From NPR: CDC cuts the recommended isolation and quarantine periods for coronavirus infections
People who test positive for COVID-19 only need to isolate themselves for 5 days if they don’t show symptoms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. This cuts in half the earlier recommendation of 10 days of isolation.
Data shows that the majority of COVID-19 transmission “occurs early in the course of the illness,” the CDC explained — generally in the one or two days before symptoms begin, and two or three days after.
“Therefore, people who test positive should isolate for 5 days and, if asymptomatic at that time, they may leave isolation if they can continue to mask for 5 days to minimize the risk of infecting others,” the CDC said.
The CDC has also updated its recommended quarantine period for people exposed to the virus. It says the unvaccinated should quarantine for 5 days, followed by 5 days of “strict mask use.” Exposed people who are more than 6 months past their second dose of Pfizer or Moderna, or 2 months out from a Johnson & Johnson vaccine, should also quarantine for 5 days.
People who have gotten their booster shot don’t need to quarantine after exposure, but should wear a mask for the next 10 days.
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She makes a good point. The continuing prominent tracking of ‘cases’ in at least moderately vaccinated populations is panic propaganda.Report
Must be elections coming up… now the circle is complete:
“But the serious point he was making is that when you test more people you identify more cases. Cases should not be indicative of the progress we’ve made.”
~White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany (June 2020)Report
December, the year after a presidential race, is about as far from “elections coming up” as you can get in the US system.Report
Ah, but not when the next ones are the most important in our lifetime (TM).
And further, do not deny Ms. Rubin her fig leaf… without it her wit and intellect are exposed for all to see.Report
About a year before the next election is about long enough for politicians to claim that something has “always” been the case.
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That’s a very different claim than that something was motivated by election timing. It also implies that “it’s always been the case” has more appeal than “we worked on this and just recently made your lives better”, as well as implying that the voting public has a collective memory longer than an hour.
If you want to say that the government did something because they think the people will like it, then sure, but then we’re just describing democracy.Report
Well, I believe that there are multiple things going on.
The first is that the winter wave is hitting Good people in Smart cities instead of just Evil people in Stupid parts of the country.
When it was only Evil people in Stupid places, we could explain that they weren’t vaccinated and weren’t wearing masks and, quite frankly, had it coming.
Now that Good people in Smart places are getting it (like, people who are vaccinated and boosted!), it’s unreasonable to punish them with long quarantines after testing positive. I mean, seriously. Follow the science.
But there is another dynamic. This one does have to do with the election. It has to do with what one does with the realization that what they did didn’t work. This isn’t limited to Covid-19 (and stuff like mask mandates and whatnot) but also Defunding the Police, the whole CRT in schools thing, and the myriad ways that Biden continues doing Trumpy things (the border, the military budget, etc).
The first half is the issue of “I just wanted those people to deal with the consequences. I don’t want my people to have to deal with them!” and the second half is the “okay, it might be time to pivot.”
I mean, we’re in some seriously overdetermined territory. (Again.)Report
To that second idea, I’m always happy when people realize that they’re wrong. I try not to do the “I Told You So” dance. But I expect that next time they disagree with me, they won’t assume I’m an -ist for doing so. We’ll see.
In the case of the shortened isolation recommendation, I’m no expert, but I thought that there have been studies indicating that the longer time wasn’t necessary. In the absence of proof of bad faith, I’m going to assume that the officials reviewed the available data and came to the reasonable conclusion. I don’t feel the need to chart the timing and explain it as a deflection or some other tactic.Report
I think you’re missing a big point about Rubin and this thread… she’s never recognized she was wrong in her entire career – a career that is mostly about being serially wrong on both sides of the wrongometer.Report
I don’t think I’ve ever read her, and I’m not going to pay WaPo for the privilege. Some of the comments here may be ironic in a way I’m not following, but no, I don’t expect a lot of human beings to look for the opportunity to say “I was wrong”.Report
She was a hardcore neocon Republican who has become a NeverTrump hardcore team D partisan. So kind of hard to take seriously by any principled person of any persuasion. Naturally she has a place at the Post.Report
It is still true that primarily only stupid people (i.e., the unvaccinated) are dying.
Non-stupid people (i.e. the vaccinated) are getting Omicron, but aren’t dying in the numbers that the stupid people are.Report
I viewed it as, “NFL playoffs impending.” Given omicron’s transmissibility, the NFL made it easier for vaccinated players to come back because the league could see the playoffs evaporating as — like many college bowl games — teams would be unable to field enough players. And the networks had visions of the last couple of rounds of playoffs and the Super Bowl being played in empty stadiums. So the CDC changed the rules to avoid that.
