Almost a full year since my last COVID-19 update post.
Today, May 11, 2023, marks the official end of the federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency declaration: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/end-of-phe.html
The CDC reports the total number of deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 as 1,131,819. Even as the emergency declaration ends, we're still recording ~1,000 deaths a week from COVID-19. But that's the lowest weekly figure recorded since March 2020.
According to the CDC, 81.4% of the overall population received at least one vaccine dose but only 16.9% have kept that up to date with the latest vaccine updates available.
As far as we know none of myself, Jess, Heather, or Corinne ever became infected by the virus. We've tested ourselves when we've had respiratory symptoms, but never had a positive test. It seems more likely that we've had asymptomatic cases rather than never being infected, but who knows--perhaps we were of the lucky group for whom the vaccines were highly effective and any contact was prevented from taking hold. We've kept our doses up to date whenever new boosters have become available.
So what does that mean in our lives? (A reader in the future might ask.)
Life has been basically back to normal--at least for our family (probably not for the families of the 1.1+ million people who died--for whom a pre-pandemic normal will never return).
The girls have had regular school and activities. We've had them wear masks when community transmission levels were "high" (according to the CDC criteria), but that hasn't been true for months now.
When out and about there are people around who still regularly wear masks. Not a lot, but it's also not particularly unusual to see. I taught Mathcounts in person this past year and I estimate that 1 out of 15-20 students that I saw on campus was still wearing a mask (Mathcounts ended at the end of March, so maybe that number has fallen since then).
I'm still working mainly from my closet. In fact I'm supposed to be losing my office on site any day now because I don't use it often enough. Just waiting to get the notification.
So I guess that essentially wraps things up. Here's to hoping we don't do that again within my lifetime. It wasn't fun.
