I wake up to texts at 2 a.m. Meg lives in Scotland and tells us that her child woke up with a cold. Sometimes Kea would be up with her toddler. Since we were all pregnant at the same time, the group chat has been our support group. How is your back? How is your child's earache? How long did they protest today? Make sure to clean their throat.
I make my toddler breakfast. My husband drives him to day care. I try to get to work. I wait.
Every parent of a kid under 5 has a knife hanging over their heads. The phone will ring with a call from school if the text alert comes. An exposure. A symptom. Come get them. Stay home if you get them.
I thought we had to make it by the end of January. The peak of omicron was past. We could even have an under-5 vaccine. Fauci said spring might be possible. My son and his classmates are subject to a full 10-day quark after an exposure because they are too young to bevaccinated. If the child has been exposed, they can come to school as long as they don't have any symptoms. During the summer and fall of last year, we let go of the breath we had been holding, because we had had exposures before. Our state kept its numbers low. We were desperate for the light at the end of the tunnel after omicron and the holidays. The Pfizer trial for the under-5 vaccine was extended because the two-shot dose wasn't triggering a strong-enough immune response, but I was the one helping my friends stay positive. We had to make it to the end of January.
Apparently not. I was chasing my son around the house this weekend, and he insists that one of us adults runs with him, when I saw the news: The Moderna vaccine trial for kids under 5 was It was extended and delayed. I felt like I had been hit in the chest. While my son was at the racetrack, I was wandering off and trying to find answers on my phone.
The worst part was that this wasn't a press release. It wasn't a big deal. My colleague pointed out that we only found out about this because a coprincipal investigator on the Moderna clinical trials told a local Wisconsin news outlet. January was over. It was April. No one thought to announce it.
The world has moved on and it is awful. The White House thinks of a winter of death and suffering for the unvaccinated, but that is their own fault. If you are fully vaxxed, you will be a sniffle and a five-day reality TV binge. The Atlantic writes of people who say they are done with shots, and people who say it is becoming like the seasonal flu for most people who keep up with their shots.
I would like to scream. Is it possible that I can scream for a second? Children under the age of 5 can't get vaccine.
Do not tell me that it is mild for kids. It is usually mild for kids. Do not tell me that your neighbor has a toddler. It would most likely be at a few days of illness. I will accept that my kid might throw up, but I will not tell you about the hot wave of anxiety that comes with that. I don't like it. I will not mention it because I would be taking care of my toddler, and you cannot isolated from a sick toddler. If I get it, I will be able to take off the mask I will have been wearing around the clock, but I might have the sniffles or I might spend a few days feeling like I have been hit by a car. I won't mention that either way, and my son will probably be well enough to run more laps to Blaze by then.
Hospitals are already overwhelmed and health care workers are exhausted. I was reassured by the thought that I live close to a good children's hospital, which will not be overrun by adult patients. It made sense at the time.
A 10-day quark is enough to break a person. This is not about whether I love my son enough or not. The little things in the world that help parents stay sane are off the table when you have been exposed. He is old enough to need friends and playmates, to need the skilled teachers who can guide a tiny human tornado through a day of activities and circling up and songs. I am not a teacher. I am not what my son needs. Even though school is the scariest place for him, he needs to go to school.
Unemployment relief that helped me get through the loss of child care due to COVID has been gone for four months now. I work as a freelancer. I don't have paid leave. I can't even find a job. I know my husband and I are fortunate to have the option not to work so we can care for him. We are lucky to have a good relationship that allows us to negotiate the work/care schedule and not break it.
We could make it to the end of January. I know we will make it to April, because we have to. Someday we will look back on how we lived. Someday I will tell my son about the time when he was a baby, when we took walks to the park, and when we were trapped inside for the second winter in a row. I hope the story will end before he is old enough to remember. We don't have a choice, so we'll make it to whenever he gets vaccine. I will help him through a day of little toddler side effects with juice and liquid Tylenol, grateful that he likes liquid Tylenol and that I can explain what will be happening. I will read his book about vaccines. He will get his second and third shots, and eventually he will be just like you, as protected as possible, safe enough to go about his toddlery business with COVID being just another risk like accidents or the flu.
We are not there yet. The world seems to have forgotten us even though we are still there. I just want to go to a bar and close everything but the schools. I know how badly my son needs his teachers, and that is why I am so fond of them. I know how hard they are working to keep him safe, and how eventually it won't be enough.
The second day after the holidays, Kea sent a group chat message, saying that her daughter's class was positive. Her daughter had been out on the exposure day for vomiting. She said that one day of day care was so nice. We will just take what we can get.
Slate, New America, and Arizona State University formed Future Tense to examine emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
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