The Ghost of Covid Past

In the region where I live, not enough people are vaccine-ing up. 

 

Because I am vaccinated, I have effectively ended Covid-19 inside my own body. In my body, that threat is past and I am free. Not so for my community. Not so for my elementary school job. 

 

It’s the next to last day of school. All I can see is Covid variants on the horizon; ones that we’ll have to make a new vaccine for. Which means we’ll have to wait for it to be produced.

 

Again. 

 

We’ll have to teach both remotely and in person at the same time again, because people will have to quarantine again. We’ll have completely Remote Learning again. 

 

We will have to teach without small groups again, or limit the exposure time severely. We will not be able to do cooperative learning again. Kids stuck in desks for hours. AGAIN. (For non-teachers, these are the WORST of the in-school Covid precautions. Covid precautions fly in the face of good educational practice.)

 

I was always someone who took my medicine. A year ago today, I would have never dreamed that there would be people who would not take their medicine. A year ago today, I had hope. 

 

I was in deep grief. I worried, mostly for my students and their families. But I had hope.

 

I am losing hope; I have lost hope. 

 

I can’t do this school year on repeat, ad infinitum, forever. 

 

I hear people talk about “living in fear” of Covid. That’s not me. My husband has been working at our local hospital for 20+ years. Day in and day out, he’s lived with droplet precautions. He knows exactly what they mean and don’t mean. He’s very comfortable with them. 

 

We have not lived in fear of Covid. We have lived in reality of Covid. 

 

We ate out indoors together. We traveled. We masked. We stayed in a very small bubble. We worked to serve our students and our patients, to stay healthy for them. And we did. We know how to live with this. 

 

But I can’t do this school year again. 

 

If a vaccine resistant variant arises (and in my region the way things are going, it will), we will have to wait for a second vaccine and then just pray that people decide to take their medicine the second time, because they didn’t take it now.

 

This is a worldwide pandemic, and many countries still don’t have the vaccine. How arrogant are we that we have it, and can’t be bothered? 

 

I can’t do this school year again and again. This cannot be my new career normal. 

 

I will have to find another career. 

 

And then what will I do?

 

I am literally made for teaching, I have teachers generations deep on both sides of my family. I don’t want to do anything else… What’s a more valuable, more interesting, and more fun way to get to spend my days on this earth than teaching kids how to read? There isn’t one! I have the best job there is! 

 

This time, I worked to not get sick. I did this so that I would not have to quarantine. I did it to protect the health of my students and their families. I did it to protect their family incomes. It was easy. The skills that it takes to not get Covid are the same skills that it takes to be celibate, and I was a virgin till the day I got married at 41 years old. 

 

I worked to protect my students’ families. It was easy. 

 

But I can’t do this year on repeat. 

 

Who do you think will babysit your children when all the teachers have left the building because you would not get vaccinated? How will YOU go to work? 

 

So, when the vaccine-resistant variants come, I can try a new tack. 

 

I can go out and lick all the doorknobs. I can get as sick as I can as fast as I can. I will pray that I just go ahead and die instead of having long Covid or the other debilitating, chronic effects that people are having post-Covid. 

 

And then I’ll come back and haunt the nincompoops that didn’t vaccine up this first go-around. 

 

I cannot do this school year again. 

 

I have lost hope.