Coronavirus pandemic still agonizes families after more than a year

PHOENIX — Eight days into the school year, all five of Amber Cessac’s daughters, ages 4 to 10, had tested positive for COVID-19.

Having them all sick at once and worrying about long-term repercussions as other parents at their school, and even her own mother, downplayed the virus, “broke something inside of me,” Cessac said.

“The anxiety and the stress has sort of been bottled up,” she said. “It just felt so, I don’t know, defeating and made me feel so helpless.”

Like parents everywhere, Cessac has been dealing with pandemic stress for over 18 months now.

There’s the exhaustion of worrying about the disease itself — made worse by the spread of the more infectious delta variant, particularly among people who refuse vaccinations, which has caused a big increase in infections in children.

Online school disrupted kids’ educations and parents’ work. Then the return of in-person school this year brought rising exposures and community tension as parents fought over proper protocols. The politicization of masks, vaccines and shutdowns have worn many parents out. Deciding what’s OK for children to do and what isn’t can feel fraught.

“Parents are exhausted on a level we’ve not seen before,” said Amanda Zelechoski, a Purdue University Northwest psychology professor who co-founded the website and nonprofit Pandemic Parenting. “We have been in survival mode for a year and a half now and it is relentless.”

Schools are, for many, a constant worry. There’s evidence that masks in schools help reduce virus spread, and a majority of Americans support requiring masks for students and teachers. But that breaks down sharply along partisan lines. Some Republican governors have tried to ban mask mandates. District policies on masks, testing and quarantines vary widely. Soon after schools reopened in August, the rate of coronavirus infections forced dozens of districts to back off in-person learning.

The charter school Cessac’s four older daughters go to in the Austin, Texas, suburbs doesn’t require masks. Her children, who are too young to be vaccinated, told her they were among only a handful of kids in their classes to wear masks. But she’s sent them back to school as they recovered.

“It’s not any better anywhere else,” she said. “All the moms, we feel stuck in this situation. There’s nothing we can do.”

More than 5.5 million children in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19, with 20 percent of all child cases coming since this school year began, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Kids are at lower risk of severe illness or death, but at least 498 have died. Vaccines have been available for children as young as 12 since May, but vaccination rates lag behind adults. Federal data show about half of 16- and 17-year-olds are vaccinated, while 43 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds are; two-thirds of U.S. adults are vaccinated.

And while a vaccine for younger children is expected before the end of the year, they remain more vulnerable. Many parents felt lost on how to best protect them. “You still had parents struggling with decisions, and what is safe for my family, and feeling left behind or invisible because other segments of society were able to move on,” Zelechoski said.

Over a million students left U.S. public schools in the 2020 school year, which was marked by widespread remote classes. It’s not yet clear what’s happened this academic year, but fights over mask mandates have led some parents to alternatives.

Sheila Cocchi, a single mom still dealing with health problems after suffering COVID-19 in February, is paying a teacher to give her 10and 14-year-olds classes at home for 10 hours a week along with an online program. She also works from home in Fernandina Beach, Fla., just north of Jacksonville.

“Last year, it was like OK, the whole world’s gone crazy, and we’re all having to adjust to this. Now it’s a different kind of stress,” she said. “We’re trying to get this under control as a nation, or at least as a state, and there’s so many people who are not participating in that. I would like for my children to be in school as much as anyone.”