I know it's how the human mind works to protect itself, but it is highly disconcerting to talk to people and realize that they have mentally blocked off the memory of all those huge temporary morgues, the heartwrenching accounts from people whose loved ones died without getting to see them one last time (or maybe only over an iPad held up by a nurse if the hospital was able to do that), and horror/terror we all felt at the sheer number of deaths (as well as the very small number of people who were able to recover from hospitalization in those early days).
And yet we still hear the same stuff over and over--getting Covid isn't that bad, getting it multiple times isn't that bad, it's fine for kids to get Covid (repeatedly).
And don't forget kids/teens don't get long Covid. Well, given that there are no long Covid clinics that I can find that treat kids under the age of 18, we don't really have a good way to gather data on that, now do we? And there's no simple blood test to diagnose it. Unless your kid ends up in the hospital with Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), it's not real, right?
When my son got Covid right around this time last year, he ended up with a severe daily headache (8 or 9/10 on pain scale) for FOUR MONTHS. He missed a ton of school. He had costochondritis. He had major memory issues. He developed severe depression and anxiety about going back to school--which some people just brushed off. Schools really don't believe in it/get it. We finally got things better with him going to school only about two months ago--as his health and mental health improved. It's his senior year, and you can bet we are doing everything possible to keep him safe at school for the 4 class periods he is there.