Yeah, yeah, cynical.Report
Cynicism is always justified. Nevertheless we should welcome anything that gets us to an acknowledgement by the authorities that it is no longer March 2020, no matter how understated or begrudgingly they do it.Report
The science of playoff revenue will not be denied by this administration.
Not even I had gotten to that level of cynicism… I mean, I’m still programmed for Democrats = Anti-Big Business and haven’t gotten all the necessary updates.Report
If I were trying to justify it for the administration, I would put is as “We need a message in early February that things continue to get back to normal. A Super Bowl played in front of an empty stadium does not support that message.”Report
It’s easy to say, “Well, the NFL is cutting corners because they care more about money than health.”
But couldn’t we also say, “The NFL has found a better balance between the economics of the league and the health and safety of employees, which is allowing them to continue operations with no apparent increase in risk?”
From what I read, the league keeps finding more and more players with the virus… very very few of whom are actually sick. Does it make sense to shut down an entire multi-billion dollar operation because… no one is sick?Report
While it may be technically true that *SOME* people were arguing for this sort of thing back when London Breed was installing mask mandates for San Francisco, they were doing so prematurely.
Now that we have new information, we only coincidentally agree with the people who didn’t want to follow London Breed’s mask mandates and saw them as unnecessary. The people who didn’t want to follow them *THEN* were wrong. It’s only now that they’re right but not for the right reasons.Report
I’m not following. What does the Mayor of San Francisco have to do with the NFL?Report
Don’t see it as being about the Mayor of San Francisco as much as about her representative policies that were intended to mitigate covid risk.
She provides a great example of someone who set policies in place that would mitigate what we very reasonably thought the risks were at the time.
And now we have reason to reassess the risk! And the previous levels of mitigation, while reasonable for the time, are now seen as inappropriate given our new incentives that we now know to take into account when reassessing!Report
We should have been continually re-evaluating the risk. This situation was unprecedented in our lifetimes. Every day brought new information… about Covid, about variants, about risk mitigation, about the costs of risk mitigation, the costs of ongoing spread, etc.
We should have been continually asking ourselves, “What makes the most sense given what we know now?”
It appears the NFL is doing this.
It did not appear the Mayor of SF was doing this.
So, yea, still not sure your point.Report
We should have been continually re-evaluating the risk.
I agree. However, you may be shocked to hear that there was pushback against such things as peer-reviewed scientific studies about how N95 masks worked while t-shirt masks did not work.
On top of that, given the efficacy of the vaccines against covid (did you remember feeling frustrated as you saw the numbers go down and expectations being actively managed?), it feels like the certainty with which proclamations were made was unfounded which makes the next equally certain proclamations questionable.
I mean, there are a bunch of jokes about the CDC floating around now. Everything from how they’re serving the CEO of Delta to to how they’re serving the NFL to how the CDC is a political agency rather than one actively interested in disease control.
The point is that if you want to properly manage risk… relying on the CDC may not, in fact, be relying on the agency most likely to give you the best information. “What *IS* the best agency, then?”, you may be tempted to ask.
I don’t know.
But I’m not sure that the CDC qualifies anymore.
They’re about as trustworthy as the Mayor of SF.Report
Hey man, I’m the one who recently shared a CNN article that was basically screaming “CLOTH MASKS DON’T WORK!” and commenting on how if FNC said the same thing, we’d label them anti-science monsters. So, I get that there is all sorts of nonsense out there and lots of hypocrites and all that.
I try to focus my attention nowadays less on the “who” and the “what” but what I can discern of the “why” and then try to look at the outcomes and see what lines up.
Are there jokes floating around about the CDC? I don’t know. I’m not in the waters where such things float around.
I’m far from a believer in the sanctity of the NFL. I’ve posted frequently about the issues with how they do things. However, when I put the puzzle pieces I have together, I see a place where their recent approach fits so I think, “Well, by hook or by crook, maybe they’re on to something.”
Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but that seems a better approach than a knee-jerk response of, “This doesn’t comport with my preferred dogma and thus I must dispel it as evil.”Report
Well, here’s the middle part of a thread that you can enjoy. It discusses the CDC jokes. (Many of which take the form “The CDC recommends X”.)
Now the thread also discusses the various ways that “Capitalism” is bad and so this isn’t coming from somebody who is arguing that we need to return to Trump.
It’s more from someone arguing “I thought we got rid of Trump.”
