Some families forming pandemic pods, but are they a good option?

PITTSBURGH — We all need some social interaction these days and everyone is going about it their own way.

Some families have joined pandemic pods, a group of parents and/or kids who hang out exclusively with each other. They’re careful about who they interact with outside of the pod so they can feel safe hanging out together.

Tira Card, Fran Hernandez, and Valerie Kubiek formed a pod early in the pandemic.

“It is so helpful to be able to socialize a little bit for us. Just to have someone to vent, to talk to, to see other people, interact and still be able to be safe,” said Kubiek.

All their kids go to a daycare together that Hernandez runs.

“They see each other there so why stop when they come home. They’ve been so much happier, so much happier,” mom Tira Card said about the kids and admits she and her friends have been happier too.

Even though their kids are there when they get together on Tuesdays, it’s a time for the moms to have conversations with other adults, while the kids do crafts and they all make dinner together.

“I couldn’t have done this without them,” said Card. “Their support, knowing that no matter what I had to say, there were two people to send me goofy pictures back to make me smile.”

But they’ve had to have hard, frank conversations with each other when COVID-19 scares have come in the picture.

“It’s really for me about who you can trust. You have to know and be open and transparent with each other and communicate,” said Hernandez.

Channel 11 asked Dr. Nathan Shively, an AHN infectious disease doctor his opinion of pods.

“I think the theory of pods is a reasonable one, and if families are truly limiting all social interaction to just members of their pod, it could be an effective way to limit the possibility of introduction and transmission of the virus,” Shively said. “Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to know if other members of your pod are fully limiting their social interactions to just the pod. They may have the possibility for exposure at work, at school, elsewhere in the community, or in other gatherings they may choose to have. If someone in the pod is exposed elsewhere, then the pod becomes the opposite of what is intended, and a fast way for the virus to transmit given the potentially false sense of security the members of the pod may have when they interact with one another. At a time when we have exponential increases in COVID-19 cases around the country and in our area, families are safest avoiding all gatherings with others that do not live in their household.”

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Cox Media Group