Covid at the Go Kart Track
Hello, my name is Katie. I’m the vaccinated mother of two elementary-schoolers, and I am extremely confused about Covid.
I have questions, chief among them: “Why isn’t there a Covid hotline, not like with the department of health, but just like with other moms who are practical and cool and also happen to be epidemiologists, that I can call and ask what the most current data says about what I should do about this birthday party/dentist appointment/swim meet/family reunion/school year?”
I have so many questions, I feel like the only way I can accurately introduce them is with a parable about a go-kart track. But you don’t want to hear that…
What’s that? You LOVE parables about go-kart tracks?
OKAY, OKAY. TWIST MY ARM.
One year for Ryan’s birthday party we went to a go-kart track.
The first time around, I don’t mind telling you, I spun out like six times. The curves shocked me, I couldn’t tell how hard to press the pedals under my feet. I jolted. I juttered. I overcorrected. It was a hot mess.
The second time around, I went much slower. Really, extremely, quite a lot slower. One of the guys working there moseyed up to me and asked if I was okay. “Great!” I said, white-knuckling it, determined not to jump the track again.
By the third or fourth time around, I started to understand where the curves would hit, where I’d need to accelerate or take my foot off the gas, where I needed to take a wider turn, where I could speed up and pass.
More and more, I’m beginning to understand that Covid isn’t an epic road trip, a journey with a departure point and an arrival point, through undiscovered country.
Covid is that Go-Kart track.
We aren’t reading a new chapter in the pandemic, so much as we are returning to chapters we’ve already finished, this time with more experience, new information, and a different appetite for risk.
On the first lap, spring 2020, you could find me gloved up and bleaching my groceries, buying seeds, masked in my backyard, overcorrecting when the road of my life took a sharp left turn.
On the second lap around Covid, when the winter spike brought me back to that same spot in the track where I’d spun out last time, I took my time. I had more information (the virus isn’t transmitted easily on surfaces so you can relax about wiping down every object that comes into your house) and more experience (look, you bad bitch from hell, you’ve been rocking this pandemmy for eight months. You’ve got your homeschool routine on lock and your mask game on point.)
Third, fourth, fifth laps around, sure, I fucked up a bunch. Sometimes I’d relax, take my eyes off the road, and find myself in a restaurant with too many breathing people and not a mask to be seen. Mayday! Mayday!
Sometimes I’d clench up, punch the brakes, and overcorrect like it was my first lap again, canceling plans that were low-risk because I just couldn’t. But mostly, I figured out how to drive this wonky circle, again and again. Mostly, it got boring. Routine.
Then my kids went back to school, which is the go-kart equivalent of taking that familiar turn only to discover that the road is now swarmed with barefoot children playing hopscotch on the track.
And then the Delta variant surged like black ice across the road, so even if the curves are the same familiar trajectories I’ve been driving for two years now, the track itself has fucking changed.
First lap, March 2020, I had HIGH risk aversion, HIGH personal alarm, and LOW understanding of the virus. I think it’s fair to say many of us fit into that category.
Then, on subsequent laps around the Covid track, as our understanding of the virus increased, our risk aversion and personal alarm decreased. Not because the virus became less of a threat, but because we understood how to protect ourselves from it.
We’re on lap eleventymillion now and in a badly-written movie our shit would be on autopilot at this point. But I’m right back at lap number one: HIGH risk aversion, HIGH personal alarm, and LOW understanding.
So what’s changed? Why hasn’t our understanding continued to rise, and our risk aversion/personal alarm continued to fall?
In a word, Delta.
In two words, Delta, and school.
In three words, vaccines, Delta, and school.
As I’ve returned to a March 2020 state of alarm and vigilance, I KNOW I should not necessarily be returning to my trusty March 2020 arsenal of precautions. For a couple of reasons:
We are vaccinated now.
Many of the March 2020 precautions we took had harmful impacts on psychological health. In the act of protecting high-risk elderly/pregnant/immunocompromised/juvenile people in our lives, we also isolated them (and us!) in a traumatic and painful way.
Some of the precautions we took back in March 2020 have been thoroughly debunked. For example, we all know we don’t need to wear gloves to the grocery store anymore. Other precautions have been thoroughly confirmed. For example, vaccinations, masks, social distancing. We know which tools to keep and which to ditch.
BUT! BUTBUTBUTBUTBUTBUTBUT!
We are vaccinated now… BUT MY KIDS ARE NOT. THEIR FRIENDS ARE NOT. And we can still PASS a significant viral load to people who are unvaccinated.
Isolation is painful and harmful! BUT SO IS BEING INTUBATED. So is having to homeschool our kids again, or put them back in front of a screen instead of a teacher’s face.
We know which tools to keep and which to ditch… BUT what about the maddening wild card precautions that have simply not been updated!?! Remember how we were all talking about taking 10 days to isolate after you returned from travel, or another high-exposure experience? What’s the deal with that? Can Delta symptoms still take about 10 days to appear? Should we be especially distancing from people who have traveled?
I know I’ve been driving this track for two years straight but now it’s full of kids and coated in black ice, so I’m gonna go ahead and slow down for a minute here.
And I’m going to show you how I’ve been thinking about all this shit, just in case you need to talk or walk through your life with a decision-making, risk-assessing, super-fucking-anxious, bad-ass mama-jamma.
