To be angry that my family banned me from Christmas for having covid

[tantrumingcoldchild]

I flew 4000 miles to see my parents for Christmas. I unfortunately have to live in a different country from them.

I am asymptomatic but had to test due to being exposed to someone with COVID.

My parent was supposed to pick me up from the airport but decided not to after the positive test.

I see my parent once a year at most. They don't travel to see me. My parent and the rest of their family went ahead with the celebration but I was uninvited.

Fortunately, my other parent picked me up and let me stay with them (my parents are divorced)

They have agreed to meet me in a park tomorrow for an hour, which will be the extent of my time with them for the next year.

AIBU to consider this relationship basically over?

I would be upset OP. I am certain my mother would be cautious but equally if she hadn't seen me for a year she/we'd come up with a plan... she'd pick me up with windows open in car, we'd wear masks and we both been vaccinated. We'd ventilate room at home, not hug/keep distance & not share drink/food/towels etc. tbh there is a really nasty flu/mega cold virus with chest infection which is flooring people for over a week, but because this is not covid many people thinks it's okay to expose others to it.
Sadly it sounds like your relationship with parent isn't as caring as you'd wish and this has very much highlighted it. I would definitely have the conversation. Best wishes for resolving things, however you decide.

How strange they 'banned you'; you come across as the perfect (resentful, foul mouthed) guest.............

I lost the love of my life to covid. I hot it ascwell but domehow surbived, but still suffer long covid. 2 years on. My youngest is a life threatned child & my other 2 like me have vunerable health too.
You should not have flown over without testing yourself & daughter first. And once you had the positivr result you should not have dteamed of thinking of hoing to your parents. Absolutely not. You should appoligise to them for even thinking about it. This disease still killing people even vacinated ones, especially the vunerable of all ages.

So u rather a family catches it and gets seriously ill.
What if they spread it to a vulnerable person.
Or would you expect them to isolate?
Selfish

@MintyFreshOne it's basic physics. The virus particles will not fit through the mesh of masks designed to filter them out such as N95 (FFP2) which in general capture 95% of particles, you can get even more performing ones that capture more depending on the mask rating. The important thing is the mask is properly fitted to be airtight around the edges. However many variants evolve, the physics of masks mean they will still be effective.

All NHS staff should be in N95 as a minimum. It's negligence on the NHS's behalf that most are only in surgical masks which don't offer the airtight fit required.

However, even if everyone is only in crappy surgicals, it still reduces the overall viral load in the air, as has been demonstrated in numerous school studies where you can't expect perfect mask wearing.

Here are some sources demonstrating how good masks work and how effectively:

Do masks work blog.deonandan.com/wordpress/2022/11/covid-19-do-masks-work.html

Universal masking in school leads to fewer cases: www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/10/school-mask-mandate-covid-study/

If both wear well-fitting KN95s risk of infection after 20 minutes is 1/1000: www.mpg.de/17916867/coronavirus-masks-risk-protection

Wearing masks prevents transmission in school www.healtheuropa.com/wearing-face-masks-reduces-covid-19-transmission-in-schools/112453/

I recommend buying 3M Aura, it would be essential if you ever need to visit a healthcare setting and I'd also wear it on public transport and other busy places. They can be reused a number of times, they are more hygienic than surgicals as they don't touch your mouth.
An alternative is KF94, earloop masks offer a less airtight fit but these fit better than surgicals.

There are currently 9000+ COVID patients in hospital and 3500 flu patients. These are all hospital beds that could have been avoided with more universal mask wearing among other precautions such as better indoor air and ventilation (I'm not blaming the patients, I'm blaming the government for not failing in its messaging around masks and COVID mitigation).

@Toomanybooks22 I agree with you on this.

@tantrumingcoldchild I'd be absolutely furious if this happened to me! They could have had you for Christmas but asked you to stay in your room until your test came back clear. You could have chatted with them in the garden during your stay etc. There's plenty of ways they could have accommodated you and your child, especially after the enormous (and expensive) hassle you went to!

@ThaiDye

Masks don’t work in the real world, any RCT study has demonstrated little effect. You link to a school study which is hilarious considering that kids don’t even wear marginally (and I mean marginally) effective masks.

Here’s a school study that says they don’t:

adc.bmj.com/content/early/2022/08/23/archdischild-2022-324172

This study says that only fit-tested masks actually help, and those that weren’t or failed the test were ineffective. So that would be the majority of N95 masks in the wild.

academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiac195/6582941

Masking should be limited to those working in HCS as they really aren’t effective in the real world.

I mean, if u want to wear one, go right ahead. But they aren’t really worth the effort for most people.

The M3 Aura has a valve on the front. This will expel completely unfiltered air as the wearer breathes out. In fact, it will expel air in a concentrated 'jet' that shoots the, potentially, contaminated air further from the wearer.

They do make a model without a vent, but air will likely escape from the edges of the mask due to the positive air pressure created when the wearer breathes out.

Wearing any mask that completely filters 'breathing out' would be very uncomfortable due to the tightness of the seal required.

@ThisGirlNever You have specifically picked the valved model. I wear the 3M without the vent. So do many healthcare workers in hospitals that adequately protect their staff with proper PPE. They are not suffocating from the tightness, the air goes through the mesh, it doesn't push out the seal of the mask.

In any case, given that practically no one is wearing a mask, nitpicking about vents is besides the point. N95s can be worn to protect the wearer, if no one else is wearing a mask then the vent is irrelevant, it would be like the mask-wearer not wearing a mask at all (in terms of protecting others - they'd still be protecting themselves though).

@MintyFreshOne RCTs are not necessary in the context of masks, we already have empirical evidence from aerosol science, physics, and other industries besides healthcare that require masking, that they offer effective protection. The issue at hand is also too complex and settings too diverse and changing with many confounding factors, to definitely confirm via RCT that masks work.

