CDC recommends shorter COVID isolation, quarantine for all

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials on Monday cut isolation restrictions for Americans who catch the coronavirus from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop.

The decision also was driven by a recent surge in COVID-19 cases, propelled by the omicron variant. Early research suggests omicron may cause milder illnesses than earlier versions of the coronavirus. But the sheer number of people becoming infected — and therefore having to isolate or quarantine — threatens to crush the ability of hospitals, airlines and other businesses to stay open, experts say.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the country is about to see a lot of omicron cases. “Not all of those cases are going to be severe. In fact many are going to be asymptomatic,” she told The Associated Press on Monday. “We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science.”

Last week, the agency loosened rules that previously called on health care workers to stay out of work for 10 days if they test positive. The new recommendations said workers could go back to work after seven days if they test negative and don’t have symptoms. And the agency said isolation time could be cut to five days, or even fewer, if there are severe staffing shortages. Now, the CDC is changing the isolation and quarantine guidance for the general public to be even less stringent.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-business-health-rochelle-walensky-d7d609c9c01e200d250df7ca7282c9d6

[SheltieLover]

1. 5 dats? Really?

[samplegirl]

2. This will just encourage people

to just run around with it.

[luv2fly]

3. People that think that way probably already were/are n/t

[agalisgv]

6. I was going to say the same thing

People who don't care about other people have already proven they aren't wearing masks and don't isolate.

[herding cats]

9. If they don't mask or vax they already are running around ignoring guidelines.

Those who vax and mask will follow the asymptotic fully vaxxed guidelines and mask the additional 5 days after their 5 day quarantine.

This is literally just a guideline for the rules followers. We're not a high risk factor in the spread of Covid and they're treating us as such. The rest of the population doesn't care what the CDC says. They're the problem, not the CDC.

[Scrivener7]

4. The CDC is an ass. And they keep proving it.

[mucifer]

5. There are no simple answers. From the article:

When people get infected, the risk of spread drops substantially after five days, but it does not disappear for everyone, said Dr. Aaron Glatt, a New York physician who is a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

“If you decrease it to five days, you’re still going to have a small but significant number of people who are contagious,” he said.

That’s why wearing masks is a critical part of the CDC guidance, Walensky said.

I'm a nurse. But, I don't know more than the epidemiologists at the CDC.

[quakerboy]

7. Oh good

I love it when politics overrides all other considerations in public policy.

[chowder66]

8. So does this mean that Delta isn't contagious for the most part after a few days or

is this for people who magically know they have the Omicron variant? Delta is still out there isn't it?

[moriah]

10. In many states, yes, Delta is still potentially the cause of ICU counts/vents/deaths.

The scary thing about Omicron, however, is that it overtook Delta much faster than Delta overtook Beta insofar as being the dominant circulating strain.

This can be good news, or this can be bad, all depending on just what Omicron "learned" during its passage through many humans to get to an immunocompromised host, and from them to the world. Serial human transmission will definitely eventually make a zoonotic emerging virus better able to infect humans.

But the reason most of the human coronavirus-based colds are likely around is that they, too, were once like COVID when they came on the scene. The strategy that has seemed to work for them is to make people juuuuuust ill enough to generate massive amounts of virus, but not ill enough to stop their lives or wear a mask if they don't already. They and humans have a weird shared co-existence, and that's what viruses require to not be fought with distancing, masking, vaccination campaigns, pills that seem to actually work, and all the amazing barriers we have thrown in the face of this monster (despite holdouts, primarily in my area of the USA).

I think any variant that overtakes the dominant one very quickly should still be a variant of concern. Omicron may be the first on the path of many variants to take COVID from the awful death toll of the original strain in cities, the decimation both Beta and Delta caused -- Beta for my state while people were getting vaxxed, and Delta when it got too hot and they all went under air conditioners/complained about masks (If you search my posts, you might hear even me saying I might give it up in August - well, our wave was cresting throughout August, so others may have given it up sooner if they were even bothering at all) to the common cold -- but it may still fark up our healthcare system. So may its successors.

Especially when the healthcare system has to deal with the way Omicron affects the "control group" here in the US. We have much better treatment options than this time last year, but ICU beds -- our main bottleneck for what the US can do insofar as treating the most critical of ALL patients, those with COVID or not -- will likely still be at a premium here in Feburary. (It may be cray, but with as much devastation as the Southern US saw w/ the horrible winter weather last year, it kept most people home for about two weeks -- enough to give Beta a bit of a kick in the arse. I'm praying this year's unseasonably WARM weather through holiday gatherings meant people sat outside enjoying it rather than huddling under heat.)

[chowder66]

11. Thank you. nt