I’m far from a believer in the sanctity of the NFL. I’ve posted frequently about the issues with how they do things. However, when I put the puzzle pieces I have together, I see a place where their recent approach fits so I think, “Well, by hook or by crook, maybe they’re on to something.”
Well, this involves independent thinking.
Which is, in theory, all well and good. But some people use their independent thinking to lead to conclusions that The Authorities don’t agree with.Report
So your main point is… question authority…?Report
Observe authority.
Odds are, they’re following what the correct protocols are given their access to information that goes through fewer filters before it makes its way to you.Report
I agree wholeheartedly that “Do as I say, not as I do” is horrible leadership and calls into question the credibility of what is said.
But I also think it’s overly simplistic to always assume such discrepancies favor what is done over what is said.
As someone who is sometimes seen and treated like an expert on kid-matters, I sometimes offer advice I myself don’t follow. Why? A host of reasons: every situation is different; some advice offers the ideal when reality sometimes doesn’t allow for that; I’m flawed; etc.
Also, some folks — and I’d venture to guess politicians and others in power are more susceptible to this type of thinking — feel “special” so much so that the rules of the world don’t apply to them. Not just, “I don’t have to wear a mask,” but “I’m so special the virus can’t get ME!” Almost like the sense of invulnerability adolescents so often have.
With Covid, I 100% agree that leadership should have been exemplary models of the rules and restrictions they sought. This is true on both sides (e.g., SF mayor, Govs of NJ and CA; but also Fox pushing anti-vaccine crap while having their own in-house mandate) but I’d say worse for anyone with actual power to make and enforce rules on the public.
Coming full circle, I think it is all about incentives. Identify the folks in power whose incentives align with your own goals and see what they do. For me, I’m looking at sports leagues and airlines, two industries that badly want things as normal as possible but who will be killed if their policies backfire. I think that forces a level of balance. It’s while they’re constantly re-evaluating their protocols without abandoning them, and making cancelations and postponements where required but not shutting things down that don’t need to be.
Not everyone thinks that’s the goal. Some still cling to Covid-0 type thinking. Some don’t care about harming others so long as they aren’t impacted. Some thing any risk mitigation is too much.Report
Fauci: Isolation period was cut in half “to keep society running.”
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That doesn’t sound like science, does it?
That’s public policy.Report
Agreed. Cr@ppy economic policy, but still a policy/political decision.Report
I don’t know whether to be delighted, or alarmed that Republican Congresspersons appear to be dropping into our friendly little blog to leave comments.Report
This is a good thread:
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There was a (pay walled) Yglesias post from last February (so pre-widespread vaccine availability, pre-delta) I think is still relevant called ‘Back to Normal Means Ignoring the CDC’. He goes into a number of examples of things the CDC says that people mostly ignore about meat and alcohol consumption, and the fact that many of the covid recommendations are actually taken directly from flu directions that pre-exist the pandemic. On the politics though these passages I think are most salient:
But I think people in the media trying to intervene constructively in this debate need to keep two things in mind. One is that Dr. Fauci’s dicta at press conferences or on television interviews do not carry the force of law. Indoor dining is open in most of America. Movie theaters are reopening. As journalists, we are supposed to provide people with accurate information. Fauci is saying that he thinks you shouldn’t do those things — it’s not the case that you can’t do them.
The other is that you need to have an appropriate baseline for how public health agencies behave. It is unlikely that the CDC is going to respond to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout by completely revamping their institutional culture. Instead, we need to understand what that institutional culture is, and cover the CDC’s pronouncements accordingly. And the plain fact is that the CDC is extremely scold-y and conservative with its advice.
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In other words, if you are hoping to get “back to normal” in the sense that Dr. Fauci will stop lecturing you about hand-washing and face-touching, you are out of luck — he’ll never stop saying that stuff because he’s been saying it for years. You just never noticed, because life getting back to normal means that most people stop paying attention to what infectious disease specialists have to say, just like most people don’t eat as many vegetables as they should.
The big issue, it seems to me, is that Joe Biden is going to have to try to pivot us out of Fauci mode at some point.
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I agree with all that. But in that sense, I think we are being ill-served by political leadership that has reversed Trump’s flagrant dismissal of public health guidance in favor of the excessive deference of “a woman should never drink a full glass of white wine.”
It’s fine that the public health agencies are going to urge caution essentially indefinitely. But that means we need Joe Biden to clearly say something like:
-I anticipate that a vaccine will be available to any adult who wants one around Day X, or at worst Day Y.
-That won’t mean the virus magically vanishes, but it does mean that a few weeks after we achieve Vaccination for All Who Want It, the official national emergency will end.
