CDC changes Covid guidelines and causes more confusion

CDC changes Covid guidelines and causes more confusion. For schools, testing and masking changes might keep kids in class. But will they keep us safe?

With the release of new Covid-19 guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday, it seems clear that federal health officials have embraced the notion that it’s time to learn to live with the virus. It’s a signal that many will interpret as permission to return to our normal, pre-pandemic lives. But each time federal guidance is relaxed, millions of Americans lose further protections from possible Covid infection.

Indeed, after the new guidelines on Covid-19 quarantining, testing and screening came out, headlines soon proclaimed that the CDC “eases school guidance” and “marks a new phase in [the] pandemic.” The message was compounded by a CDC official asserting that “Covid-19 is here to stay,” so the new guidance “helps us move to a point where Covid-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives.”

CDC issues new guidance on Covid exposure: What you need to knowAug. 11, 202203:57The CDC still recommends indoor masking in counties with high community transmission — where about 60% of the U.S. population lives. However, it no longer recommends testing in most cases and ends “test-to-stay” programs in schools, which allowed students exposed to a known infected person to avoid quarantine as long as they were asymptomatic and continued to test negative. This relegates important public health tools to the sidelines.

Encouraging masking on the one hand while relaxing guidance on the other will leave many school administrators, elected leaders and members of the public scratching their heads. The bottom line is that this new guidance is another example of confusing and opaque communication surrounding Covid. Instead of emphasizing the continued dangers of the ongoing pandemic and the policies needed to protect the most amount of people, the message being emphasized is that restrictions are easing up. 

It’s been 2 ½ years. More than 92 million people in the United States have gotten sick and 1 million have died. While it’s true that we are no longer running out of ventilators and far fewer Americans are dying, there are still more than 34,000 hospitalizations and about 400 deaths every day from Covid, and those two trend lines are flat — not getting much worse or better; a steady toll of sickness and death. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/cdc-changes-covid-guidelines-causes-confusion-rcna42514

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