test and bam—positive. After two years of being careful, distancing, staying away from gatherings, being ultra careful, COVID finally caught me.
This was the day I feared. How would my nearly 50-year-old, diabetic body respond to COVID? Fortunately, by being careful, I bought myself time to get double vaccinated and boosted. That would prove to be a lifesaver.
On Friday, I had several hours where I was very sick—weak, fever, chills, stomach problems, no appetite or taste, but quickly it turned around. By the evening, the Tylenol knocked out the fever and aches and by the next morning, it was clear I was on my path to a quick recovery.
Had this happened prior to being vaccinated with perhaps a stronger variant, it probably would have ended very differently for me.
My whole family tested positive eventually. Jeremiah had one day of very mild symptoms, but my daughter has been sick for a week. My wife, whom I was worried about, has had some asthma problems, but it is not clear if that is from COVID or the nasty winds that blew through last week.
What I worry about are a few things.
The Omicron surge has really receded. The numbers which in January showed over 800,000 new cases a day are down to 250,000. That’s still pretty high. Deaths still haven’t peaked however—another 2600 people died yesterday alone. That’s what people continue to miss from this—Omicron may be a little milder, but it is still killing people, particularly because it is so much more contagious than previous variants.
And yet, we see the governors in four states, including California, saying that they are going to lift mask mandates. In several states they are talking about making masks optional in schools.
This is all political. Mask mandates are controversial especially among potential swing voters. But we bought into this notion that somehow schools were not going to be transmission points for COVID—in fact, had it not been for school, we never would have gotten sick.
We were fortunate. All four of us are vaccinated and my wife and I boosted. That meant when we did get hit, the damage was more limited—but I still got pretty sick, albeit briefly, and my daughter is still down.
The real danger is for the population that is still not fully vaccinated. According to data from CDC, just 23 percent of students ages 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated and just 56 percent of those 12 to 17. Even adults 18 to 64 are at less than three of four.
I get it, people want to move on with their lives and get back to what was normal, but this is still a dangerous disease and, at the current rate, we are adding 100,000 deaths every six weeks or so.
We have yet to learn our lesson. Every time the numbers start to go down, we relax our guard a bit and another wave hits us—rather than keeping ourselves at a relatively low level of precaution that might be able to prevent waves to begin with.
What would actually happen if everyone were vaccinated and wore masks indoors in public places for the next year? My guess, COVID really would disappear into the background. But, as long as we refuse to do those two reasonable steps, we end up where we are—serious waves hitting every six months, prolonging this agony.
Meanwhile, I am disappointed that our schools did not allow us to remain safe. They put us in the bad position of choosing between health and education for our kids—and ultimately we ended up without either for a time. Why they couldn’t do what UC Davis did and go online for a month, or at least a hybrid model, I don’t know.
It is political, but really it’s the end of a long-chain cluster-F. Even now, after the guv’ment is finally saying we need N-95’s, and even in Davis which has one of the lowest transmission rates, highest testing rates, and political/culturally cooperative, people are wearing *cloth* masks inside!!! Yet, go beyond the Blue Curtain, and for 3000 miles you may not see a mask. Visit the Land of Noem, and you may be mocked for wearing a mask (that’s freedom?).
I read recently a study on mask effectiveness — it was shocking. The basis was two people in an enclosed room – how long is the mask effective? Cloth was found to be as good as useless. Two people wearing properly fitted surgical masks if one had Omicron the other was safe for about 10-15 minutes of exposure. Two people wearing properly fitted (and I stress that) N-95 masks – could be in a room for over 12 hours and the other person wouldn’t get Omicron! That’s how much difference it makes.
Yet we still talk about mask mandates, like all masks are the same. Comparing cloth masks to N-95 and just citing ‘mask mandates’ is like having your space shuttle require a ‘booster rocket’. Maybe a Saturn IV, maybe a bottle rocket. We are living in complete informational insanity!
Yeah that’s true. Those who want schools open — and I’m not arguing either way — cite that the odds of a child dying is infinitesimal – which is true. But they always ignore that children are powerful little vectors. Another part of that mask study is they concluded that children are so poor at properly wearing masks (and of course they should be wearing N-95s if anything), that they might as well not wear masks at all. Most children simply can’t wear masks properly fitted all day long, some can barely keep them on their faces! So the whole thing is basically a joke.
Glad you are alright. Most people who are vaccinated seem to be alright. Heck, most people who aren’t vaccinated seem to be alright. BUT, most people who are very sick and dying are not vaccinated. So most people see all their friends getting Covid-19 now, and they are all fine. So is it any wonder people are “done” ? Even among my most concerned friends, they are getting to “done”.
Yet very true, people are spreading it, people are dying. The question is: do we (and by “we” I mean those of us within the Blue Curtain) stay ‘locked down’, ‘masked’, etc., for the good of a small number of vulnerable people, and unvaccinated people ? We certainly don’t do this for flu, which kills a ton of people. How do we end this?
I even wonder, should I just get it? I mean, if it’ll always out there, is it better I get it now, at home, near my doctor, or when I’m on the tundra in the middle of Siberia on an international journey in 2027 when I’m older and forget to have my 37th booster and relying on the Ural Community Hospital?