-In post-emergency America, it will still be true that virologists recommend washing your hands every time you pet your dog, but personally I’m going to return to my relaxed, no-malarkey lifestyle.
-Specifically, I have been wearing a mask in public even though I was vaccinated a while ago because I’m trying to set a good example, but once vaccines are broadly available I will stop doing that.
-I understand that everyone is impatient, but I’m asking you all to wait for six more weeks, not seven more months.
Then, I dunno, make a good-hearted joke. Say, “Fauci and Trump disagreed about a lot of stuff, but I read in Washingtonian that way before the pandemic Trump would obsessively hand sanitize before drinking a glass of Diet Coke, and Fauci probably thought that was great. And maybe we should all be more healthy all the time. But right now I’m gonna go get some Jeni’s with Nancy Pelosi.”
https://www.slowboring.com/p/cdc-normalReport
I’m reaching the point where I think that the way forward is something like “Okay, this is now endemic. You, yes you reading this, are probably going to get it. The vaccines will protect you when you do get it. It’s not really a morality thing at this point. So that’s why we’re going to back down on masks, play up the vaccines even more, and give out aid where it’s needed. But feel free to go back to work, go back to school, and go back to the grocery store.”
And the only thing tempering me on that is the whole question of “what about the immunocompromised and elderly and what have you?”
And if we figure out a way to answer that last question, we’ll probably be golden.Report
That’s about where I am. Only nuance for us is having a child/social group with children too young for vaccination. On the one hand that age group appears by far most naturally resistant/least likely for a really bad outcome. On the other we are trying to be conscientious, i.e. avoid interactions with known recent positives or unvaccinated people.
But I’ve also been doing ‘high risk’ activities like weight lifting at the gym and occasionally going to bars since I was vaccinated. This strikes me as a no brainer in a county that is allegedly 90+% vaccinated. As soon as my son can be vaccinated I’m not going to care at all, and assume we will get it at some point anyway, with very low chances of anything particularly bad coming of it. Because damn it, I trust the science.Report
I don’t like how we switched from “the vaccines will protect you and others” to “okay, the vaccines will mostly just protect you”.
I mean, that’s how the science works and all that but I wish that there had been less emphasis on the whole “get the shot to protect other people” thing. In retrospect, it makes the “vaccines don’t work” arguments superficially stronger.Report
It’s absolutely a failure of leadership. That’s what I think the Yglesias piece really nails. No one actually lives their lives in accordance with CDC recommendations, and that’s ok. It’s politically crazy to imply or outright argue that should be the standard. What we need are leaders that take the information seriously but also act on it in ways that are practicable in light of actual risks.
Instead we’ve got a sort of cut off your nose to spite the libs reactionary-ism against ‘The Science’ ™ that’s an easily lampooned combination of cautionary overkill and moving target.Report
How do we “play up vaccines” given the massive campaign of disinformation waged by the world’s most-watched media empire, and an entire political party devoted to preventing vaccines from being enacted?
And if we can’t reach a satisfactory level of vaccination, and the virus continues to mutate and rampage through the population and overwhelm hospitals, how do we “go back to work, go back to school, go back to the grocery store”?
“Normal” life, that is, the life that we all grew up with, was only made possible by widespread acceptance of vaccine mandates. Once that collapses, our lives will never go back to anything resembling normalcy.Report
I would do stuff like acknowledge that Harris publicly said that she’d never take a Trump vaccine, acknowledge that saying that politicized the vaccine debate before it even started, acknowledge that it was a mistake, and ask forgiveness.
That’s how I would play it up. “Hey, we screwed up. Can we unscrew things up?”
And if we can’t reach a satisfactory level of vaccination, and the virus continues to mutate and rampage through the population and overwhelm hospitals, how do we “go back to work, go back to school, go back to the grocery store”?
You don’t seem to have received your copy of Biden’s talking points. Why are you trying to undermine the President? Don’t you trust the CDC?Report
And then what happens?
Fox stops pumping anti-vax propaganda 24/7 into the minds of a hundred million people?
The Republican party embraces vaccine mandates?Report
Sure. Fox starts talking about the importance of taking the Trump vaccine and interviews Trump about how awesome it was that he pushed for Operation Warp Speed.
Mandates? At this point the judiciary has a bigger problem with mandates than the Republican Party itself, but I’m pretty sure that something as simple as messaging the vaccines as a Republican win will get the country’s numbers into the 80’s. (We’re in the 60’s now, 70’s if you count “only one dose”.)Report
So, like I was saying, until we can bring Fox and the Republican party around, we will never get back to “normal”.
