Thank you, Philly, for asking people to mask up indoors | Opinion

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter got a runny nose. In normal times, this would not have phased me: She had no other symptoms and seemed her usual, chipper self. But these aren’t normal times.

In children, a runny nose can be a sign of COVID-19. I am fully vaccinated, as are the eligible members of our immediate circle. But at 7, my daughter is nowhere near able to get a vaccine (and may not be until winter). She attends an outdoor summer camp that’s doing a great job maintaining COVID-19 protocols, but what if? I called her doctor’s office, who told me that a runny nose alone is no need for concern, but I should watch her for coughing and other symptoms.

She does cough sometimes, I told the nurse on the phone.

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Well, how often? the nurse asked. More than a couple of times per day?

I couldn’t say. Even so, the nurse told me my daughter didn’t need to get tested and was fine to attend summer camp. Still, I spent the next few days counting her coughs, each one making my stomach flip. And the “what if” questions never went away. My daughter doesn’t have any underlying conditions that put her at risk of severe illness if she gets COVID-19, but what if she gives it to a child who does have one of those conditions? Or lives with someone who does? Could her runny nose kill someone? Those questions didn’t dry up until her nose — thankfully — did.

This is the limbo I am living in, along with thousands of parents of unvaccinated kids in our area. And it’s recently become a lot more difficult, as we watch cases and deaths rise across the country, including in our area. In places with low vaccination rates, it’s gotten downright scary, thanks to the more contagious delta variant, which now accounts for more than 80% of sequenced cases of COVID-19 in the U.S.

So I took a deep sigh of relief when I heard Thursday that Philadelphia was asking people to mask up indoors when in public, even if they are vaccinated.

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This recommendation — if people follow it — will help protect young kids, as well as the vaccinated people who may still be at risk of severe forms of COVID-19 because they are immunocompromised. The list of who may remain vulnerable after vaccination is longer than you might think, and includes people who are getting chemotherapy for cancer (roughly 650,000 people in the U.S. each year), those receiving hemodialysis for kidney failure (which affects more than 600,000 Americans), and people taking any number of drugs that can reduce their immune response to the vaccine. Then there’s the 13 million people in the U.S. who have received the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine, which preliminary data suggest may be less effective against the delta variant.

The vaccines work incredibly well, but no vaccine is perfect: The CDC has received reports of more than 1,000 vaccinated people who died after getting COVID-19.

More indoor masking could make simple trips to the store a lot less stressful than they have been lately. I had to bring my kid grocery shopping last weekend, and even though only 60% of adults in our region are fully vaccinated, roughly 90% of my fellow shoppers weren’t wearing a mask. She always wears hers when indoors with strangers, but I’m positive that someone, at some point, has come close to her indoors who wasn’t vaccinated and chose to not wear a mask. All I can do is push my cart around the store, quickly gather what I need, and hope that the thin layer covering her nose and mouth is doing its job.

When you look at COVID-19 from the perspective of those who remain vulnerable, the decision to get vaccinated isn’t an entirely “personal choice,” as some (including Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola) have argued. Unless everybody who chooses to not get vaccinated always masks up (which is not what I’m seeing), they are putting at risk those people who can’t get vaccinated or aren’t fully protected afterward. Anyone who isn’t vaccinated is also a potential incubator for new variants of COVID-19 that may one day overpower existing vaccines, which puts everyone at risk.

If you decide not to get vaccinated and don’t wear a mask indoors, just know that could affect many other people. All the rest of us can do is keep hoping those thin layers covering our nose and mouth are working.

Alison McCook is a writer living in Wyncote. @alisonmccook