CDC Needs To Change Its Covid Isolation Guidance, Opinion, Wash Post

- Opinion, The Checkup With Dr. Wen: The CDC needs to change its covid guidance, By Leana S. Wen, Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2023.

The end-of-summer increase in covid-19 infections has brought renewed attention to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s isolation guidance. These outdated recommendations must be revised, as they disincentivize testing, sow confusion and fail to achieve the most important objective of protecting vulnerable individuals.

This suggestion is not new. In April, three health experts wrote in The Post that the CDC should retire the existing policy and treat covid as it does influenza and other viral illnesses. Other countries have long since pivoted to this approach. Denmark has removed isolation requirements specific to covid. Britain no longer requires testing for symptomatic individuals and recommends that children with covid stay home for just three days.

To me, the most compelling reason for the CDC to change its recommendations is that they are not being followed, even by conscientious people. Robert from Virginia wrote that he just contracted covid. “I stayed in my apartment alone for five days,” he told me. “Now, can I drive my mother (87 years old) to her dialysis appointments? Do we still need to wear masks in the car, since we are having dinner together after the dialysis?”

Elizabeth from New York is a single mom of two boys. One of her children just tested positive for covid through his school’s screening program, though he has no symptoms. “Should I really keep him home until he tests negative?” she asks. “When I had covid, I was positive for two weeks. It makes me wish I never agreed to test him.” She adds that she is not testing herself or her other child because she can’t afford to miss more work...

- Read More, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/28/cdc-isolation-guidance-covid-protection/
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- Select Comments (of 402):

- No wonder teachers are leaving in droves. Kids are not at high risk, so go ahead and send them sick/contagious to school? Thanks a lot - on behalf of all the adults exposed to them.

- I agree that the current CDC advice is confusing. I got Covid for the first time a month ago and I read the rules as having to isolate for 10 days, not 5. I'm sorry but there is no way I'm comfortable with that no matter what the CDC says. I stayed in for 10 days and masked when leaving the house after that until I had a negative test. Though I realize now, I should have waited until I had two in a row? I don't know. Like I said, it was confusing.

The other issue I see with these guidelines is that the antigen home tests are not reliable enough to be making these kinds of decisions. I got a "head cold" the very next day after returning from a trip, but didn't test positive for another two days -- at which point I had already infected my husband and it was too late for Paxlovid.

- The CDC is an easy target and they’re certainly not perfect but the past few years have proved that most people don’t care all that much about one another. I’ve known or know of an increasing number of people who have not shared their positive status and exposed others to Covid figuring it’s on them to deal with it. I used to think that nobody I would be acquainted with would do that but now I’ve come to expect it. Do say it’s pretty disappointing is beyond an understatement.

- As someone who lost her husband to COVID because his caregivers would not mask, I believe many (if not most!) people just don't care. If they are not at risk to die, then they just go on with their lives and DO NOT care about the health and safety of others. I know people who were mildly symptomatic, who have attended sporting events - unmasked! I was exposed a few weeks ago and even though I repeatedly tested negative, I stayed home for a week. I would not be able to live with myself if I infected another person just because I felt "okay". We now live in an "everyone is out for themselves" society that no longer cares about others. It is beyond sad and breaks my heart as this selfishness will and does lead to the deaths of others. The elderly and infirm are being sacrificed so that others can have their stinking "freedumb".

- A large 2022 study published in Lancet Respiratory Medicine found that 65 percent of individuals are still shedding the virus five days after symptoms emerge. While the viral load is lower than earlier in their illness, they could still transmit it to others. And all of them are vectors for new mutations which could be even more transmissible -- and potentially fatal. This is what happens when there are no reasonable sick pay regulations, and people are doing what they have to do to pay the bills. Others just don't care who they infect.

In the past year I've known 41 people who got covid. One in her 40s died. One was so sick she lost her baby. Four others, in their working years, got long covid with devastating effects on their lives and livelihoods. And one ended up in ICU and hospital for three weeks and barely survived. But deliberately misleading disinformation from the far right, plus the "I'm all right Jack...and screw you" mentality is a potentially fatal disease -- both scientifically and politically.

- Do the home antigen tests even work? In the summer of 2022, I got what I am fairly certain was COVID, but I never got a positive out of a half-dozen tests.

- They are not full proof and that is the reason you should test for several days and if you can with different test brands.

- I tested negative at home on two Binax tests, but at an Urgent Care I tested positive using a different brand. A couple of days later I tested negative at Walgreens. I don't know what brand was used at Walgreens

I thought I had bronchitis initially, but my symptoms were identical to those of my adult nephew's symptoms, and he repeatedly tested positive for Covid. Like me, he had severe laryngitis, a dry cough that could go on for hours, and a low-grade temperature. I was prescribed an antiviral.

- The antigen tests appear to work well for some patients but not for others.

- This opinion piece completely ignores the real danger of Long Covid. Covid can sequester in the body for years, and wreak havoc with various systems, including the heart, immune system and the brain. One case of Covid can do these things. Repeated infections add to your risk. Given the surge, all people should be masking, all the time. Covid is more like HIV than it is like a cold. This is the message that CDC should be providing.

- This article asks people to use critical thinking. Part of the population defies all thinking and relies on what ever news site validates their already existing ideas which continue to infect everyone else...