I don’t know about you guys, but I haven’t had a cold in a year. Not a sniffle, not a cough, not a sore throat — nada, zip, zilch.
This is very abnormal for my household. You see, my wife is an early childhood educator (the best ECE around), which as you can imagine, means she comes into contact with a lot of germs.
Kids are kind of leaky after all.
Every fall when the kids return to school, our household gets a cold because some virus has piggybacked home with my lovely wife. Whenever there’s a cold going around, invariably my wife brings it home with her and at least one of us will get sick.
The flu isn’t as common as the cold (it is after all the “common cold”), but if one is circulating, there is usually a decent chance it’ll hit my household.
But this year, not a one. Not a single member of my household has picked up a cold.
The fact none of us are spending much time out of the house interacting with people I’m sure has something to do with it. We’ve kept our trips pretty essential.
I’m sure the lack of public interaction plays a role in the lack of sickness at my house.
But I’m also sure that wearing a mask when we’re in public, sanitizing our hands when we enter and exit stores and our efforts to socially distance play a really big part, too.
The pandemic has been trying on everyone, but especially on those who have been impacted by the illness, by death, by disability, by job loss. The isolation, particularly for someone like my wife who loves to be social, has been particularly difficult for many many people.
If there is a silver lining for me in all this though, having to cope with this while not battling a head cold or a chest cold has been a real blessing.
Mask-wearing is common in other cultures outside North America and Europe. Given my experience this year, I'm leaning toward masking up even after I've been vaccinated (yes, I will be vaccinated).
How about you?
