CDC ditches 5-day COVID isolation, argues COVID is becoming flu-like
CDC ditches 5-day COVID isolation, argues COVID is becoming flu-like
The agency released a unified "practical" guidance for respiratory viruses.
COVID-19 is becoming more like the flu and, as such, no longer requires its own virus-specific health rules, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday alongside the release of a unified "respiratory virus guide."
In a lengthy background document, the agency laid out its rationale for consolidating COVID-19 guidance into general guidance for respiratory viruses—including influenza, RSV, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, enteroviruses, and others, though specifically not measles. The agency also noted the guidance does not apply to health care settings and outbreak scenarios.
"COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including influenza and RSV," the agency wrote.
The most notable change in the new guidance is the previously reported decision to no longer recommend a minimum five-day isolation period for those infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Instead, the new isolation guidance is based on symptoms, which matches long-standing isolation guidance for other respiratory viruses, including influenza.
Fuck you CDC. Long Covid is real.
Just leave 5 days as a recommendation. What's the harm in that? fuckers.
Ed: CDC could do better to protect people, but instead bend to capitalist (mostly GQP) forces to ignore that edict and get sick people back out working.
Fwiw, they mostly did, it's just that it is no longer restricted solely to COVID and now is shared with others.
e.g. stating that people should "take precautions", which if someone can work from home could be that, and/or wearing masks if not, etc. Unfortunately, not everyone (single mothers?) has the luxury of taking a week off whenever they want or even NEED to.
Also, this is just a guess but I am fairly positive that this is based on all the EXTREME amount of push-back that they have been putting up with from Republicans over the last few years to CONTINUALLY get all up in their business, despite barely having finished a high school's worth of edumacashiun. And probably also, to an enormously lesser degree, from Democrats who want to push the "pandemic is solved, b/c Biden won the last election" message that they believe will resonate with the handful of centrist people left in the country.
So this is once again a symptom of late-stage capitalism, where obstructionists shoot the department in the head, then complain how "ineffective" it is after that.
e.g. stating that people should “take precautions”, which if someone can work from home could be that, and/or wearing masks if not, etc. Unfortunately, not everyone (single mothers?) has the luxury of taking a week off whenever they want or even NEED to.
On the other hand, employers will take this to mean 'come in or else,' even if WFH is an option. I know for a fact that my previous hybrid job that claimed they were doing whatever the CDC suggested would interpret this as 'you can come into the office after 24 hours of the symptoms ending.' I guarantee you that they would be far from alone.
So yeah, this would help those single mothers. This will also spread a lot more COVID and possibly kill those single mothers.
Fwiw, they mostly did
No they didn't. 5 days of "normal activities with precautions" is not 5 days of "isolation".
And the core problem is that 5 days was already not scientific and "fever" isn't an indicator of infectiousness at all, it's just a symptom that some infectious people experience for some of their infectious period.
From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35853589/:
"We showed that among the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant infected patients, viral shedding continues for ≥10 days in 13.5% of all cases and 11% in symptom-free cases. The decision for cessation of isolation according to the presence of symptoms could be reconsidered until further studies disapprove of our results."
Unfortunately, not everyone (single mothers?) has the luxury of taking a week off whenever they want or even NEED to.
The CDC changing he recommendation doesn't do anything for people who might need to leave the house for supplies or to pick up a child. They already could and would do that, because a recommendation to private citizens is just a recommendation. Where it matters is that it removes liability from their employers and "lets" them work, but that's only "helpful" because so many people are desperately poor and they haven't mandated paid sick leave when people have infectious diseases. This is the sort of "helping workers" where the help is just because they do absolutely nothing to require humane conditions from their employers. Taking a week off to not infect your fellow workers shouldn't be a "luxury".
stating that people should "take precautions", which if someone can work from home could be that, and/or wearing masks if not, etc.
Except that is not what is being reported, it not what managers will enforce, and it’s not what most people will do. It’s a poor decision because adding nuance will just make people ignore what they want to.
I think it's that case that a lot of these viruses have "long" versions. We just call it things like ME/CFS.
Long CoVID is indeed real but the same issue happens with many other diseases including the flu. That said, Covid is still much deadlier than the flu should not be treated as such.
Long COVID happens at a WAY higher rate than ME/CFS does with any other illness. In an oversimplification, they're basically the same thing. COVID is the first disease we've found that can reliably trigger ME/CFS, to the point where it got its own name.
People isolating for five days can’t work, and we value our GDP over our lives.
I never considered it but long covid might explain a lot about how I can barely concentrate anymore. like at all, on anything
Permanently Deleted
Please show me where they addressed long Covid there?
Anyway, to your point, the casual public fuckhead only sees the headline and just goes out sick and unmasked.
Same as they did forever when they were sick with a cold to invite some company to their misery.
And in what way do you think that addresses the fact that long Covid is real and common?
COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including influenza and RSV," the agency wrote.
Instead of treating COVID like Influenza and RSV, let's treat Influenza and RSV like COVID. Cough more than twice in 24 hours, put on a fucking mask.
Fuck the cdc. They've made one bad call after another on this thing since the start. Becoming like the flu? Last time I caught this shit a few months ago I was in bed for 2 weeks before I could even function at a base level again. And that's with being fully boosted, otherwise healthy, in shape, and using paxlovid.
Won't you please think of the economy!
The side effects from paxlovid can be very harsh and may be part of you felt so poor.
