If you haven’t heard by now, the CDC has changed its COVID isolation recommendations from isolating for five days before returning to work or school and can resume daily activities if they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the aid of medications and if their symptoms are improving. The CDC also recommended that people who are ending isolation mask and limit contact with others. Some thoughts, in no particular order:

1. The ‘symptoms are improving’ is, between employer pressure and some general assholery, going to allow people to return when they’re still highly contagious. That is a very vague end point compared to ‘symptoms have ceased.’
2. A much better end point–and one I encourage–is two negative rapid antigen tests combined with significant decline in symptoms. At that point, you’re likely not shedding much or any virus at all.
3. The CDC made this policy change to bring COVID recommendations in line with RSV and influenza recommendations. That assumes these three viruses are similar–which they are not. (Hell, why not add measles to the mix too?{/snark})
4. Again, this is obviously a COVID policy that is uninformed by long COVID. As I’ve discussed before, it’s possible that long COVID in people who are up-to-date on their vaccinations is extremely rare, and if that’s the case, then long COVID really isn’t a concern. But if, even among those who did what they’re supposed to do and got vaccinated, the likelihood of long COVID after a mild infection is non-trivial, then policy needs to reflect that reality.
5. Once again, the previous point highlights the utter failure by journalists to ask policy makers, elected or appointed, what the likelihood of long term disability after infection is and how that relates to vaccination status.
6. That long COVID is willfully ignored by policy makers and by pundits who wish to ingratiate themselves with said policy makers is nothing short of a political scandal. No serious discussion of Social Security could possibly be this innumerate–and as someone who has spent a lot of time defending Social Security from those who want to destroy it, that’s an incredibly low bar (think ‘buried in several inches of mud’).

Not a good move by the CDC.