Thanksgiving, with a side of COVID uncertainty
Families should talk early and openly, and search for common ground
Last Thanksgiving, Bev Gunnarsson and her husband followed public health recommendations and stayed home in Fox Chapel for Thanksgiving, rather than traveling to the New York area to visit their daughters.
For just the two of them, the couple cooked a 10-pound turkey — the smallest they could find. “We had so many leftovers it was crazy,” Ms. Gunnarsson said.
For Ms. Gunnarsson, this year will be a return to normal. She and her husband will travel to their daughter’s home in New Jersey and spend Thanksgiving with their two children and three grandchildren,just like old times.
“With COVID last year we couldn’t all be together,” Ms. Gunnarsson said. “The vaccines were really a game-changer.”
But for many other Pittsburghers, this Thanksgiving is still complicated. While some families are ready to gather together, others are still cautious, or dealing with fault lines that have emerged overvaccines or politics.
ForLynne Smith, of North Fayette, Thanksgiving last year was just her and her husband. This year, it will expand to include some family — but not as much as in the past. Since the start of COVID, Ms. Smith was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer and even though she is vaccinated, her body isn’t effectively producing antibodiesto the COVID-19 virus.
So just her sister, brother-inlaw and nephew will be joining
them for dinner. “Their family has been as cautious as we have been,” she said. “They both work from home, they’re both vaccinated. They pick up their groceries and ours are delivered but they are parallel, doing the same thing.”
Her brother-in-law is bringing his grandma’s sweet potato casserole, which she greatly missed last year.
Butother family members who aren’t vaccinated or take more risks will not be coming. “I get that everyone has a choice and people don’t want to be told what to do,” she said, “but I wish people would just start respecting each otherenough to go get a vaccine.”
When everyone is vaccinated and relatively healthy, Thanksgiving this year can proceed pretty much as normal, said Dr. Amy Crawford-Faucher, a family physician and vice chair of the Family Care Institute at Allegheny Health Network.
“We’ve made so many concessions to the pandemic over the last year and a half,” she said. “I think that we are all so tremendously tired from this and we have the opportunity to have relatively safe family gatherings.”
Dr. Crawford-Faucher is having an indoor gathering for Thanksgiving unlike anything she’s hosted since before the pandemic, including two elderly grandparents, someone from overseasand two college students. Buteveryone is vaccinated and almost everyone has had a booster. “While it gives me a little pause, I think we are doing what we can doshort of not having it,” she said. “What would I not do? Maybe not havea kazoo contest.”
If there were unvaccinated parties,however, her advice would be different. She would not recommend that unvaccinated kids and unvaccinated elderly adults be in thesame room together, for example, and would suggest a kids’ tablein a separate room.
For situations where a family is dealing with a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated members, she recommends that they use strategies similar to those recommended pre-vaccine: be outside as much as possible,
open windows and wear sweaters inside, consider wearing masks inside, social distance as much as possible. She also recommended that families be upfront and honest with each other, whether it’s about vaccination status or the presence of symptoms. Breakthrough infections are not unusual at this point in the pandemic, she said, so for vaccinated people, even minor cold symptoms should be taken seriously. She also recommended that anyone eligible for a booster should get one before Thanksgiving dinner.
Some families might be tempted to tie an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner to a requirement to get vaccinated. It’s not a strategy that’s likely to work, said Selina Shultz, who runs the Conflict Lab in Lawrenceville and has more than two decades of experience in family conflict as a mediator in custody, divorce and estate cases. For Thanksgiving dinner this year, she recommends that families talk early and openly, and look for common ground.
She will be attending Thanksgiving dinner with her husband’s family, which is trying to accommodate those with different attitudes toward COVID-19 precautions. “They have a big house and they’re setting up in different groups,” she said. “If people aren’t comfortable being around unvaccinated folks, they’re going to come afterwards. Some people go into this trying to manipulate behavior, going in with this line in the sand hoping that this will be the thing that gets them to want to get vaccinated. You end up achieving the opposite.”
For George Hawdon, of Arnold, Thanksgiving this year is still a question mark. He typically goes out to dinner with friends and his son, but even if he usually spent it with family, he doesn’t think it would be in the cards this year.
“The cousins that I would be with, they span from extreme anti-vaxxer to got the vaccine, got the booster and still wear a mask,” said Mr. Hawdon, an Arnold city councilman. “They can yell at each other over politics and walk away friends, but now there’s the risk of exposure. There’s not going to be a traditional familygathering.”
But what he will do is still uncertain. In the past he’s gone out for Thanksgiving dinner at places such as the Omni William Penn or the Gateway Clipper. But due to the staffing shortage affecting restaurants even on a normal day, he’s not sure whether eating out will even be an option on Thanksgiving. He is encouraged that at least things seem to be moving in the right direction.
“Every time it looks like we’re out of the woods, we’re not out of the woods,” he said. “It might be one of these things that people are going to have to live with for years, but it’s definitely going to be a little brighter this year than it was last year.”