I want to scream. If I can scream, for a second? The pandemic is not fucking over, because children under 5 cannot get fucking vaccinated.

Do not tell me it’s usually really mild for kids. I know it’s usually really mild for kids. Do not tell me about your neighbor’s toddler who didn’t even have a sniffle. I know it would probably be at most few days of fever and endless episodes of Blaze. I’ll even accept that my kid might throw up, and I won’t even tell you the hot wave of anxiety that floods my body when that happens. (I just don’t like it, OK.) I won’t even mention that “mild COVID” for adults, which I very well might get—because I would be taking care of my toddler, because you cannot isolate from a sick toddler—just means “not hospitalized.” I won’t mention that if I get it, too, I’ll be able to take off the mask I will have been wearing around the clock inside my own home, but I might have the sniffles or I might spend a few days feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck. I won’t mention that either way I will still have to parent, and by then my son will probably be well enough to run more laps to Blaze.

I won’t mention that hospitals are overwhelmed already, and even where they’re not, health care workers are exhausted. Just this morning I reassured myself with the thought that I live 20 minutes from a very good children’s hospital, which at least won’t be overrun by adult patients. It made sense at the time.

What I will mention is how a 10-day quarantine is enough to break a person.