Its about keeping the kids safer. Nothing more. Anyone in NYC working the front lines is putting their family at risk anytime they go home.
This is the second time today on TUG that I've had a chance to post about my son's situation. First time was in a thread that got locked but in itself it's not offensive in any way, and it certainly fits here.
My son is a nursing home administrator who currently has two staff members who've tested positive and are now hospitalized, but they each treated residents for 10 days before developing symptoms without benefit of PPE, which is being mishandled and misappropriated by those who should be in charge. He is dreading the first positive test result among his residents which he knows is inevitable, not only because of the disgusting PPE situation but also because testing can't be done until symptoms present.
My daughter-in-law, his wife, is an RN at a major Boston-surrounding-area hospital who was floated from a presumptive-positive floor to the ICU last week, working three shifts a week but adding on extra hours to those shifts because every major hospital is declaring new units/floors for COVID-19 treatment every day thus straining the system.
Their daughter, my perfect granddaughter, had a drive-by 4th birthday party the other day. A DRIVE-BY BIRTHDAY PARTY. FOR HER FOURTH BIRTHDAY. If you don't know what a drive-by birthday party is, it's when the birthday girl/boy stands out front of their house and a parade of cars goes by with a lot of beeping and a lot of waving and a lot of "Happy Birthdays!" being yelled out of car windows. But there's no stopping, no dropping off gifts, no birthday kisses/hugs. Believe me, I hate Chuck E Cheese as much as the next person who's older than ten, but I'd give my world right now to have been able to go through 18 hours of that torture instead of a ten-minute car ride.
Their son, my perfect 15-mos old grandson, has a history of asthma and other respiratory ailments. He uses a nebulizer twice a day - on the good days it requires only one medication, on the bad days it can be up to three. He loves to be snuggled. It's heart-breaking to have to think about how much snuggling can hurt him now.
These two children, my perfect grandchildren, have lost their daycare due to the pandemic so Don and I are pitching in with their other grandmother to provide coverage. We are the only three people who are being allowed into their home these days, only when it's absolutely necessary, and still my son and his wife are terrified that if any one of us are asymptomatic, they're going to be carrying guilt for the rest of their lives that they killed their own patients, or worse, their own parents, or worst of all, their own children.
It would never occur to me to tell my son and his wife that their children would be better off living apart from them - with me, another relative, as wards of the state, whatever. Never! The LAST THING they need is forced family separation! They, and we, are following every precaution suggested by experts and peers as much as can be done in this situation. (I've never showered or done laundry so much in my entire life.) And as has been said already this pandemic, now this case, raises an issue that medical personnel and others serving in various ways face every single day anyway, that of risking their own and sometimes their families' well-being by being exposed to health-compromised individuals in their work. I have no doubt that if this case were allowed to stand, even temporarily, millions of service-oriented people would walk off the jobs to save their families. Who wouldn't?!?!
