I, too, have seen its effects first-hand. My daughter had it a month ago - she apparently got it from my in-laws at Christmas, who tested positive shortly after the holiday. Somehow my wife and I never tested positive. My in-laws were sick for over 3 weeks, but thankfully they were never hospitalized. I'm glad you are recovering, and I hope you have no long-lasting effects.

Perhaps you misunderstood my post, or perhaps I mistakenly conveyed an unintended message - I absolutely recognize that COVID is real and that it is dangerous. My family and I are all very careful - I already had a pack of N-95 masks when the pandemic started, and I've been wearing those every time I go anywhere since before the CDC did its about-face and recommended masks after originally saying they weren't necessary. Yet, we were still directly impacted.

But that brings me to the actual message I was trying to communicate - even the government agencies have been inconsistent in what they have told us. Anthony Fauci is actually on record admitting that he strategically withheld information from the public about mask efficacy in order to prevent the public from taking PPE away from healthcare workers. In my opinion, it would have been more prudent to simply tell the public that cloth masks are effective for non-medical situations. Putting out adamant guidance that masks were not effective and then doing a complete 180 a month or two later did a lot of damage to the public's trust of the officials who were "calling the shots". Then there's the information about the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID. It turns out that in 2005, the NIH put out a study that suggested hydroxychloroquine was not only an effective treatment for coronaviruses, but it could also be an effective prophylactic. This is the same NIH under which Anthony Fauci has been the director of the NAIAD since 1984, so you won't convince me he was not aware of this study. This type of inconsistency is what makes me suspicious of all the information we are given by mainstream sources. With regard to the governor's COVID website, with all due respect, I find that data utterly useless. That's not necessarily the governor's fault, but since Virginia does not link identity to COVID tests, the totals for percent positive and total cases are meaningless. The same person could test positive or negative multiple times, so the numbers do not tell us anything useful about how many unique COVID cases there are at any time. My wife and I were tested a total of 4 times, and each test was negative, so in our case, we actually skewed the percent positive data lower. I've heard of others who have tested positive multiple times. There's just no way to draw any conclusions from this data.

Regarding football games, I could not care less if fans are allowed to attend, or if they even have the games at all. I've stated multiple times recently that I do not watch college football anymore, and I'd actually prefer if it just went away altogether. I'm sickened by the way it has become nothing more than a business, and I refuse to participate in it any longer. So I'm in total agreement with you - I'd prefer to see kids return to school long before any emphasis is made on re-opening sporting events to fans.

I wish you continued healing and recovery going forward. Hopefully we will all be able to reclaim some sense of "normalcy" in the coming year.