Today we received an alert from our school that our little little had been noted as a "close contact" when an absent classmate reported they had tested positive.

We had just been looking at the climbing rates reported by our school district. Normally in the low single-digits of "new cases" in the last week, the post New Year surge report had single-digits of dozens of new cases! We steeled ourselves for an imminent engagement, and then it came today.

We've been through it before, with the big little having to quarantine when a classmate reported they had tested positive. A major difference this time is that we're all vaccinated now, and the adults are boosted. The process at the school is that quarantine isn't required for vaccinated people who don't show symptoms.

We continue to test weekly, the last coming on Tuesday (where we still all tested negative), postponed from New Year's Day. The next is scheduled for tomorrow.

Then, on the way home from picking the kids up after school, we stopped by the pharmacy to fetch something for the missus. While we queued I received an alert in my COVIDaware MN app. The app uses Bluetooth pings to other users of the app, and creates a graph of who's nearby and when. It's crowd-sourced so that if you test positive, you enter that information, and the app finds connections during the critical windows.

I misread the announcement to say I was standing near enough someone at the moment, but after I had a chance to review in detail, I see that it was discovered I was near someone last week, the last week of 2021. I tried to remember where I might have been, as we've not been going to restaurants, and I haven't made many store excursions, either. Mostly school pick-ups, and during that last week, the kids were home sick.

I did meet a friend for lunch. Two friends, different locations. Now I'm nervous.

On both occasions, we sat alone, separated from others, masked while walking through the places, dealing largely with just the masked waitstaff in both places. Of course, we were there for about an hour each time, so circulating air from a dozen feet away or more puts just about everyone else in the places as potential culprits.

A plus to this alert is that it's been long enough that if I was exposed and caught the thing, I should be in that sweet spot of early contagion now, so our tests tomorrow should confirm either way. Of course, a positive test would probably be household-wide. Other than those meals, though, I've only been to the school and one quick dash through the store, where I got my alert.

Fingers crossed we stay healthy.

Everyone's healthy.