SlideWaters Waterpark in Chelan, WA. attempted to sue Gov. Inslee in 2020 for COVID-19 restrictions
Almost all the people I know (or at least the ones I hang out with) are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, except one guy: my daughter’s father-in-law. R is a nice guy but he loses his mind over the idea that government is bad and he must stand up against ‘the man.’ Naturally when it came time to get the vaccines, he didn’t do it because it wasn’t approved. Then after it was approved, he decided he didn’t need to get it because ____ (fill in the blank.) You see where this story of contagion is starting from, right?
Well, R and his wife, N, decided to take their grandsons, ‘I’ and W, both age three, for an end-of-summer fling to a waterpark in Chelan. This trip involved an overnight at a hotel. Chelan is in a much redder part of our state and the waterpark, SlideWaters, didn’t have a good COVID safety record. I had misgivings and I told them to my daughter. She had misgivings, too, but wanted her son to have a fun experience with his cousin, W, and his grandparents. While there W had diarrhea and a runny nose. He didn’t feel well, but he is a kid so he slid down the slides and spent a day at the waterpark, dutifully infecting everyone else there that day. Now, to be fair, I don’t know that W had covid but his mother’s sister did have covid and she lives in their house. So… it seems like a good possibility. Now we already know two people tangentially related to us with covid and it’s coming for us. But who knows how many people were exposed in Chelan. Hundreds?
After returning from the waterpark W had to stay with his grandparents for several nights because his mother didn’t want him to get covid from his aunt. Problem was, he probably already had it. He also spent one night with my grandson, ‘I’, in preparation for a birthday party the next day. Yep, you guessed it. We attended the birthday party, and so did my older daughter and her husband, and his parents (the grandparents mentioned earlier), my sister, my younger daughter, seven little kids and their parents. W was there running around with his runny nose looking a little peaked (sickly). We were mostly outside but together for several hours. Thirteen people were exposed that day, including my younger grandson, J.
The next day my daughter brought her kids over for a visit and stayed even though ‘I’ had a tummy ache and felt badly for part of the time. He also had a runny nose. Looking back we are pretty sure he had whatever his cousin had, which was likely covid. Neither was tested. Two days later R got sick, and a day later N got sick. After five days of excruciating symptoms R finally went to the doctor and you guessed it, he has covid AND he has blood leaking out of his heart. Covid related? He is now in the hospital. My daughter and her family all tested yesterday and J, our one-year-old grandson tested positive. I babysat him on Wednesday and Thursday, and spent time with him on Sunday after church, where he was the only human not masked during the service. The circle on contagion is widening.
Now my husband and I are quarantining for safety sake and will test if we experience any symptoms at all. Before I knew about J being positive I spent a long day waiting for a prescription at the hospital pharmacy. I spent most of the time outside waiting, but did end up inside sitting fairly close to a few people for twenty + minutes. Did I expose anyone? I hope not but the potential was there.
But let’s trail back and see where else this goes, shall we?
We’ll never know about the participants at the waterpark that fateful day. Sorry people.
Of the participants at the party we know three people got covid (R, N, and J) and it is likely that it started with W and spread to ‘I’. That is five for sure or likely cases.
Of the other eight people remaining, two of them took airplane rides within the incubation period. Of course they were masked but exposure to others, hundreds?, was possible. My sister, one of the flyers, was picked up at her destination by my mother who is 92. They spent a car ride together. Two days later, my mother went to church and sat next to several people and spoke to many more, wearing a mask, I presume. Dozens exposed?
The other flyer got herself home and lives alone. But after the exposure could not attend the first night of her choir who has been singing remotely for over a year and last night was the first face-to-face practice in over a year. Exposure has consequences.
Two of the parents at the party are teachers, one an elementary teacher, the other secondary. With school starting up this past week they have been in close contact with lots of students and other humans, totaling over 150 people when combined.
‘I’ went to preschool one day and four of the other kids at the party attend daycare and/or school. J also went to daycare for several days before he was found to be positive. Dozens more children were exposed as were their teachers and care workers.
One man unwilling to get vaccinated and another family, mine, is now contagious and look at the circle on contagion that has spread around us. We’ve all unwittingly spread the disease to schools, day care, airports (and two other states), churches (at least two), innocent by-standers at a pharmacy, and unknown other places and families. We’ll never know the full extent of the contagion, but we do know that at least one person is seriously in trouble and in the hospital. And that person wasn’t vaccinated.
