outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Airline CEOs are hitting back huh?

Oh, I have no doubt. Hospital groups too.

Serious question, though: is this decision reflecting the lived experiences of ILXors and their friends/relatives? Everyone I know infected in the last two weeks has already stopped feeling anything more serious than a runny nose in the 4-6 day range.

I can imagine the toll the 10-day period took on people who can't work from home.

Severity is not directly the issue. Quarantine isn’t rest up for x days. It’s don’t see other people for x days.

Anyway this was not a given and is extremely good news

Had been biting my nails waiting for data like this: Omicron infection boosts immunity against Omicron… and also props up your Delta immunity. Should be really good cross-protection in combination with vaccination. https://t.co/CnkkHopJBZ

— Dr Ed (@notdred) December 27, 2021

There is some science behind the 10 day isolation period being outdated. This came out weeks ago, and Wu is a fine COVID writer. Leading resources like Dr Rasmussen and Muge Cevik cited.

There ARE exceptions naturally - some people infectious longer than 10 days esp in immunocompromised or severe cases

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/12/fully-vaccinated-covid-isolation-breakthrough-transmission/620919/

Great news caek. Have been waiting to see info on that

Lol y'all are tripping, they're sending people to die for the economy.

i mean i thought the exact same thing when food service resumed in what may 2020

idk i’m just very tired

It was the same thing!

Everything is fucked!

Well, Chicago's test positivity is 15.4%, average daily new covid cases are literally higher than ever,* and covid hospitalizations haven't been this bad since last December.

*Actual cases may have been higher in wave one--testing was far worse then. https://t.co/KbwF92903H pic.twitter.com/kdVDJWsJDY

— Matthew Borus (@MatthewBorus) December 28, 2021

it's telling that they cut it from ten days to five plus five days of "strict mask use." they've seen how people wear masks. gotta give people the freedom and liberty to do it themselves i guess. i mean, lol:
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-business-health-rochelle-walensky-d7d609c9c01e200d250df7ca7282c9d6

A lot of people get tested when they first feel symptoms, but many Americans get tested for others reasons, like to see if they can visit family or for work. That means a positive test result may not reveal exactly when a person was infected or give a clear picture of when they are most contagious, experts say.

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.

now *that* is just a bunk decision

just going to leave this here

https://late-light.com/issues/issue-1/death-drive-nation

i read that last week! and yes.

i read that last night! i think i found it somewhere else map posted it! :) and yes.

https://i.imgur.com/1eMiYJh.jpg

just going to leave this here

https://late-light.com/issues/issue-1/death-drive-nation

― Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Monday, December 27, 2021 3:59 PM

the death drive is sick shit, i love reading about it

as expected, the 73% stat re: Omicron's prevalence in the US was incorrect.

but it is still expected to be the dominant variant now - this just means it has more room to infect people (almost would have been better if it had been 73% a week ago)

CDC estimates of circulating variants including week of 12/25. Notably week of 12/18 estimate of Omicron revised from ~73% to 22.5% (just a tad different!).

Now saying 58.6% of variants are Omicron nationwide. 1/ pic.twitter.com/duYpLSEXQm

— Jason Gallagher (@JGPharmD) December 28, 2021

agree w/ Angie here. no idea why "two negative tests" is not a requirement for returning to the world. the 10-day isolation period was an arbitrary timeframe established last summer at a time where tests were much scarcer than they are even now, and before we had a lot of scientific data on how long people are contagious. a system that allows you to 'test out' sooner than 10 days, like the one the UK adopted, is reasonable.

not a system that allows you to basically just return to society without a negative test 5 days later, even if masked. people are already misinterpreting the asymptomatic part and think they can just go back to clubbing even with sniffles 5 days later as long as they wear a mask.

Once again, @CDCgov outdoes itself by taking what might be a reasonable policy (test to leave isolation) and removing the part that makes it reasonable (the testing part). This is reckless and, frankly, stupid. https://t.co/K2UyP3dKxB

— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) December 28, 2021

(Angie, btw, is one of the people quoted in the article from Wu suggesting the 10 day isolation period was outdated, so the fact that she's angry about this speaks volumes - she was always adamant that a TEST has to confirm you're negative, not a calendar).

oh it’s ‘angie’ now

CDC’s new guidance to drop isolation of positives to 5 days without a negative test is reckless

Some ppl stay infectious 3 days,Some 12

I absolutely don’t want to sit next to someone who turned Pos 5 days ago and hasnt tested Neg

Test Neg to leave isolation early is just smart

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) December 27, 2021

That death drive article is really interesting -- well-written and forceful, but it just feels like fiction to me, a vivid description of a situation that doesn't feel at all like what I actually see around me.

