D exposed to Covid - questions about family gathering

You and thirteen year old could wear n95 masks yourself.

I think it’s up to 24%
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I agree with most of what you are saying except the part about not letting the kids gather at your house. Where should they gather then? Should the same parents be asked to take the risk all of the time? If you are willing to let your kids go to that person’s house, you should also be willing to have those kids at your house. Otherwise, tell your kids they can’t go out at all or host the kids outdoors at your house.

S22 is a senior. He goes to school, plays sports, and goes to the gym daily. He’s constantly around others in his daily life so we allow him to socialize with friends. And that means that sometimes we have to host them. We generally just have them hang out in the basement but they do come up for snacks and the bathroom. There are about 4 families that host a lot and 6 families that never do. I sometimes feel like telling the kids whose families never host they they are not welcome. People seem to set up these “rules” that make them feel good about themselves but really serve no purpose. If one of the kids has it, there is a good chance your kid will get it too, whether it’s in my basement or yours. Or many parents just feign ignorance. They know their kid is out but just play dumb on where they are or who they are with. And are suddenly “shocked” when their kid is contact traced through a party or a get together.

ah yes. I definitely see your point. With our S19, his group of friends have all been together since kindergarten. They are a tightly knit group and all of us parents have also grown up together with them. Two of them love of have the kids over all of the time and are fine with it - I’ve asked during covid. I wouldn’t send them over to a household where they were not OK with it. So yes, it definitely depends on the situation. But I wouldn’t host a group of kids at my house during an omicron wave. I would put my foot down on that one. But I also don’t have a basement that they could hang out in like the other parents. Ours is a dirt floor cellar fit for a horror movie.

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I took the question to mean whether they allow the gatherings at all, not just where.

12 days after being exposed at a party which made her fiance (vaxxed x 2) really sick, D2 tested positive for Covid. She had gotten the booster 7 days before the party. She believes she probably avoided the virus from the party, but couldn’t emerge completely unscathed by virtue of sharing a home with a partner who was very symptomatic.

D2 had only 2 symptoms: a mild dry cough and a stuffy nose. Within 3 days, she was completely recovered.

They do not have to gather any where. They should be staying home during this period now. Just because other parents condone it doesn’t mean you need to do the same. I am not sure why you cant let your kid know that if they want to stay in your house then they need to refrain from seeing people so they wont get you infected.
When my kids were in college, they used to stay out all night, partied in their rooms, but they didn’t when they came home. Not sure if it is my job to support their lifestyle at a detriment to my own.

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I currently have covid. I’ve been keeping my social circle small and I actually caught it from my best friend, not any of my 3 teens.

My point was that my teens are out in society all the time. One works at a grocery store and is in middle school. One is in HS and plays sports and goes to the gym. Third is OOS in college. My saying that they can’t see their friends just doesn’t make sense. My point was just that if you are allowing your teen out to other people’s houses, you have to assume some of the risk and be willing to host, otherwise don’t let them out at all. Or only allow them to go to public places. Putting the risk on others and then saying that your ”rule” is no guests in your house is just a cop out.

If your kids don’t socialize alt all, that’s fine.

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Well, allowing 10 kids over to your house at a time isn’t necessary, imo, for socializing during a pandemic. What is wrong with having one, maybe two over, masked and socially distanced?

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It doesn’t matter what other people are doing. It doesn’t matter if every other kid is out at gatherings every night of the week.

What matters is what the parents feel comfortable with. It matters what the people owning the house feel is right for them. If a college kid isn’t happy with the rules in their house, then they have the right to go back to school.

These rules have been in place since the beginning of this god forsaken pandemic. We all have our own opinions about the risk we wish to incur. Some people have felt great gathering since the beginning, some have not. Some have periods of time where they are feeling more cautious.

But I personally don’t feel that my child gets to set the rules. I made rules that made me a unpopular parent at times. And I was ok with that.

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We all need to assess our own risk and reward.

D1 is planning a small 1 year old birthday party for her daughter. She is asking her guests to refrain from socializing 5 days ahead of the party and be tested the day of the party. She said to her guests that she would understand if they couldn’t adhere to her requirements, but they wouldn’t be able to come. Of course, she expects all of us to be boosted.

My brother and sister do not believe they should pause their social life before they go see my mother because “life needs to continue.” My mother told them not to visit her. My brother was upset when my mother cancelled his visit after he went out to dinner with some friends 2 days before his visit.

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I’m not sure what you mean by

Our “lifestyle” is near isolation (and like everyone else we probably will be infected but not due to anything specifically re our “lifestyle”). I’d say I am probably the most paranoid and anxious of anyone I know and I/we (other four family members) behave accordingly. Our oldest child has different views of risk but the rest of us do not socialize at all at this point (and largely haven’t since March 2020). No one in our friend group does either and none of us has gotten Covid. We wear masks outside, even.

