Immunocompromised or otherwise at risk; caretaker to someone elderly or at high risk; clients who are at risk; much less overhead; still many clients who are still not comfortable in person; being cautious that this improvement is actually going to last.

I went to a funeral last week for the wife of a teacher friend. She was fully vaccinated and boosted, but she had lupus and pulmonary fibrosis prior to Covid. They had discovered her antibodies were low (very common with immunocompromised patients) and had her scheduled for a 4th vaccine but she was infected with omicron about that same time (you know omicron: the one people wave off as a cold). Well, it killed her in a month.

Covid is still very dangerous, and I can understand a professional’s hesitation to “go back to normal” when the reality is that nearly a million people in the United States have died. It is estimated that nine million people are left in mourning for the one million dead. 200,000 or so minor children have lost a parent. The rate of people needing mental health support for grief and trauma is going to balloon.

So maybe it’s not laziness. Maybe it is cautious awareness. We’ve jumped the gun before. It is very hard to trust that this is a real recovery. We all hope it is, but a few weeks of improvement is honestly too soon to tell for sure.