Collective Joy

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Hope on the horizon

It’s been a little quiet around our blog for the last couple of weeks. Did January come hard for anyone else? Work has been crazy for Aaron and I and due to a possible COVID exposure we had a couple weeks back to work without the assistance of our wonderful nanny so we were slammed! It feels like this month has been nonstop, but also full of progress.

Today my parents received their second vaccine dose and our joy and relief that they are just a few days away from protection is hard to overstate.They live in Florida where residents 65+ are eligible and they were watching closely so they were in line early on the very first day of vaccine availability in their area. We are hoping this means before too terribly much longer they may be able to come visit us, we miss them so! But whether or not they feel safe traveling, we are SO SO glad that we can all breathe a sigh of relief that they are protected against the worst outcomes.

In other good vaccine news, Aaron and I got our first doses a couple of weeks ago! We had to load up our family and drive to Texas (we maintain Texas as our legal home of record/residency) to be able to get our shots, but it was worth it to us! Aaron could have gotten his shot here through the Air Force, but Colorado (where we stay because Aaron is stationed here) isn’t projecting availability for me until sometime late spring. The Texas rollout included people of any age with high-risk conditions, so I was included. I had a sore arm, but otherwise we had no major side effects and our kiddos were complete angels for the impromptu 16+ hours of car time.

While the vaccine is nothing short of miraculous, we still know it won’t mean that as soon as we get our second dose life returns to “normal”. After enough time for immune response to give protection we are looking forward to being able to relax to more typical levels of cautiousness, down from our super conservative posture necessitated by my risk profile. We still plan to maintain most of our social-distancing and safer-at-home practices, but perhaps we’ll be enjoying more outdoor dining or being able to go into a store on occasion to browse instead of doing everything curbside, or maybe we will even be able gather with some friends or family. We’ve been so lonely! We’re also looking at what it could mean for getting our kids back in school/preschool. If we’re able to do that, we would still want to keep our nanny because we love her and because as things open up both Aaron and I will travel more for work, so we’re looking at our options and trying to see what might make sense for all that. But just the thought of having some better options is honestly making me giddy. I’ve gone to bed most nights for the last 10 months worrying about me or someone else high-risk that I love dying, and to have that weight reduced brings so much comfort.

If you or someone you love is also high-risk I hold you in my heart as you wait for your chance to be vaccinated, and I am so encouraged to see the commitments to make more doses available to more people as quickly as possible. If you are nervous or unsure about being vaccinated please talk to a health-professional and give them the chance to address your concerns.

It’s also very encouraging to see how much progress our community is making at stopping the spread. Colorado Springs currently has a reproduction rate of 0.92 which is close to the best it has been since the pandemic started and a positivity rate below 6%. If this trend can continue, it will play a big role in how we make decisions post-vaccination and our choices aside we are thrilled to see these numbers trending down. Neither vaccine availability or slower spread will bring back any of the lives lost or fix the financial and other hardships so many have faced, but just to have real hope again feels so good.