There are four factors that go into any Covid decision:
Pros: Reasons you feel comfortable doing it.
Cons: Reasons you don’t feel comfortable doing it.
Feels: Elements that are psychologically significant, but not logistically significant.
Risk Bucks Balance: Your own personal budget of risks that you’re willing to “spend” on activities that aren’t 100% risk-free, but are, to you, worth the risk.
For example, say your kid gets invited to a birthday party with a couple of friends from school.
Pros: I’m comfortable with it because…
Everyone will be masked
We know the parents are vaxxed
It’s a small group
They’re already spending time together daily in the classroom
Cons: I’m uncomfortable with it because…
Don’t know how much the venue cares about enforcing masks
Don’t know if venue staff are masked/vaxxed
How crowded will the venue be with other people?
Feels: Emotionally, but not logistically significant…
My kid really wants to go
It’s been such a hard couple of years and he deserves to go blow off some steam with his friends
We let his brother go to a birthday party last weekend and it would be unfair not to let him go to this one.
Fuck it, he went to a birthday party this summer at the zoo and nobody got Covid
(Feels are important to acknowledge! Even though they aren’t part of the logistical part of the decision, they are an important part of the person MAKING the decision, aka YOU.
In other words, yes, I know you BADLY want to spend rent money on a statement coat, and OMG it’s SO important for you to wear that coat into your high school reunion. While those feelings do NOT change whether or not you should spend rent money on a coat (you shouldn’t, babe), they do help you understand how you’re doing right now, what you’re scared of or worried about, and what you might be craving in your life.
In this example, my feels show me that:
a) I feel worried about my kids’ well-being and social connections, and
b) I’m fucking sick of taking precautions and spending a sweaty 20 minutes working out my thoughts and feelings over a birthday party that would’ve been a “sure sounds great” in 2019.
While those emotional facts don’t change the logistical choice of whether we’ll be going to this birthday party, they do show me that I need to find safe ways for my kids to connect with their friends, and set aside time for some no-brainer, low-risk activities for myself.)
Risk Bucks Balance:
They’re masked in school 5 days/week but bro anything could happen - $$$
They’re in swim lessons on Sundays, unmasked in the pool - $$
We’re having a family over for an outside BBQ on Saturday night - $
Ryan got back from a work trip to Nashville six days ago - ?????
Never ask someone what their Risk Buck Balance is, so rude.
I’m just kidding, feel free to ask them, but then you’ll have to explain what Risk Bucks are and then you’ll have to send them this blog and they’ll be like who writes a 7,000-word blog post and you’ll be like KATIE, but don’t worry, there’s this bit about go-karts that’s really snappy, and they’ll be like oh yeah what about the other 6,500 words and you’ll be like Katie’s going through some shit right now okay just skim it.
Seriously, though, the thing about the Risk Bucks Budget is there is no number. God I wish there was a fucking number. But no, it’s a gut feeling. It’s a “Whoops, too far” feeling, or a, “YIKES I’M CLENCHING I think I need more information before I can decide,” feeling, or an “......... I think this is okay” feeling.
By the way, don’t be fooled by the paucity of words in that expression: “Trust your gut.”
It’s simple, but not easy, to trust your gut. Those three short words, each only a syllable, can disguise an emotional spaghetti pie of second-guesses, self-shaming, and anxiety.
And honestly, I have zero guidance on how to quickly and easily trust your gut. Zilch. Nada. Sorry. If I did, I’d be on the cover of my hardback book, leaning against the title “THE GIRLFRIEND’S GUIDE TO TRUSTING YOUR GUT” in a coral scoop-neck tee, my arms crossed sassily, my hair blown out in daytime TV splendour.
What I do know is that trust isn’t a thing that just appears. You have to earn it, build it, nurture it. You have to let your gut earn your trust.
So all I can do is encourage you to keep TRYING to trust your gut. Talk to your gut. Listen to your gut. Let your gut show you it’s on your side.
Never be afraid to bail on something if you’re getting a WHOOPS TOO FAR message from your gut. You can blame me! “This blogger I know is in CRISIS she’s in a CAKE CRISIS she needs this CAKE that only I can bring her I’m so sorry we HAVE to go.”
Never be embarrassed to ask for more information or have second thoughts. Anyone who isn’t asking for more information or having second thoughts right now scares the shit out of me.
We might be on the eleventymillionth loop of this track, but we’ve never driven it like this before. Yes, we have more information and experience, but we’re also sick and fucking tired of it, and we also have a new variant of the virus, a different appetite for risk, and are you fucking kidding me, the track is full of barefoot children now?!?
This is what it’s like inside my mind, and the minds of a lot of parents you know.
We’re driving in circles with a slightly more experienced, slightly more confused, slightly more confident, slightly more anxious, slightly better informed version of ourselves at the wheel, steering a slightly different tilt of the slightly changed track, doing our damnedest to not run over any soft, unprotected toes and keep our wheels on the road even when they’re coasting on black ice.
All we can do is try: try to learn as much as we can, try to trust our guts, try to spend our Risk Bucks in the ways that cost the least and yield the most.
Fucking hell. Alright. Back to the track I go!
If you liked this post, you might also like Doing Nothing is Exhausting and Fuck this Fucking Pandemic Seriously.
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