Creating a SAFE Family COVID Bubble Plan

November 20, 2020 by Doug Dillon 5845 1 0

When COVID hit last March, my wife, Barbara and I, like a lot of older people with health conditions, pretty much isolated ourselves in our home here in Central Florida. That isolation included separating from our daughter, her husband, and our granddaughter, as well as our son, who all live in nearby communities. But, recently, Barb and I began working with our children to see if we could possibly create a COVID bubble plan that might allow us all to safely visit in at least a little freer atmosphere.

Those family members get more exposed to the world than we do, to varying degrees, but use masks, carefully social distance, and work hard to avoid unmasked people, especially indoors. And, thankfully, they have remained free of this horrible illness. But, with the rising infection rate all over the country, making our COVID bubble plan a safe one was quite a challenge.

Doug and Barb Dillon in happier days before COVID

Up to this point, we had gotten together occasionally, but outside, masked, and social distanced of at least 6 feet. Or if we wanted to share a meal, we did it outside, and unmasked, but at a much great distance from each other. Unsatisfactory, for sure, but better than nothing. However, with winter on the way, even here in Florida, it can get much too cold for extended outdoor visits. So, using our existing outdoor visiting structure as a floor for our COVID bubble plan, we set to work.

Of course, we did all kinds of online research. In fact, at the end of this article, you will see links to the information I found. And once we collected all that data, we did a lot of talking on the phone. And talking. And talking. All those conversations went on and on and we got so confused, we just keep going in circles. It got very difficult and we wondered if we could ever come up with a safe COVID bubble plan.

The Dillon family burns up the cell towers

Finally, we determined we had enough knowledge that we could put some of that down in writing in the form of questions that we all would have to answer about what we might be able to safely tolerate in visiting each other’s homes: quick, simply stated questions requiring only yes/no/maybe responses. And if we could agree on those things, only THEN could we actually create a COVID bubble plan. And, amazingly, it worked.

It was my son-in-law who finally came up with the basic questions and a format for allowing us as a family to respond before attempting to make an actual COVID bubble plan. The result was two questionnaires, one focusing on family gatherings and the other on behaviors and activities that we engage in that some of us might view, even the slightest bit, as COVID risky. That last one was mainly for Barb and me, looking at our daughter, her family, and our son, because they are more “out there” in the world than we are.

Just a couple of checklists in a simple, user friendy format

The results, once we compiled them, then gave my daughter a solid basis to create that illusive COVID bubble plan and she did. Yes, it still took a good bit of work and some more conversation, but with the agreed upon “tolerance guidelines,” we didn’t get all bogged down in endless talking like we had before. And the results are tailer-made just for our family, based on our COVID understanding and tolerance levels. Everyone had to agree on each item and if anyone disagreed, that item was thrown out, recognizing that it took unanimous approval to make the thing work.

I’m not going to tell you what our final plan was because that is not the point of this article. I will say that we didn’t change a lot of our previous behaviors because we felt that going too far afield from them woulldn’t be safe. What I will share with you are the two questionnaires. But, keep in mind that some of those questions were structured to fit just one family member. Even so, we hope they might at least be a starting point for you in case you might want to create your own COVID bubble plan.

Click here to see our COVID Questionnaires

We aren’t doctors or researchers and we make no claims that what we came up with has value beyond our own little group, but they just might. Those two documents were created in Microsoft Word using the “table” format for easy viewing and changing. So, do your own research, scrutinize our questions, see if the formats make sense, make changes to your hearts content and print them up for your family. How very much we hope this will assist you in developing your own COVID bubble plan.

I would love to hear about how our little effort was of benefit to you, or not. So, feel free to use the comment link below, either to tell me how things went or ask a question.

For Further Reading