Covid In The Family!

This is the second time - aka second branch of the family - when this has happened. Both times, nobody vaccinated. Both times, a senior member seemed to be the earliest hit and the worst hit. The first time, all survived, seemingly doing very well.

This time it's in beginning stages. We don't know much, except for refusals to vaccinate. By the time vaccinations were approved for 5-year-olds, the youngest was eligible.

This time O called his father while he - O - was at work. The kids' other grandpa was really sick, his wife somewhat sick, and their daughter wanted to go and take care of her father. O didn't want her to and was looking for some kind of way to discourage her effectively without starting a family bruhaha. Under those circumstances Steve asked the question that confirmed nobody had gotten their shots. We're not really surprised. Those two have had that conversation before. I had hoped the kids had been vaxxed by their mother by now, however.

When he handed the phone to me, as I was trying to feed him suggestions for what to say to O, Steve (unnecessarily) requested that I not get into it over the non-vaxxing part. I was trying to simply suggest things he might say to Krystal to keep her from going over. Like, where would she leave the kids? If she got sick, then who would take care of the kids? Shouldn't Grandpa go to the hospital before he got too sick? I don't know if he was successful in preventing her from going. I did hear that Grandpa did not go to the hospital, even though he was sickest and yet maybe still in the early window when medical treatment would do some good.

OK, nothing I can do about Grandpa. I spent a few minutes counting days and figured out that he was likely already sick over Thanksgiving. Did he not know yet? Did they all get together or not? I want to ask but I also think they have enough on their plates right now. Maybe later. Maybe.

I got busy with club duties and getting gifts and cards ready to ship out, and next thing I heard was Steve letting me know that now everybody but O was positive for covid. He's been working double shifts, 6 in a row by now if he has been able to follow the schedule. The good news is that may mean he didn't have enough exposure to pick it up. Yet. But it's been two days now with no new information. It's O that we really worry about since he's the one with asthma.

Of course we both worry, much as Steve hates to do that. He'd much rather make that long-awaited doctor's appointment (January) to start trying to treat his latest severe back pain. Or take advantage of my increasingly busy schedule, meaning no available lap for Heather Too for too much of the day, by making his own lap available for a dog too often only in mine. The two seem to be getting on very contentedly. Sometimes even when my lap is available!

I did risk asking the truly hard question. If the worst happened and one of the grandkids, the apples of his eyes, either got very sick for a long time or even worse, would he be able to forgive his son for not getting them all vaccinated?

He wasn't sure if he could. 

There's more than one way to lose family in a disaster.