My wife's family takes the virus seriously, and yet does not. Contradictory right?

Her family has a long history of "getting together" for big family gatherings. If there isn't a holiday or a birthday as an excuse they just make up a reason to gather every two or three weeks. Yet here they are mixing three or four households. And every household of two or more people has its own ven diagram of outside contact, now overlappping.

I have avoided going to ALL of these gatherings because the guidelines were to NOT mix households. So what does my wife do? Two weeks ago, she invites her brother and his wife, her sister and her husband and son, over to OUR house for dinner! So now, I have FIVE other people crowded into our home. Well, she set the table but I grabbed a TV tray and ate in the living room rather than be one of seven crowded around the dinner table. It garnered me a rather piqued look from her but I spent the next 2+ hours staying across the room from everyone else.

Then late last week, we find out one of her brother's wife's sons had covid and was on a respirator.

People are just not getting the concept of layered protection until we hit 80% vaccination. Masks + distance + vaccine