Covid Stories: Aisha

The majority of my COVID worries for the past two years have been about my immunocompromised and vulnerable loved ones. How can I protect my diabetic father? What if I accidentally exposed my infant niece? Should I take an international trip to visit my 93-year-old grandmother? The constant choice between posing a risk to people I love or going months, if not years, without seeing them, has been brutal. And the pain of knowing that, even if I take every precaution and avoid seeing them, I still cannot guarantee their safety, has left me feeling powerless and angry. The vaccine rollout helped with my anxieties about my own health and that of many around me, but it did not help these three vulnerable people that I was concerned about most.

After two years of anxiety and uncertainty, I ended up catching COVID-19 in April 2022. In some ways, it was a relief to finally catch it and get it over with. It was starting to feel inevitable–particularly with the Omicron variant–and the fear of the unknown was starting to be unbearable. And I recognize my privilege in being healthy enough to say that. But what was remarkably unfair was that, after two years of taking COVID precautions, I caught it just days before I was supposed to depart for a much-awaited trip to visit my grandmother. I had purposefully not visited her since the pandemic began, but couldn’t delay seeing her anymore, so I booked a trip. She was so disappointed that she urged me to come anyway, despite knowing what the risks would be. But I could not in good conscience visit her or get on a plane and expose others, so I canceled the trip.

There are no “right” decisions regarding the pandemic–only choices between the lesser of two or more evils. There is no guarantee–only calculated risk. To many who are part of marginalized or under-resourced communities, this is not a new idea for us, of course. But the pandemic has only made it more severe, more frightening, more exhausting, and more dangerous to navigate these difficult choices in our everyday lives.