Perhaps, but last time I had covid (two years ago) without Paxlovid it was even worse. I ended up in the ER and my oxygen hung around 82-85% for days. I think I'm just one of the lucky few who won the shitty body prize when it comes to covid response.
Edit: For reference, I'm not in the at-risk age group, I bike 5-7 miles a day, practice yoga regularly, eat a vegetarian diet and get blood tested every 6 months to make sure I'm not nutritionally deficient, I stay on top of my boosters, wear masks when out in crowds...etc. I think it's just the luck of the draw with some people when it comes to this weird virus.
It still kills multiple times the number of people that the flu does. They are not the same.
I’ve been expecting this from the cdc for a while, I just didn’t know if it would be this year or next. The mortality numbers are looking like COVID (all strains) in ‘23 was less than 2x the influenza (all strains) numbers (which are climbing again) and it may be on track for the ratio to drop again this year.
The CDC is looking at statistics and - from a population health perspective- a certain number of deaths per year is acceptable. That’s true in how I design buildings, too. We look at probabilistic numbers on external loads, evaluate the utility of the building and the number of people who will die if it collapses, and we put a chalk mark at the “appropriate “ location - and everybody beyond that mark dies. It sounds callous, but if you’ve ever complained scott the cost of housing, I can tell you that we can reduce the number of deaths in building fires/collapses/etc. I can buy back, say, 20% of those lives simply by doubling the cost of your average house. Or making your library or restaurant cost twice as much to build. We could kill more people for more affordable housing, too.
After mask mandates lifted people actually seemed to be conscious around illness and stayed home or kept their kids home if they were sick. Lately it seems like sick people are everywhere especially this winter. In the past two months we had both covid and norovirus in the house.
There are a lot of never-maskers out there, but I’d say that I’ve seen at least an order of magnitude increase in general usage even years after the lock downs and mandate have been lifted.
10,000 people have died of COVID in the US in the two months of 2024 alone.
How many people have died of influenza in that time?
I looked this up because I was curious, according to the CDC 4171 people have died from influenza in 2024 so far
None, remember the stats? Completely ceased to exist couple years ago.
Remember how we were meant to defeat COVID by staying home and playing video games?
I’m still doing my part
Been training for it my whole life.
Sounds like our 1% overlords just want us back on the workforce as quickly as possible
Fuck the CDC and late stage capitalism. One of my best friends is in a wheelchair for the rest of her life because of Long COVID, she can't walk a few feet without being so out of breath she passes out. My mom got Long COVID the first and now the second time she's been infected. She still coughs every time she walked around or does any activities. She has to carry an inhaler now but she doesn't have asthma, just Long COVID. She got COVID only a few weeks ago and it's was most definitely NOT like the flu for her or anyone I've known that's gotten it.
I would call it 'stupid' but there is 100% a more malicious reason for this
Man, last time most of my relatives died of the flu 😷 that must have been pretty bad. But good thing the flu never killed my immediate relatives like my grandparents, my parents or my siblings. The others that did get killed by the flu probably had it coming. El flu es muy bueno! Y sabroso! Yeah! Baby!
But now here comes COVID 19 trying to be a copycat. Sure if you get COVID you might get long COVID and never recover and die eventually. Sure if you got autoimmune stuff going on like HIV, colitis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, MS and such with suppressants, you could actually die of COVID. But we're here to make money not to worry about if you're gonna die from a deadly disease or not. So fine COVID you can be flu like.
We'll miss you guys! Specially my mom. I'm gonna miss her. And my sister with her MS. But hey, McDonald's gotta make a buck! We can't be holding the line mom! Sorry! We can work on a nice eulogy while you don't have COVID yet. I'll call you sometime! 😉
no one normalizes needless death like americans
People should also quarantine if they have the flu.
Idiots. My workplace is packing people into conference rooms for a standup every morning. I see people with visible symptoms and nobody wears a mask anymore. Surely this will end well… I’ve already gone through RSV hell this year and I’m still experiencing residual symptoms and brain fog from COVID I caught last year. But sure CDC, it’s no big deal.
It was like the flu the whole fucking time, jesus. If literally everyone got the flu, yeah, some people die. The idea we can control this is asinine at current technology levels. piss around for years and blow everything up instead of just getting it over with isn't leadership, it's cowardice.
Except the original COVID was literally killing 1% of the people that caught it. I lost many friends. Nobody I know died of the flu. Especially in the same year.
Physics Girl on YouTube (https://youtube.com/@physicsgirl?si=hsr7n5xi2VRCEZMV) contracted COVID a year ago and has been totally crippled since.
Scary shit man.
I’ve had it 3 or 4 times and it was a minor cold. My fiancé lost her sense of taste for over a year and was knocked out every other time she had it.
I don’t know. What can you do? The world goes where the world goes. Just gotta ride until we die.
Remember when you would get shouted down for saying this will eventually be treated like the flu? I do.
No, I remember when people who said it was the flu got told that they were idiots because influenza is, a) a totally different family of viruses than coronaviruses and b) really fucking deadly.
So yeah, if you say that, you're as much of an idiot as someone who says that people shouldn't be worried about all those wolf attacks when there are leopards on the loose.
I remember conservatives complaining about their oppression happening, but I've never heard of it happening in real life.
You got shouted down for saying that covid WAS already like the flu. Stop arguing in bad faith and spread disinformation.
No, but I do remember almost everyone agreeing with that. The part they disagreed with was how long "eventually" would be.
You're spare parts bud.