Thread by @gwensnyderPHL

I've made some references to it before, but our Omicron response has been sending my infant daughter & me into complete isolation (apart from grocery delivery/curb pick-up) living with relatives who are able to sustain that kind of lockdown.

We are lucky, but it is hard.

I don't share details about my husband's life on here without permission, but broad strokes are, he's an essential worker at high risk.

We decided together that his work was important, but also that it was simply not safe to take such a high risk of exposing our baby.

Babies are loud.

That means that when you're in someone else's house, you need to be on constant alert to what everyone else is up to and whether you'll disrupt it.

That actually goes double with people trying to accommodate you, because they may be too polite to tell you.

Babies require a lot of stuff, stuff that needs to be stable and set up carefully for safety reasons and therefore is bulky and hard to move.

Hard to move to another person's house, hard to move around when you're trying to maneuver a screaming baby out of others' earshot.

We spent 9 months figuring out what a baby would need, how to fit it in our space, how to lay it out.

We spent 3 months getting to the point of having some semblance of routine.

We had 2 days to figure out how to pack it all into suitcases as best we could & go.

Again, we're really lucky that we can do this.

We're lucky to have relatives who 1) can maintain this level of isolation *and* 2) are kind enough to welcome me and this cute little noise machine into their home.

At the same time, it's so hard.

The logistics, but even more than that, having her away from her father when she's so new, and growing and changing so fast.

It's so unfair to both of them, and I miss him.

What we are doing may be extreme but it is not unreasonable.

Omicron is wildly transmissable.

The very things that make it potentially easier on the adult respiratory track than other COVID strains make it more dangerous for children, especially infants.

It sounds like about a quarter of COVID cases cause some level of longterm disability.

A quarter.

It is almost unbearable imagining subjecting this wonderful, vulnerable brand new human to those sorts of odds.

And the worst part is, none of this feels particularly temporary.

It'll feel a little better when the surge is over, but that's likely weeks away.

There's the prospect of infant vaccination, but that's still 3 months away in the very best case scenario.

And even after that, Omicron is only blunted by vaccination, and only slightly.

It's not "mild," even for the vaccinated.

And we have no idea how much long term disability it causes.

This isn't a bad cold we're hiding from.

COVID causes measurable brain damage in a significant number of its victims.

This is a horrifying illness we're talking about "living with" instead of eradicating.

This is what I've feared since I first found out I was pregnant: a scenario where primary caretakers end up either forced to choose between protecting our children or participating in society/work, or left with no choice at all.

This is what the future will look like if we continue to give up on aggressive pandemic control efforts:

Those who are vulnerable will have to choose between isolation and death/disability.

Those of us responsible for care of vulnerable populations (overwhelmingly women & femmes), will have to make similarly impossible choices between our isolation and their possible exposure to deadly/disabling disease.

I say "choices," but it's not really a choice.

Many elders, many disabled people, and all children need care and have little to no ability to choose what levels of exposure their caretakers will experience.

Many caretakers and parents can't afford to isolate and lose work.

"Living" with COVID sentences so many people to death, disability, and isolation for so long.

I'm so angry.

This was preventable.

It still is.

It still is, but the challenge mounts with each passing moment.

We have so failed our most vulnerable as a society, and we just keep leaning into that failure and worsening it.