‘Landmines all the way down’: the guilt and frustration of breakthrough Covid

The never-ending pandemic forces people to do their best to balance living a decent life and making responsible choices

When Sean Williams, 50, caught a breakthrough case of Covid-19 in November, he felt guilty and embarrassed. His 14-year-old tested positive, too; both were double-vaxxed" and probably caught it from his 11-year-old daughter, who got it in school two days before her scheduled first vaccination.

It's impossible to talk about without going through this whole tortured thing about how careful you were before you got it," says Williams, who lives with his family in New York City. Also, this horrible feeling that you have to stutter your way through a clarification that you do believe in science, you did get vaccinated, you're, like, not a fascist, even. It's landmines all the way down."