A couple of weeks ago, I started reading about the unusual way that COVID was affecting kids. Spots on the hands and feet. Blisters on the mouth and tongue. Decreased blood pressure. Fever. Today’s NYT’s Daily podcast discusses this topic.

In the beginning of March, Ian had spots on his hands and feet. The blisters on his mouth and throat that were so severe that he was hospitalized for three days. He was diagnosed with a mild form of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare reaction to epilepsy medicine.

We stopped the medicine. He recovered.

But then the news about the COVID presentations in children made me wonder. Maybe he had COVID in the beginning of March. It was certainly spreading in our community at that time. So, I called the doctor, and she had him tested for antibodies.

He came back negative. No COVID antibodies. So, the epilepsy medicine was definitely the cause of his problems in early March.

Now, you would think this was good news, but it isn’t, really. It would be better for him to have COVID than to have an extreme and rare sensitivity to epilepsy medicine, which he’ll need to take for the rest of his life. Also, it means that probably none of us in the family had the disease yet.

Steve, who traveled into Manhattan on packed commuter trains every day, didn’t get it back then. Jonah, who was living in the toxic waste dump that was his off-campus college housing, didn’t have it. Ian and I, who spent are entire days in one of the nation’s hotspots for the virus, didn’t have it. Hell, we were all in the emergency room of a hospital without any PPE just a week before everything exploded in our area. None of us had it.

I suspect that outside of New York City very few people have actually been exposed and developed an immune system to combat this virus. Social distancing worked. But now that we’re lowering our guards and heading out into the world, we’re going to see some really bad shit soon.

Knowing this, my family is still lowering our guard. My college kid has to get out of the house and get a job. We have to rent a vacation house by the beach soon. Without school or college, family sanity demands some outlets.

I mean, we’re not going to start going mask-less and waving “Freedom” banners outside state capitals. Steve will be working from home until at least next January. I don’t expect that there will be any camps for Ian. But we’re making changes.

Which means that everybody is going to get really sick in September. Are we prepared for that?