WHAT THE HEALTH?

Faster than you can say "Omicron sounds like a Transformers villain,” the Centers For Disease Control took a bold step backward yesterday, March 1st, by dropping the five-day isolation rule for COVID-19. Changing COVID guidelines has become one of the CDC’s favorite pastimes, right up there with confusing the heck out of us. They could have at least waited until April 1st to spring this on the public.

Remember the good ol' days of 2020, when a ten-day isolation was the gold standard? The CDC cut that down to five days a year later, since most workers don't have the luxury of ten sick days to waste being infectious. Fast forward to this election year, and the time-honored tradition of spending five days at home being sick in your sweat pants, questioning your life choices while streaming an unhealthy amount of TV, has been cut shorter than a politician abandoning his promise to follow the science and ensure the public's well-being after taking office.

If you happen to be one of those people still tracking the data, you might be scratching your head. "But wait," you say, as you adjust your glasses in disbelief, "aren't hospitalization rates still higher than my anxiety levels at family gatherings?" With almost 20,000 people finding themselves in a hospital bed each week thanks to our little viral friend, this new guideline has the same energy as saying, "No need for helmets if you're only planning to crash your motorcycle moderately!" Of course there are other people paying attention to the data from other very official sources, like their uncle's Facebook post about Alex Jones's theory that the COVID virus is actually a plot perpetrated by the same people using Taylor Swift to turn the youth of America into Biden supporting socialists, one catchy pop anthem at a time. This latest decision by the CDC will only add to their conspiratorial beliefs that COVID was always nothing more than a bad cold or mild case of the flu, while simultaneously being a plot to overthrow Donald Trump and install a New World Order.

The real conspiracy seems to be the sheer fantasy of expecting people who are gig workers or with part time jobs to isolate without the cushion of paid sick leave. Those who feel like death warmed over are probably going to have little choice but stay home or go to the ER, but only ~30% of people who test positive for Covid usually have a fever. Most people testing positive are infectious for ~10 days, while ~80% of people who test positive are infectious for at least 5 days after symptom onset. These are the folks who will have to practice "coughing responsibly" and wear an N95 mask to prevent spreading the virus to others when they skip isolating and head back to work.

Source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797070