(Which I guess is what some people would say about Freudian analysis generally, but I'm pretty sympathetic to that framework, though in a one-frame-among-many way, not in a this-supreme-frame-explains-everything way.)

wapo, 30 mins ago:

Health officials’ recommendation this week to shorten the isolation period for people with asymptomatic coronavirus infections to five days was driven largely by the concern that essential services might be hobbled amid one of the worst infection surges of the pandemic, said senior officials familiar with the discussions.

will be cool to see whether halving the isolation period has any effect on essential services or the infection surge imo

The decision to cut the recommended isolation time in half, which was hailed by business groups and slammed by some union leaders and health experts, reflects the increasingly tough decisions health officials navigate as they seek to strike the right balance between vigilance and normalcy as the nation heads into the pandemic’s third year.

rly feel for them

Fauci goes into detail in this interview with Chris Hayes (mid-thread excerpted here):

@chrislhayes: "You are talking about a policy judgment in a context of tradeoffs between different consequences."

Contrasts stopping spread of Covid-19 vs having a water treatment facility have its technicians all out sick for 10 days.

Fauci nods yes and responds: "Correct."

— David Lim (@davidalim) December 29, 2021

(Says there would be "a lot more devil advocates yelling" if the U.S. was "shut down."

damn them!

Interview:

https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dr-fauci-explains-new-cdc-isolation-guidelines-129732165818

Anti-vaxxer neighbor ("read both sides"/"I have a strong immune system") just revealed that she just had Covid for 3 weeks. Sourced Ivermectin from a Wisconsin doctor because she couldn't get it in Minnesota (?). Says she may get the Novavax vaccine if it becomes available but fears that Biden won't allow because he wants Pfizer to profit.

Novavax vaccine is fine but a) no data for how it performs against Omicron and b) no better than any of them already available. what a knob.

do you ever just look your neighbor in the eye and say "you have no idea what you're talking about?"

it feels great and plus you never have to talk to them again

hard to lose a good cat-sitter.

haha, that's real :)

Says she may get the Novavax vaccine if it becomes available but fears that Biden won't allow because he wants Pfizer to profit.

The pathology of this, where they will take literally anything recommended by literally anyone as long as it's not actual medicine recommended by actual doctors is just mindblowing. It takes real effort to be that actively dumb.

onethread

One would have to step back and think about it that way. You can't step back when you're stuck inside a hole you've dug for yourself. Their only motivation for doing anything at all is based on how much they think someone on the left will be frustrated by it.

I can't believe anyone still believes in this fake pseudoscience but people really do still become economistshttps://t.co/syjFkc7gxw

— Bedford Falls High-Speed Rail (@BudrykZack) December 30, 2021

Some twat had stuck another QR code on top of the NHS test and trace one at the motorway service station we visited today. Potentially quite an effective form of sabotage, as the app only lets you use the QR code as far as I can see - there’s no option for manual entry. Luckily, their sticker peeled right off without damaging what was underneath.

i never even thought of that. pretty easy bit of sabotage.

the US has now green-lit boosters for 12-15s. that age group is just now getting its second shot in the UK. so another 4+ months to wait for kids’ boosters to happen over here, and seemingly no plans at all to vaccinate u12s. feels…… complacent.

Hope this guy is right:

My latest tweets have mostly been bad news, which saddens me, particularly during holiday season.
Today I’ll take you to my Happy Place, with some thoughts on why we could be in good shape – and maybe even great shape – in 6-8 weeks.

A 🧵(1/24)

— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) December 29, 2021

thanks for that.

lost in my holiday reading is a story that apparently a decision in the UK on 5-11s is expected soon
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/14/covid-jabs-for-younger-children-in-uk-could-get-green-light-before-christmas

Wachter's a good resource. and after Ashish has become Capn' Save a CDC, the one I look for the most now.

(btw, if y'all do wade into the cesspool of science twitter, be very careful who you read - there are a lot of 'alternative' messages out there from cranks that have wide followings, some who minimize COVID ridiculously, and some who greatly catastrophize it)

Ach theres no need sher wont it all be posted here within a nanosecond

I liked visiting Bob Wachter's Happy Place for a few minutes. His analysis of the trend was more convincing than his accelerated timeline, but the analysis alone was a bit heartening. The early speculations about the potential upside of omicron appear to be solidifying rather than fading.

Still, it's a sad shame that omicron will do so much harvesting among the unvaccinated, ivermectin-gobbling, research-loving millions. Our healthcare workers have seen too much easily preventable death and misery already.

xpost hey if you wanna keep up with your gatekeeper schtick, have at it

i've posted two whopping tweets in the last week (yes, I've counted) after several people basically said they were unwelcome, some t'aint me