"But what constitutes evidence in this context [mask wearing]? There has been an almost exclusive focus on evidence from experimental studies, specifically the randomized controlled trial(RCT), which is characterized as the "gold standard" of research, as it allows for the determination of causality. However, the reason such evidence is still lacking, should be obvious – the RCT is neither feasible nor appropriate for determining the effectiveness of mask-wearing in the community in protecting against COVID-19, and moreover, its use will be considered unethical in the context of a deadly pandemic. At the minimum, an RCT would require manipulation of the intervention, by way of the researcher randomly assigning some members of the community to wear a face mask and others not to, and ensuring that both community groups are similar, based on key background characteristics, in other words, controlling for potential confounding factors." www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87870

One supposed RCT (Loeb et al 2022) gained a lot of media interest last year focusing on healthcare workers assigned a surgical mask but with the option to wear N95s, but it had many flaws: no control of masking outside the workplace, no requirement to mask when at work but not with COVID patients, only 80% of the N95 group wore their mask 'always', the surgical group sometimes wore N95, the different country sites all had very different sample sizes and characteristics, and staff had different responsibilities, to list a few. In any case, it showed a 15% increase in infections with surgical masks. Here's one takedown but there are others out there: first10em.com/the-now-infamous-but-not-very-helpful-n95-trial-loeb-2022/

There was also the DANMASK study last year but similarly flawed - small sample size, during a period of low COVID incidence, it used antibody tests that are on the US FDA's removed list, it was only a 30 day study so missed infections/recorded infections preceding the study, it had no ethical approval.
I shared a school masking study precisely because it shows that even with imperfect mask wearing (e.g. taking them off for lunch, kids in surgicals) it's still better than nothing. There's a natural experiment that happened in Alberta, Canada where schools that removed their mask mandates had 3 times more outbreaks than those that kept masks (source is official government statistics cited in this news article: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-government-mask-mandates-1.647720)
And more studies that show masks work in school and other indoor settings:
Comparison in US counties with/without school mask mandates: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7039e3.htm?s_cid=mm7039e3_w
Study in Arizona schools: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7039e1.htm?s_cid=mm7039e1_w

California indoor spaces: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm?s_cid=mm7106e1_w

At the end of the day, we can pick and choose our papers, but physics dictates that you will be protected more with a mask than without. Even if it's not fit tested.

RCTs are not necessary in the context of masks

They absolutely are. We did RCTs for the vaccines, so you can do one for masks. All the current RCTs show no effect beyond statistical significance.

Industrial hygienists typically are quite down on masks. They have better understanding of their limitations than medical doctors on this anyway.

Are you in America by the way? You link to a lot of American school studies (and we also have a natural RCT in ND schools that says opposite to the one you have).

It’s weird that Americans really aggressively mask children, but it’s not really done elsewhere. And it doesn’t seem to have affected their Covid numbers at all, so ….

Thank you for that response, @MintyFreshOne. I had a visceral WTAF response to Trish Greenhalgh PP. I post the pyramid of evidence here, yet again. Note that mechanistic studies don't even get on the bottom rung.

Do people still believe masking children is any way proportional and appropriate 🤯

I see you named yourself well. Definitely childish.

I would not let you in my home with a positive COVID test no matter how far you had traveled. What about your child? You didn’t say whether he/she tested positive. Do you care about your child contracting a deadly virus? Wow.

I think your family might be better off if you choose not to spend a lot of money to travel to see them in the future. You obviously don’t have their best interest at heart. You only appear to care about the money you spent. I know people who are focused on money. I don’t spend much time around them. I prefer to be around people that care about people over money.

You are definitely unreasonable here.

I would not let you in my home with a positive COVID test no matter how far you had traveled. What about your child? You didn’t say whether he/she tested positive. Do you care about your child contracting a deadly virus? Wow

What was she supposed to do with her young child? Abandon them in a foreign country? She tested positive after arrival after all

No that is not the pint of getting vaccinated, it never has been. Vaccination do not and never have given you 100% protection, they reduce the chance of it killing you but doesn't reduce long covid as far as I am aware. People who have the vaccine still die from covid, I would very the one telling my Mum I'm not visiting if I was in OP's shoes, but then Inhave lost one parent and will do whatever I can to make sure the last oen stays with us as long as possible

I personally don’t test anymore so I think a solution in future would be just that, don’t test. You didn’t even have symptoms so no reason to test and it would have solved this whole debacle.

Because if you don't test your vulnerable elderly parents would certainly be protected by magic from any virus you might give them [eyeroll]

My 80+ year old father carried on as normal throughout the whole pandemic. He caught long distance trains to visit friends, came to see his grandchild, had us as guests.

Nobody got ill.

It doesn't even enter my mind to test before we see him. He's living his life and wants to see us.

He'd never, ever, leave us stranded - especially not after travelling thousands of miles with kids in tow.

At the start of the pandemic, I was in his village and all the elderly neighbours were quite realistic about things - we're old, we're going to die of something, there's nothing we can really do to avoid it, why worry?

Ah anecdata - doncha just love it?

It is interesting to hear that someone carried on as normal. Utterly selfish behaviour when the whole country was locked down and only leaving the house for one walk a day etc, in order to try to reduce the spread and so make sure the nhs could cope with the rate of transmission.

What, like Boris and his chums, you mean?

You've got bigger issues in your life than COVID if those are the people you base your decisions on 😁

I completely agree.

Covid stopped being an issue in my life, as far as I was concerned, in May 2020.

It's been the biggest mass hysteria event in human history (except, perhaps, for organised religion).

Yes it's not as if anybody died or had long-term effects is it?