If there isn’t a deadly variant headed our way, my suspicion is people are going to be done with this within a couple of months, and talking about going back to ‘the old ways’. And then the clash will come, with those walking their dogs in the park alone with a mask on. It’s going to be a weird, weird year.
Good post Alan
It was literally just a string of somewhat conflicting thoughts with no central theme — but I think that’s where most of us are at with this thing.
David, I, too, am glad you’re okay. But you have absolutely no evidence that you contracted Covid through your children. And to blame your illness on the DJUSD decision to hold in-person classes is totally unfounded. You wrote:
There is no evidence that your daughter contracted Covid at school or served as a vector for your eventual infection.
Here’s what you wrote about your daughter:
And here are the symptoms of Covid-19:
With your daily travels about town, and even your trip to Kaiser to have your daughter re-tested, those are more likely routes of transmission than a school classroom.
Alan’s right; people are done with this.
News flash: You’re going to die, someday.
In your case, probably from asphyxiation – from wearing multiple layers of N-100 masks. 🙂
Not helpful; nor illuminating.
Not the romantic headling-grabbing method I pictured, nor the method pictured by my enemies, which involves more suffering and pain under their direction – and a laser beam – wait, no that was Goldfinger. He’s not my enemy.
Actually I wear P-100 (that’s two full letters of the alphabet better than the letter “N”), and only a few times a month as I don’t go indoors with rando humans except briefly.
But in my other life I’m a sit-in-hot-springs-naked-with-a-bunch-of-randos, pass around the cup of tea to everyone, share bites of the burrito, don’t get a flu shot, hug friends and non-smelly randos, take public transit with randos, yoga indoors with people breathing IN-OUT-INHALE-EXHALE, LION BREATH, OCEAN BREATH on mats all around, go to packed indoor concerts with my 60,000 closest friends, catch-everything-and-build-up-the-immune-system guy.
And yes I got a lot of colds and flu some years.
But I haven’t had so much as a sniffle in two years.
Lockdown happened; transition back? . . . priceless!
I’m actually pretty careful, as well.
What I found kind of interesting is a theory put forth (by some conservatives) that those in liberal cities are more fearful of death than conservative cities. Perhaps tied into religious beliefs which are more prevalent in conservative cities (thereby explaining their less-fearful response to Covid, perhaps)? Not sure, but I certainly don’t want to die gasping for air – even if it led to the pearly gates.
In any case, I do think about death a lot more than when I was younger, as I’ve pretty much got an iron-clad guarantee that it’s more than half-over for me at this point, regardless.
Up until that realization, I found it unfathomable that the world could possibly continue on, without me. 🙂 (I’m still not sure where I was before I was born, for that matter.)
And I’ll share something personal here . . . as to why I’m not anti-vaccine guy this time around. First of all, I’m on the edge of that age where the fatality stats start to rise. But most of all, a few years ago I got pneumonia. Because I’m a stubborn F, I laid on the couch and was waiting it out — for my always-triumphant body to win another war against the tiny tiny invader. Had a friend not called and realized I was not coherent and sent another friends to pick me up in ten minutes and take me to the hospital (I think it was highbeam who picked me up, but I may have hallucinated that), I may have died on my couch.
I got tested and was pretty far along – but some anti-biotics turned me around. I’m actually not sure they should have sent me home for a day or so, but such is cost saving — and well it did work. But that was the first time I felt that a non-conscience living microscopic entity could have taken me out. And with one of the complications of Covid-19 being pneumonia, I wasn’t looking forward to that battle again, especially not in an overwhelmed hospital system. So . . . that’s why I’ve been living-in-a-cave-for-two-years guy.
Pretty scary.
Yeah, it often takes something like that for us to realize how vulnerable we can be.
Along with getting older. The first step usually being that you stop driving like you did when you were a teenager. Or, getting into a car with your fellow teenage buddy, who has far more disregard than you did. (I wonder if anything ever happened to one guy I recall, in particular.)
And eventually, we progress to the point where we’re terrified to fall down (and “can’t get up”, either).
And on that happy note, . . .
Saw this on the national news, last night. Big rig trucks blocking the streets in Ottawa, protesting vaccination requirements for truck drivers. I suspect that some of these folks are from the U.S.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/world/canada/truck-convoy-protests.html
To be clear, I am fully vaccinated, have not entered any business without wearing a mask for nearly two years and have conscientiously practiced social distancing.
In fact, I was ridiculed in an exercise class for wiping down equipment with sanitizing wipes and wearing protective coverings in January, 2020, long before Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency in California on March 4, 2020.
By mid-2020 Covid-19 had been politicized to the point that both major parties were using it as a weapon in upcoming elections and those battles led to the hi-jacking and twisting of medical information to fit various political narratives.
And now that Covid-19 seems to be approaching endemic levels, many people are calling for a return to “normal,” without any of us really knowing what that might be.
What we do NOT need at this crucial time are irresponsible, false claims and accusations aimed at schools and other institutions as we try to recover and move forward. Therefore, I believe the Editor of The Vanguard should retract and apologize publicly for this outrageous, knowingly false claim, that opening of schools caused his recent illness.