Family, school, and COVID update in real time

I just published an early July photo post below.  I should have the 4th of July weekend post up soon.  I realized I haven't done a COVID update since June 29th.  Our area, like many in the US has a growing number of cases this month.  Our immediate area is also growing very rapidly.  This has me feeling very concerned about school options for the fall.  I am sure many of you are wondering our our family is doing health wise as well.  I thought I would do a real time update.

Health:
M is on day 58 (not a typo) of fever.  T is on day 47.  I had a fever for a couple of weeks, but am happy to report I have not had one now for 3 or 4 days.  This is great news.  It gives me some hope.  The infectious disease Dr at Children's is pretty stumped.  We are moving on to other departments so new Dr's can try to figure things out, while still consulting with the ID Dr and continuing to run labs about twice a month to watch blood counts etc.  We had the house tested for molds and learned we do have them.  We are waiting for a couple of companies (hopefully in the next few days) to give us estimates so we can move towards mold removal.  Mold generally doesn't cause fevers or the symptoms the kids have, but you never know what can cause something strange. T has very little symptoms, just some rashes and bloody noses.  M has lots of swollen glands/lymph nodes, general aches, headaches, weariness etc. T feels well almost all the time.  Every once in a while she will feel sick in some way.  M feels well some of the time, but gets tired, weary and cranky pretty quickly.  We try to get outside and bike, roller blade, hike, swing, play basketball... something every day.  Sometimes there is eagerness to play, other times it is forced.  There are so many people struggling so much more than we are.  We have all we need and excellent Dr's so we are very blessed.  Overall, I feel a lot of peace as we wait for answers, even though of course I would love to know what is going on.

School:
The school district voted on the school reopening plans this week.  Plan A if cases are low: The plan is for elementary students through 4th grade to go the other 4 days a week.  The middle school and high school will be divided in half so they will do 3 days of virtual and 2 days in person. The entire school district will have a cleaning day on Wednesday so all levels will be virtual. Plan B if cases are elevated: All levels will do two days in person and 3 days virtual.  Plan C if cases are high: All virtual for all ages.  The plan seems simple, but of course there are 1,000 questions without answers that every parent and teacher is asking.  I do know there will be a virtual track for families who choose to do all virtual.  Cases in our county are very high right now, so we don't know what the start of the year will actually look like. We are going to wait until the final day of registration to make a decision for our family.  If the kids still have fevers we will choose virtual, as it would be a huge headache for teachers to give us assignments each day.  Apparently, you can make decisions each quarter.  This means if the kids are feeling better we could opt in for in person school in 2nd quarter.  My feelings about school stuff are constantly changing so by the time someone reads this post my thoughts could have changed.  Having immunocompromised kids does influence my feelings of course.

COVID - 19

On June 29th (3 weeks and 3 days ago) Our state had 27,743 cases and 777 deaths.  The US had 2,564,163 cases and 125,928 deaths.  The world had 10,199,798 cases and 502,947 deaths.  Now for the real time results... Our state currently has 45,899 cases and 878 deaths.  The US currently has 4,026,288 cases and 144,032 deaths.  The world currently has 15,356,780 cases and 626,357 deaths.  The numbers increases are crazy.  The flattened curve is rising and we are really feeling it locally.  

Last time I updated the cases in our area were going up so slowly.  This is no longer the trend. On June 29th our county had cases 223 and our community had  29 cases.  Today, three weeks and three days later we have 440 cases in our county and 77 cases in our small town.  This means our local cases have more than doubled in the last three weeks.  Actually, it has been less than that, because they didn't really start to increase this rapidly until the last two weeks.

It is hard for me to see these numbers and not be concerned.  Quarantine fatigue is real. We are all feeling it, but our family is doing our best to avoid tricky situations.  We wear our masks.  There is still currently no mask mandate in our state, though many chain stores have mandated masks.  It will be interesting to see what happens with our area in the coming weeks. Our school year isn't set to begin until September 1st.  A lot can change in 5 weeks so we could be in a much safer spot than we are today or an even scarier one.  2020 sure is an interesting year!