I am not the most covid-cautious person I know, but I am sure that I am the most covid-cautious person other people know. I still do almost all of my socializing outdoors. I do not eat in indoor restaurants, have not attended crowded events like concerts or shows, and my family has never stopped masking indoors with people outside our household. I only go maskless indoors with small groups if everyone is symptom-free and has rapid tested negative, and even then I subscribe to the Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense (now updated with even more layers), so I also open windows to improve ventilation and run air purifiers to clean the air.
All that to say, my family has made every effort to take "personal responsibility" for our health, as the CDC has repeatedly advised. But since my teacher husband and two kids spend their weekdays in a crowded high school with <5% masking and undisclosed but presumably insufficient indoor air quality, and knowing that one-way masking is not enough when Community Transmission is Substantial or High, it wasn't a complete shock when covid showed up in our family. Still, it's pretty frustrating that my husband got covid despite wearing KF94 masks and being fully vaccinated and up-to-date with boosters. (My husband and kids do occasionally have to unmask to eat lunch indoors, by an open window if possible, when the weather is too wet or cold to eat outdoors.) I suspect we got the new XBB.1.5 variant, which is dominant in our area and appears to be the most transmissible and immune-evasive variant to date.
The week before the holiday vacation, my husband said he knew of 2-3 students in each of his classes who had contracted covid, which means he was very likely exposed in school. The Friday before vacation, December 23, he felt under the weather, but rapid tested negative. He woke up feeling worse on Saturday (Christmas Eve), tested positive, and isolated immediately in our bedroom, which has an attached bathroom. In retrospect, we should have had him mask and/or isolate starting on Friday just in case, since I probably got covid from sleeping next to him Friday night.
We cancelled Christmas Eve and Christmas Day plans with my dad, and the kids and I video-chatted my husband into Christmas present-opening on Sunday. I felt fine until that evening; I had a very light scratchiness in my throat, and was especially tired and went to bed early. I rapid tested faintly positive the next morning and joined my husband in isolation.
Actually, the first thing I did was arrange for us to get PCR tests, for two reasons. First, I have been disgusted at the lack of transparency that has resulted in a massive undercount of covid cases, and I want our cases officially counted, out of principle. Second, if we were to unfortunately develop long covid symptoms, having a PCR test may help with diagnosis and accessing care. We got first available appointments at CVS that Monday morning, though we didn't receive our positive results until Thursday. We also reported our results to makemytestcount.org, an NIH website that tracks rapid test results.
For both of us, our illnesses started out flu-like (e.g., sore throat, fever, chills, muscle aches), then transitioned to feel like a bad head cold (e.g., excess mucus, congestion), though I additionally have had a persistent sinus headache the whole time, which my husband has not had. I was laid out for a good 5 days, and for about a week was unable to watch TV or read or even use my phone much due to the sinus headache. Our illnesses may be "mild" by covid standards, but I still spent days feeling dreadful, and isolation is incredibly disruptive for the whole family, so still worth avoiding, if you ask me.
Today is Day 9 for me, Day 11 for my husband. We are both still testing positive on rapid tests, which means likely still contagious. So, we're still isolating.
A few people have asked why we're bothering to isolate after Day 5, since the CDC says we don't have to. Quite simply, we don't want to infect our kids. In addition to carrying a risk of long covid in general, even a mild covid infection can increase a person's risk for diabetes, mental health issues, neurological disorders, cardiovascular disease, erectile dysfunction, possibly even immune dysregulation. I am not yet resigned to inevitable infection, so we're still trying to protect our kids from these potential harms.
In addition to simply isolating, to minimize the chances of further household transmission, we've also had air purifiers running 24-7, and the unusually warm weather has allowed us to open windows on some days. I also asked the kids to mask as much as possible outside their bedrooms.
The kids have thankfully continued to test negative on rapid tests. They've been real troopers through this whole ordeal. They spent their entire vacation cooped up at home, leaving food at our door, and taking care of our dirty dishes. My father has been an enormous help, too, making three large deliveries of homecooked food for all of us.
My husband and I continue to rest, rest, rest. Hopefully we'll test negative any day now, and hopefully the kids will not get covid at school!
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