Covid Taught Us a Lot. The CDC Now Wants Us to Forget It. [View all]

https://newrepublic.com/article/179304/covid-cdc-guidelines-isolation-symptoms

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https://archive.li/E8mei

Four years after the Covid-19 pandemic slammed into the United States, forcing shutdowns and killing 1.1 million people and counting, the U.S. is considering one of the final steps that might cement Covid’s status as just another virus, similar to the flu or RSV: Instead of recommending a period of isolation for those who test positive for Covid, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to recommend a symptom-based system, anonymous agency officials recently told the Washington Post. If someone has been fever-free for 24 hours and other symptoms are improving, they would be free to leave isolation; presumably those without symptoms or without fever would never isolate, even while they are testing positive. This could be part of broader new “pan-respiratory guidance,” a topic CDC director Mandy Cohen reportedly broached last fall.

While public appetite for Covid news is low, experts say the stakes for communicating about respiratory illnesses are deceptively high. An ongoing bird flu outbreak and a small but deadly swine flu outbreak in Colombia this year have public health experts worried that another flu pandemic is all but assured in coming years. As government officials downplayed Covid, flu, and other deadly viruses in recent years—shortening Covid isolation times and lifting restrictions—misinformation about measles, another respiratory illness, has proliferated. A massive measles outbreak is currently roiling Europe, and Florida has now reported multiple cases at a single school. State officials who rose to prominence by opposing Covid measures said the 200 unvaccinated students who had been exposed did not need to quarantine.

Then there is the threat of more novel viruses; dangerous new coronaviruses have emerged every seven to nine years in the past two decades, which means we may be soon see another. In the meantime, Covid is still hospitalizing and killing people even with current guidelines; it could get worse when people are urged to move more freely while contagious.

In theory, we should be better equipped than ever before to counter these threats. “Covid has elevated the amount of access and information and awareness that we have [of] seasonal respiratory viruses,” said Erin Sorrell, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Covid taught us that these respiratory viruses can be airborne, that asymptomatic people can still infect others, and that the time it takes to stop shedding the virus can vary widely; we also learned what we can do to lessen these challenges.

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