I recently went home to surprise my family. I left on Saturday, September 5th. Initially, I was apprehensive to go home. Before I moved out, my family was talking about what would happen if I got COVID and needed to quarantine off-campus. We have one room upstairs for someone to quarantine if anyone got it. I took a test right two days before I left, but I have yet to receive my results as of today. So, I honestly had no idea if I would need to quarantine. My parents talked about sending me clothes for Winter instead of coming home to visit like usual. In this instance, my family didn't seem to care and everyone hugged me.
One thing that made me the most nervous was being infected and visiting my grandparents. I initially didn't want to visit them at all because I honestly didn't know if I was positive. My parents made me go visit them, but I had to have on a mask. That's something I didn't have to worry about when I was living at home because I didn't go anywhere with COVID outbreaks.
When COVID first hit, my brother and sister-in-law wouldn't let us touch my nephew because they were scared he would get it from us. Right before I left, they decided to change that and began to let us hold and play with him. However, this time when I visited they wouldn't let myself, my sister, or my parents hold him because I was home visiting. They will not let my family touch him anymore for at least two weeks after I have left. Things like this make me feel guilty and selfish for coming home. I told them I probably wouldn't visit anymore until it was time for Thanksgiving. Even then I didn't plan on having a family dinner with them because I have no way to self-quarantine for two weeks right before Thanksgiving Break. Having COVID-19 as a factor to worry about when visiting family makes it hard to work past the risk of exposure and it brings up a lot of undesired thoughts.
Blog Evaluation Portion Continued:
In my hometown, Henderson, Kentucky, there has been a total of 686 positive COVID-19 cases as of September 24th. Most of those cases have been located within areas of the city where more people reside such as neighborhoods and businesses. We have a large number of residents that live out in secluded areas with farmland, so those people may be at less of a risk due to less interaction with others. I think many people in my town has this general consensus that there is no worry that COVID will affect them. I go into many smalls business and people don't wear masks. They aren't limiting contact with others or social distancing. My friends and their family aren't concerned like my family is.
When trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19, most of my family has the same mentality. Everyone follows guidelines set as much as possible. They all want to socially distance and wear masks. My grandparents, parents, and siblings all have mostly the same thoughts about the pandemic. My extended family feels the same way as well. However, my brother and sister-in-law are extra cautious because my nephew is only 1 year old. They don't want to expose him to anything. I can sympathize with their thinking because I don't want anything to happen to him. On the other hand, some of the actions they take as prevention can be a little extreme and inconsistent. For example, when I visited and they wouldn't let me contact him the stated they would be able to do more in a little. That basically insinuated that he couldn't be around me because of cases here at UK. They were also like this during the beginning stages of quarantine. My thought was they would have my family quarantine for two weeks before visiting again. The very next weekend, they allowed him to do everything he wanted and my family to babysit him. To point out, the quarantine time period is 14 days.
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