COVID PUTTING CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS ON STANDBY

It’s the most infectious time of the year.

With COVID-19 numbers in the United States soaring and the holidays right around the corner, those in the most vulnerable age bracket are deciding to skip traditional visits with family this year, or at least waiting to see if things improve before pulling the trigger.

“Two of my children live in Virginia,” said Loretta Klinger, 80, of Brookhaven. “One lives in Virginia Beach and the other lives in Richmond.”

Klinger said she and her 81-year-old husband, Joseph, usually drive to her daughter’s house in Richmond, then their son and his family drive from Virginia Beach for Christmas Day. Those plans have not changed as of now, Klinger said, though she noted she and her husband would be tested before making the trek to ensure they are not bringing the virus with them.

“You still have to live,” said Klinger. “That’s the way I feel. Just hanging around here all the time is depressing.”

Joseph sounded less convinced, however.

“We really can’t make the commitment,” he said. “There’s a lot of iffyness. …

The whole shebang is up in the air over what we say we’re going to do and what we do. It wouldn’t take me much convincing to say, ‘Ok, we’re going to avoid it this year.’ I’m afraid of the spike. How high is it going to?”

Update on numbers

Delaware County Council on Dec. 4 issued an update on coronavirus numbers that showed an “extremely high” spike in COVID-19 cases across the county and state in the week after Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans ignored pleas from health experts not to gather for the annual feast.

“During the early months of the pandemic, the county’s highest count of COVID-19 cases for a single day was 232,” the release stated. “The 7-day incidence rate as of today is 318 per 100,000 and the 7-day PCR positivity rate is 12.7%. To put that into perspective, 30 days ago, on Nov. 6, the incident rate was 149.3 per 100,000 and the 7-day percent positivity was 6.5%.”

There were 21,290 positive cases in the county as of Dec. 4 and a “dramatic increase” in deaths, bringing the total toll to 873, the release said. Statewide, the Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed 11,763 additional positive cases of COVID-19 Dec. 4, the highest one-day total since the pandemic began. As of Dec. 7, more than 426,000 Pennsylvanians had contracted the virus and 11,373 had died statewide, the vast majority of them ages 70 to 94.

“As human beings, we want to be around people, but you can be around people in a lot of different ways,” said Olivia Thorne, 77, of Nether Providence, who has a background in nursing with mental health. “The thing that I see being most difficult right now is that people are so depressed and they are depressed largely because their lives have changed without their having any control. And that’s perfectly natural and there’s nothing abnormal about that, but you need to have something else that you can do that’s going to cheer you up. And I think we’ve gotten to the point of thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners as being essential.”

Thorne has one brother in South Carolina who is not able to travel as it is, so she was not expecting to see him anyway without going to visit him. Her daughter in Massachusetts is a schoolteacher, said Thorne, and that state has a plethora of travel guidelines and rules about quarantining that make visits during the pandemic difficult, though not impossible.

“As far as Christmas goes, my daughter desperately wants to come, but the question really comes down to ‘Should she come?’” said Thorne. “She didn’t come down for Thanksgiving, mostly at my insistence because I didn’t want her to come down here for 36 hours and then having to shelter in place when she got back.”

Extended school holiday

Christmas is a little different because of an extended school holiday, said Thorne, so her daughter might be able to spend a few days before returning and going into quarantine ahead of schools reopening.

But Thorne said with Pennsylvania in worse shape than Massachusetts, there is a risk that her daughter could come here on her own, get sick, then take that back with her to her own family. Nothing is set in stone, but Thorne does not think it’s worth the risk.

Instead, Thorne said she believes people will have to simply have to get a little more creative this year about what “seeing” family for the holidays really means.

“I have a granddaughter who seems to be incredibly good at FaceTiming and talking on the phone and making you feel like you’re sitting next to her,” said Thorne. “Right now she’s in St. Petersburg in Florida at college, so she just walks along the beaches and says, ‘Do you want to see a sunset?’ and things like that, and it’s great, but I keep saying maybe we should do that, maybe that would be the smartest thing.”

Thorne said there is one person in her bubble, a son of friend who died, that she thinks will likely come over for Christmas. He is also a teacher, she said, so the same transmission concerns exist for this family as Thorne’s daughter, but she said he would not come by unless he feels it is absolutely safe.