Making this a new thread, so it doesn’t get buried. This is our situation:

1) Three weeks ago, I was exposed. I spent sustained time around someone who, it turns out, had it (they explained it away as seasonal allergies), and apparently knew they had it.

2) I came home and slept in the same room as my wife.

3) Maybe two days later, I get sick, and take a test. I have it. We have the rest of the family test. They’re negative one day. The next day, my wife and daughter (both immunocompromised) feel sick, and test positive.

4) My daughter bounces back pretty quickly. My wife and I get really sick. (It was the sickest I’ve ever been, for about a week.)

5) I get better. My wife doesn’t. Her oxygen level plummets one afternoon to 82%, and she’s hospitalized.

6) She comes home after two nights. She is prescribed home health, and oxygen.

7) Three days later, she gets pneumonia. That is current. We’re monitoring oxygen levels again. My guess is that she’ll end up in the hospital again in the next few days.

Could we have avoided any of that? Maybe not. But had I known about 1, I would have gone and basically quarantined myself prior to 2. Realize that we’ve taken significant precautions for two years to at least mitigate the odds that she and my daughter would be exposed. So, five or six days working out of the basement, sleeping in the guest room, etc would have been no big deal for me.

A simple email to family that you know you exposed is just so easy. Let them do with that information as they wish. It’s just courtesy. Decency. All along, my philosophy has been mitigate, mitigate, mitigate. Cut the odds of exposure by 10% doing this, another 10% doing that? Sign me up. We knew we still had to live life. But if I could take, say, 2/1 odds, and make them 3/1 or 4/1? That’s worth sacrifices, in our situation.

Acting flippant about it? Well, why? Why not just send an email, or a text?