CDC ditches 5-day COVID isolation, argues COVID is becoming flu-like - eviltoast

COVID-19 is becoming more like the flu and, as such, no longer requires its own virus-specific health rules, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday alongside the release of a unified “respiratory virus guide.”

In a lengthy background document, the agency laid out its rationale for consolidating COVID-19 guidance into general guidance for respiratory viruses—including influenza, RSV, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, enteroviruses, and others, though specifically not measles. The agency also noted the guidance does not apply to health care settings and outbreak scenarios.

“COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including influenza and RSV,” the agency wrote.

The most notable change in the new guidance is the previously reported decision to no longer recommend a minimum five-day isolation period for those infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Instead, the new isolation guidance is based on symptoms, which matches long-standing isolation guidance for other respiratory viruses, including influenza.

  • Tabooki@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Except the original COVID was literally killing 1% of the people that caught it. I lost many friends. Nobody I know died of the flu. Especially in the same year.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Physics Girl on YouTube (https://youtube.com/@physicsgirl?si=hsr7n5xi2VRCEZMV) contracted COVID a year ago and has been totally crippled since.

      Scary shit man.

      I’ve had it 3 or 4 times and it was a minor cold. My fiancé lost her sense of taste for over a year and was knocked out every other time she had it.

      I don’t know. What can you do? The world goes where the world goes. Just gotta ride until we die.

    • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Just think about what you just wrote. Really think about all aspects of it. Look a few things up too. It was never 1 percent mortality. Barely point one.

      • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        Yeah man, just make shit up…

        In the USA we had:

        • 111,558,488 cases
        • 1,216,367 deaths

        That’s a 1.09% mortality rate.

          • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            Yes, the actual rate of infection is probably higher than the official numbers because of underreporting, but if the goal is to compare COVID to the flu, this hardly matters, because the flu rate is even more underreported. Factor that in, and it just further reinforces the fact that COVID-19 was and is a far more serious illness than influenza, even in an especially bad flu season (peak annual death toll of 60k).

            COVID has had an average annual death toll of ~300k since the pandemic began.

            • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Yeah I’ve had it 4 or 5 times. Like I said, if everyone gets the fucking flu, well…I’m not even a statistic neither are most had it.