Just need a space to vent I think. I appreciate that different people have different opinions about all this.
We have travelled 200 miles to stay with my family now and had planned to see my DH's family on boxing day and stay with them for two nights. They know my mother is CEV and they also have two members of their own family who are CV. We've listened to months of them talking about how hard they're trying to shield the two members of their own family who are CV (95 year old relative and younger adult with complex health needs who isn't able to advocate for themselves and lives with my in-laws) and how annoyed they are with people not being sensible during covid and putting themselves ahead of others etc. Both of the CV individuals will be there on Boxing Day. I'm also recovering from a really nasty chest infection (non-covid) which I've been advised could make me vulnerable to covid given other health conditions.
With covid rates rising sharply we've been really consciously careful in the ten days before travelling - both worked from home, didn't attend Christmas parties, I've seen one friend last week (outdoors) and been conscious of mask wearing and social distancing etc. We also LFT'd before travelling down today to do as much as we could to ensure that we're not a risk to any of our family. In-laws knew we've been doing all of this and why. Covid rates are really high currently where our families live compared to where we do.
We've just learned that in the last week my MiL and FiL have had three different sets of friends over to dinner in their house and to stay overnight (all from different parts of the UK and back to back visits) and are actually having more friends travel to see them at home tomorrow, the day before we are seeing them. SiL and BiL have been to panto, leisure centres, the theatre and indoor grottos, all within the last few days. All have said they don't believe in, and therefore won't, LFT. Apparently they all decided they just wanted to have a good Christmas and enjoy themselves incase we go into a lockdown. Given the volume of mixing they've all been doing with no masks or distancing (and including some of the friends who haven't been vaccinated through choice) I think there's a realistic chance that they may have been exposed to covid in the last week and therefore have sharply risen our chances of catching it.
Part of me knows that they are entitled to spend their Christmas as they like, but the main part of me right now feels really sad/angry/let down that they don't appear to care at all about putting our family at risk and didn't think it was worth communicating with us about their new plans to socialise en masse. The fact they also refuse to LFT is honestly making me not want to go, but I know this isn't realistically an option given my DH will still want to see them and our DD has been excited to see her grandparents and cousins. I guess I feel foolish that I've been careful to try and respect what they've been saying about wanting others to protect their vulnerable family members and have made changes and sacrifices to try and aid this, but then actually when it counts they have actually seen more people than they would in a normal week before Christmas and won't even lft to try and minimise the risk or help us to make an informed decision as to whether we should be arranging to see them. It's affected how I view them to be honest as we'd all appeared to be on the same page when discussing being careful before Christmas... And that was before Omicron was even in the picture! Urgh.