About Being Asked to COVID Test

Now I will annoy everyone.

With Thanksgiving and Christmas approaching, there is no easier way to get people’s blood pressure up than to broach the subject of requiring vaccinations and COVID testing to be allowed into family gatherings.  For example my own blood pressure probably went up when I saw this:

Leaving aside the question of whether I would want to be at any get-together with Diana Butler Bass, if a family gathering required vaccinations, I would rather decline and spend Thanksgiving alone.  That even though I am vaccinated.  Why would I want to spend Thanksgiving with people who are that insufferable?

And one has to be insufferable and more to require vaccinations to attend family gatherings. Being unvaxxed does not at all mean one has COVID.  Being vaxxed does not at all mean one does not have COVID. For young men, the risk from vaccinations may be higher and the benefit certainly lower.  These so-called vaccines are new and experimental.  We do not yet know their long term side effects.

For these and other reasons, the decision whether to be vaccinated should be left to the individual, and that decision should be respected.  Yes, families can still decide that their gatherings be vaccinated-only. But any family so awful as to treat unvaxxed members like lepers would probably be one I want as little to do with as possible.  Heck I would be tempted to lie and say I am unvaxxed just to stay away from such people.

I have annoyed a little.  Now I will annoy much.

I really have no problem with requiring an at-home test. 

There I said it. 

I personally would not require that, but an at-home test is not much to ask.  In my area at least, they are readily available at the grocery store, two tests costing only $20.  And although the directions are a bit involved, even I managed to follow them successfully on the first try without any trouble.

Yes, I recently self-tested, and that without being asked.  I was under the weather and was to attend a funeral in a couple days.  I didn’t think I had COVID but just to be sure I would not be spreading it at a big gathering, I self-tested.

I know the tests are not foolproof, but test two or three times and you probably know if you have COVID or not.  There are no needles or health risks involved as with vaccinations.  And the inconvenience is minimal.  (I say that because no one will make you report a positive at-home test at least where I live.  I will leave aside the ethics of whether you should report a positive test.)

So are you asked to test before a gathering?  I would do so without grumbling.  It is really not asking much.  And testing without being asked just might be good, too.

Yes, not everything has to be about politics.