I think this tolerance level thing is probably a widespread issue/concern for families with adult children. Son is home alone for several days, hasn’t seen most of his childhood friends in 2 years because we didn’t allow it or their college schedules conflicted. I do not mind him seeing them or having them at our house. They are not “partying”. And I probably overstated the number of friends. Sounds like closer to 4 (though to me that doesn’t seem much different than 10 since it only takes 1). But I am upset about the no masks. So I will have him air out the house and will ask him to mask when we return. And tell him he can go back to college if he doesn’t like that.

At some level this isn’t really different than him coming home for any school break, having been in a campus apt/dorm with so many unmasked people (per school rules for living spaces). Last year he masked when home for break the first few days until tested. But we haven’t asked that of him this year bc all vaxed etc. And if he ventilates the house some and doesn’t allow anyone in for 24 hours, then that’s that with the house.

I did see that FDA approved boosters for 12+! Waiting for CDC approval and we are in line!

What I mean is that the person to whom I replied eats indoors in restaurants, both parents work in schools (if I remember correctly), and they have children with social lives. I’m not faulting anyone’s choices (other than a choice to decline the vaccine and the booster). I’m just stating the fact that at this point, people who are unmasked around other people are going to get infected.

The only people who can avoid being infected at this point are people who essentially live as hermits - which my spouse and I did, until we were immunized, and now are doing again, until this wave of Omicron passes.

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I see. You were not referring to me, then.

People don’t seem to understand exposure and risk factors. There are so many stories about people who get Covid after having been SO careful (but they really haven’t been). For example, last week there was one about a woman who met a friend outdoors for lunch. Then she went to a gathering with at least 4 different families, adults and children, for a Christmas cookie baking event. A few days after the lunch, and after the party, the friend with whom she’d had an outdoor lunch let her know that she’d tested positive. A few days after that, she came down with it. And she blamed the outdoor luncheon with the friend, but it probably was the indoor, unmasked, cookie baking party with likely 16 or more people in the same kitchen that was where she got infected!

In your daughter’s case, she might have gotten it at the party, at the same time that her fiance did, or she much more likely got it from her fiance, over the course of the next week. It’s not “12 days after being exposed at a party”. It’s, “My daughter’s fiance, with whom she lives, got Covid, and even though she’d gotten a booster about X days before she came down with it, she still got it.”

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There’s logic, and there’s paranoia. We went to one unmasked small party in late December. The hostess asked all attendees to be vaxed and boosted. After the party, we learned that one attendee PCR tested three days later and was positive. However, she went to a bar after our party and three people she went there with also subsequently tested positive. Our hostess never said if this person was boosted but did say she’d had a negative rapid test the day before the party. Three other attendees at our party tested negative in the days after our party. (We tested negative eight days later.)

One other of our party attendees went ballistic and blamed the “positive” attendee for keeping him from seeing his 86 year old mother. So was it possible the attendee was contagious at our party, didn’t infect anyone else there, but did infect everyone she went with to the bar? Possible, but improbable. Was it possible the bar attendees picked up the virus there? Highly probable.

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Basically that’s what I said. She WAS exposed at the party, but she was subsequently exposed over and over by her fiance, who by then probably had a pretty high viral load. And therefore most likely infected by HIM. That’s why I emphasized that she didn’t test positive until so late after the party. More likely she would have tested positive from the party exposure after 2 days, like her fiance did, if the exposure at the party was what actually infected her.

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Why are people requiring people to be vaxed and boosted to come to a party? Most people I know who currently have covid are boosted. It doesn’t seem to stop the transmission at all. I have covid now, am vaxed but not boosted (very hard to find a booster here). 4 friends I know that also have covid all have boosters. And they’ve all transmitted it to immediate family members, some of whom are boosted, some aren’t. I can somewhat see requiring a test before a party but again, that’s just a snapshot in time. Someone can be incubating but not have enough viral load to test positive but still spread the virus.

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My SIL brought my MIL to her house for Christmas (MIL is in an assisted living facility). During the visit, MIL mentioned to my H that it was a very tiring visit, because there were so many people in & out 
 she didn’t know most of them. What??? I don’t understand why SIL thinks it’s okay to unnecessarily expose a 95 year old woman to people she doesn’t even know. It wasn’t like anyone tested before they came over. It’s frustrating, but we are sadly used to SIL not taking things seriously. Then MIL returned to a locked down facility 
 5 residents & 4 staff members tested positive that day. While the elders want (and need) to be with family, family members really need to be extra careful.

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Because most people are boosted.

Yes, the protection against infection is much reduced with Omicron. However “at all” doesn’t match research results.

More anecdotally, my wife and I had spent time working together on her computer the day she developed symptoms, and tested positive the day after. My daughter (who had shared her bathroom, etc.) and I were boostered and neither of us were infected by my wife (who had been one day away from being boostered, herself).

The same with the 3 other families we are close with - in each one, a single family member was infected (some boostered, some not), the others (boostered) managed to escape.

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