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"The science of COVID has not changed," Nuzzo says. If you test positive for COVID-19, you're likely contagious for a few days at least and risk spreading the coronavirus to others.

The policy change under consideration may be a reflection of the fact that the impacts of spreading COVID-19 are less consequential than they used to be, at least from a public health perspective. Deaths and hospitalizations went up this winter, but nowhere near as high as they did in previous years. In fact, hospitals were mostly OK — not overwhelmed — this virus season.

Translation: Many of you will still die, but the economic effect of your labor offsets the cost of your suffering and death.

It really felt nice when your employers actually cared that you were sick and being able to stay home when you were showing symptoms/tested positive was not only acceptable, but actively pushed and for a minimum number of days. Now it just feels like we're sliding back to where we were before, like we've learned absolutely nothing from the experience and the unspoken (sometimes spoken) expectation now is that you come into work regardless. So now it feels like, "Just spread it, whatever, who cares?"

"May be"? They dropped the five day quarantine yesterday or the day before.

@themeatbridge got it right. Get back to the office, you fucks.

It surprises me the CDC is considering this ... especially in light of what we know about what measles does to our immune systems and the fact measles is spreading.

We’ve known since at least 2019 that the measles virus can effectively erase immunity to diseases contracted earlier. So we might survive measles only to contract opportunistic infections we’ve had before and thought we’d beaten... including COVID-19.

And we now know that repeated COVID-19 infections, however “mild,” can increase the likelihood of long COVID — which can do serious damage to the brain, heart, gut and kidneys. Source

From the WaPo article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/02/13/covid-isolation-guidelines-cdc-change/): "The decision was hailed by business groups and slammed by some union leaders and health experts.

Covid is here to stay. How will we know when it stops being special?

The plan to further loosen isolation guidance when the science around infectiousness has not changed is likely to prompt strong negative reaction from vulnerable groups, including people older than 65, those with weak immune systems and long-covid patients, CDC officials and experts said.

Ref'd in that article is: https://peoplescdc.org/ "a coalition of health-care workers, scientists and advocates focused on reducing the harmful effects of covid-19."

"Coronavirus levels in wastewater indicate that symptomatic and asymptomatic infections remain high. About 20,000 people are still hospitalized — and about 2,300 are dying — every week, CDC data show. But the numbers are falling and are much lower than when deaths peaked in January 2021 when almost 26,000 people died of covid each week and about 115,000 were hospitalized."