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One week Haidyn was a healthy wild child, and the next week our seven-year-old couldn’t even get off the couch to go to the bathroom because he was too weak from having COVID.
   
He started getting sick on Saturday, coming home from a friend’s house saying he was tired and not feeling well. Getting progressively more irritable throughout the evening, he developed a fever of 103.

Mask mandates and COVID vaccination requirements are a controversial topic. Some see the requirements as necessary and imperative; others see the requirement as restriction on our basic American freedoms.
   
President Abraham Lincoln – the first republican elected president – said the government was formed to do things for people that they could not do themselves.

If there are unvaccinated (for whatever reason) at the holiday party, I strongly suggest a layered approach. The more layers we have the more protection for you, the attendees, and the community at large. Here are some key layers:

1. Get people vaccinated.
2. Test, test, test.
3. Then there’s the usual layers.

The pandemic landscape continues to rapidly change. More likely than not there will be a mix of people attending your holiday celebration: family members that are ineligible (0-4 year olds), partially vaccinated (5-11 year olds), vaccinated but not protected (people who are immunocompromised), or just plain unvaccinated (22% of 12+ year olds are still unvaccinated in the United States).

Non-medical prevention works by limiting the amount of virus we’re exposed to. Vaccines help by making us less likely to get sick or seriously ill when we are exposed. When the SARS CoV-2 virus emerged, we had a hundred years of learning about viruses and decades of vaccine development to draw upon.

My son spent his sixth-grade school year at home, and boy was it tough. He missed being with his friends terribly and struggled to stay motivated to do his virtual schoolwork. No fan of needles, he jumped at the opportunity to receive the COVID vaccine, eager to do his part to help us all return to some kind of normalcy. As difficult as it was, he knew it was the right decision for our family, considering that he has a mom with several autoimmune conditions and elderly grandparents to protect.