Lesley Weidenbener: The dread that comes with a COVID surge

On March 6, 2020—a Friday night—my mom and I joined two friends at the Magic in the Making art event at the Stutz building.

By that time, COVID was in the headlines and Indiana had its first cases. But—and this sounds ridiculous in hindsight—the pandemic seemed to be happening elsewhere.

Still, I remember that, as we stood among hundreds of other people, crowded into small artist’s studios and eating food in the larger common spaces, I wondered if attending had been a terrible idea. I had a feeling of dread as I looked around and realized how easily an illness could be passed at an event like that.

This was before terms like “super-spreader event” became common vernacular and when officials said we didn’t need to wear masks.

But when I got home that night—and then didn’t get sick in the coming days—I felt incredibly fortunate. It was just a week later that the Big Ten Basketball Tournament would be canceled midstream and the NCAA would cancel its Men’s Basketball Tournament for the year, moves that seemed unthinkable just days before.

It was like déjà vu when, last Friday night, my mom and I headed to Indiana University Auditorium to see the band Straight No Chaser—this time vaccinated, boosted and under a mask requirement. But the apparently highly contagious omicron variant was also threatening to significantly increase the number of cases.

When I bought the tickets just a few days before, I wasn’t worried. Ever since I was vaccinated, I have been out and about, working in the office full time, shopping, dining out, seeing friends.

It’s not that I have thought those activities were risk-free. They absolutely are not. But I have felt confident that my vaccination (the one-shot J&J and then my Moderna booster) would keep me and my husband safe from serious illness.

Still, in the few days between purchasing the Straight No Chaser ticket and actually going to the event, news about the omicron variant exploded. And while, to that point, Indiana had not actually confirmed a case, I was confident omicron was well-entrenched in the state. (The state would confirm the first omicron case two days later, from a specimen taken 10 days before.)

I couldn’t help but think back to 2020 and wonder—again—if we should be going to the concert at all. And if we did, would it be the last thing we did socially for a long time?

We did go. We wore our masks and hoped for the best. To our knowledge, we did not leave with a case of omicron—or any other COVID variant.

But it would be only days before the sports world started rescheduling games again, before companies started canceling plans for events, and before my family’s Christmas plans—like so many other people’s—were wrecked by a new wave of COVID.

Fortunately, it appears—so far—that this variant might be less dangerous than those that came before it. Still, its ability to spread quickly and to more people means it still has the potential to send more people to the hospital, a scary proposition considering how crowded hospitals already are.

So, for the moment, I’m pulling back again a bit. Not completely. I’m not retreating like I did pre-vaccination. I’ll still see my family for a delayed holiday celebration. I’ll still go to work. But concerts might be off the table.

Here’s wishing all of you a happy and healthy holiday season. Stay safe.•

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Weidenbener is editor of IBJ.