…to think I should not be visiting my vulnerable parents if my son has Covid?

[ZebraDanios]

DS (6) was v ill Thursday and tested positive for Covid. Much better now but still positive. I’m supposed to be visiting my parents, along with my brother’s family, on Boxing Day. Dad is CEV. Parents say I should just go anyway. Just spoken to my brother and he agrees with them.

I understand everything’s a risk but surely knowingly taking a contagious child to visit a vulnerable elderly person is a bad idea?

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

Weekly death rates last week.

I think this is a really good point. He is already feeling guilty about it all!

There’s a difference between infantilising your parents by trying to micromanage their exposure to everyone else, telling them where not to go, trying to stop them seeing other relatives etc, and choosing to manage your own exposure to them through a lens of “Ok they can theoretically catch Covid from anywhere, but if they get seriously ill following a visit with my sick child do I want to be the person responsible?”

This is exactly how I feel. I recognise they could get Covid from anywhere - they could even get it from my brother’s family on Boxing Day - but I’d rather not be directly responsible if they do.

Parents might be happy with the risk, but you and DS will feel like shit if your DF catches it and dies.

My CEV DF has just died. I managed to avoid passing him Covid for three years. I still feel an absolute mess. I honestly don’t know how I would be coping if any part of me felt responsible for his death.

He was much more relaxed about catching Covid than I was giving it to him, but I couldn’t have lived with myself if I had guilt on top of normal grief.

It’s easy for a CEV person to be blasé, but if the worst happens, you’ll have to live with that forever.

I wouldn’t do it.

my sister visited me when she had a cough the she’d had for a a week before she visited. Said it was just allergies turned out to be the flu. Of course me and dd both got it. I have asthma and I was so sick I had to take steroids and then I had a bad cough for weeks that exacerbated my asthma, I was miserable. I would celebrate on another day to spare your parents from getting sick especially if they are vulnerable.

I had Covid three weeks ago....and I only tested positive for one day. Husband has it (boosted to the max but still caught it) and he's only been positive for two days. Yesterday and today he was negative.
Son has been feeling shit for last two weeks with exactly the same symptoms but has been negative every day.
This Covid is a weird one I can tell you!

OP

they are both vaccinated,
correct?

@rochenutty Yes, vaccinated and boosted. Last one was in October I think

I wouldn’t go if he is still testing positive

so being straight with your mum as per my previous post re the precious second turkey… not going to happen?

@rochenutty So I’ve spoken to my Mum re: Turkey-gate and she’s agreed they’ll get one turkey out and then just get a chicken on Boxing Day if we get the all-clear. Gives us one more day for him to go negative but if he’s still positive - or any of the rest of us are by then - we won’t risk it. Thanks for all your advice, it’s been really helpful!

I think we really need to forget about testing for COVID now.

Apparently, people are 10% as likely to end up in hospital with it recently than they were a year ago, either due to rising immunity or the latest version having very low morbidity.

Imagine if we had a multiple test kit for flu, RSV, Covid etc. We would just stay at home all the time and be constantly testing. When Covid was a novel zoonotic virus, there was a reason to test and isolate; it isn’t novel any more and we need to start treating it like every other bug.

sorted

I’m the opposite, my mam has covid and we’re meant to be visiting. She tested positive on Friday and we’re going up on Wednesday so I think we’ll be okay unless my dad catches it. My husband doesn’t want to visit as he needs to be in work 2nd January with a new starter.

Your parents sound great -- if he were still sick I'd give it a miss, but as he's better, you should go.

I know my parents would rather see their grandkids than miss out.

But they’ll still get to see their grandkids - hopefully just a few days later, if the rest of us stay negative. We’re all off work/school til the 8th so there’s plenty of time. The issue is my parents seeing all their grandkids together (which happens very rarely because my brother is always too busy to meet up).

I feel we’re thinking about testing the wrong way, because of testing’s history of use in restrictions at the height of the pandemic.

Some years ago, I brought cold symptoms home from work (school) at the start of the holiday. Having no insight into what I actually had, my elderly parents came to see us. Unfortunately, what I had was in fact a really nasty flu bug that floored the rest of the family one by one and nearly killed my dad. Had I had a cheap, quick, easy test to say ‘is this a nasty bug with specific risks for the elderly?’, I’d have leaped at it and would gave taken the test with relief.

If we see the test as ‘a valuable opportunity to find out whether the cold-like symptoms in a child are of a disease of specific danger to certain groups’, rather than ‘a control mechanism that seems designed to frustrate and annoy’, I think we’d see the results in a different light’

I wouldn’t. If he ended up in hospital or really unwell I would feel absolutely horrible.
Surely common sense would prevail and you’d postpone.
We would as a family . I would.

I had mouth ulcers too. It was really unpleasant. CEV or not, covid or not I just wouldn't spread something that unpleasant around if I could help it.

OP… you with your family or decided against?

Assume they’re all vaccinated so what’s the problem? If your parents are ok with it then, to my mind, there shouldn’t be a problem. I wish people would stop testing and just get on with their lives!

DS was still positive (though a bit fainter) this morning so we gave it a miss. I know my parents were disappointed but we just had to agree to disagree.

I’m now worried that it’s Day 6 and no-one else has it yet (the whole household has come down with it the two other times we’ve had a run-in with Covid) - if one of us gets it now we may not get to see my parents over the Christmas hols at all and I know they’ll blame me for testing if that happens.