Tests are rationed in drugstores. Today in Boston: 4 per customer at Walgreens, 6 per customer at CVS. My brother-in-law wanted as many as possible, so yesterday my sister and I ended up in a bunch of different stores, and she bought 18 packages -- 36 tests -- in total. At $25/package, that's a pretty penny. I didn't say anything (though I did buy her an initial set of four to match her first 4 in the first store), but it felt pretty awful to me to be buying so many when there's such a serious shortage. Today the shipments seem to have just come in, but for days people all over Boston apparently were scrambling and home tests were completely unavailable. Meanwhile, people waited in long lines for equally hard-to-obtain PCR tests. My bro-in-law's justification is crap. Said something about someone last spring who'd said "it's everyone for themselves" upon scrambling to jump the queue to get vaccinated -- but of course he's doing exactly the same thing by getting all these tests.
December 27, 2021
Tough week. My mother-in-law decided to prolong her stay with us because we didn’t know the kids would be able to return to school, both of them having been sick at the end of last week. Announcements that restrictions would be eased again, as cases are rising and people stop caring. I feel like it’s going to be a long winter. I just want my kids to be vaccinated so we can feel safer again. One of my husband’s cousin got COVID and her boyfriend too. Everyone seems to have given up where I am, although if you look at other countries ahead of us, you can see that cases have been surging… it’s just discouraging. I caught whatever cold virus my kids had and out of caution I preferred to cancel my birthday celebration with my parents. It’s also awkward because I don’t feel comfortable being indoors with my sisters who’ve resumed their lives and go out a lot and mingle. Please, get us the COVID kid vaccine asap!!!!!!!!!
November 9, 2021