But I am not seeing any proposals for actually making this happen.Report
“I’m not going to compromise and therefore if they don’t compromise we’ll never come to an agreement.”
Rots of ruck, Raggy.Report
What does “compromise” mean in this context?Report
Begin by acknowledging the mistake of politicizing the vaccine and apologizing for making that mistake. Making a concession and then asking for a concession in return.
That’s what I mean by “compromise” in this context.Report
So you’re prediction is that if Biden does some sort of contrition, Fox will stop broadcasting anti-vax propaganda and the Republican Party will embrace vaccine mandates?Report
You keep bringing up vaccine mandates. If that’s your goal, I’m not sure there are any circumstances under which you’d get that. And that’s on the judiciary, not Fox.
That said, I’m pretty sure that something as simple as messaging the vaccines as a Republican win will get the country’s numbers into the 80’s. (We’re in the 60’s now, 70’s if you count “only one dose”.)Report
You’re pretty sure of that, are you?
That somehow “messaging” vaccines as a good thing will turn around the followers of Ron De Santis and Greg Abbot, sure as shootin’?
And the various state legislatures will suddenly revoke all the laws blocking vaccine mandates, because, well, hey, some people started saying these vaccines are a good thing.
This is some weird logic you got going on here.Report
I’m pretty sure that we could squeeze out another 10 percent, yeah. I think that it’d work better than Even More And Even Bigger Mandates.
Will it get us to 100%? No, I don’t think it will.
But if that’s the goal, I think that the goal is unachievable.
I do think that there’s a lot of ground that could be regained through an acknowledgment that this shit got really politicized when it should not have been and requesting that this particular area be de-politicized and that request would be made much more reasonable by acknowledging stuff like Harris’s asinine statement about how she wasn’t going to take it.Report
Why was MMR and polio and smallpox vaccines so successful to where we did acheive almost universal vaccination rates?
Why is it only the Covid virus that this is strangely “unattainable”?Report
Because it’s been politicized.Report
COVID and the vaccine debates are like everything else, they are just excuses for people to do what they were going to do anyway, but with nomenclature that makes them feel like it’s a fresh idea and foisted upon themReport
Yes, it was unexpected that simple public health concepts like vaccine mandates would suddenly become a hotly contested political idea, but in retrospect, once our major political party decided to follow Cleek’s Law, it should have been seen as inevitable.Report
The biggest vaccine-hesitancy threat in blue parts of the country isn’t Trumpkins. It’s black and hispanic (mostly) men in urban areas and inner ring suburbs not getting the shot despite wide availability. I’d like to think that can be changed without worrying about what Republicans or their right wing media friends are doing.Report
What is the vaccination rate among Republicans versus Democrats?
Between those who consume Fox News and those who don’t?
As to your question below of “What should we do?”
the answer starts with “IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM”.
If we aren’t willing to name the causal variable we have effectively surrendered to it.Report
I asked what people like me are supposed to do. Because the answer seems constant panic/putting life on hold indefinitely. Frankly, f— that.
If you’re asking if I think the biggest driver of this is Fox et al., then sure I agree and am happy to say so. The best the royal we can do is try to make the case for those who can be persuaded. The rest are just idiots taking their lives in their hands which sucks but at a certain point I don’t know how to help people that adamant about not helping themselves.Report
“What is the vaccination rate among Republicans versus Democrats?”
According to the CDC:
At least one dose
Population ≥ 18 Years of Age | 220,716,765 | 85.5%
Fully Vaccinated:
Population ≥ 18 Years of Age |188,075,067 | 72.8%
I’m old enough to remember when we were told that 60% was needed for herd immunity… then maybe 70%.
Every state in the union is at least 67% one-dose vaccinated… all but 5 are 70%+
At this point, it is clear that there’s no herd immunity coming, only individual immunity aided by vaccines.
The Vaccines are a success story that is strangely being manipulated into a false narrative of war. We should be glad we came up with vaccines to mitigate the scourge, but there’s no public policy other than keeping them free and accessible that would alter this significantly.
This *is* what a successful vaccine roll-out in 1-yr looks like.Report
This. In my blue county, the highest percentage is non-white non-Hispanic (80%), then a substantial drop for white non-Hispanic (65%), and finally Hispanic hovering at barely 30%.Report
Exactly. And in blue areas we should do what we reasonably can can to get them over whatever the issue is. If these articles I’ve been seeing are accurate even Trump can’t get his own hardcore supporters to vaccinate.Report
There have always been pockets of anti-vaxxers.
Whether they are New Age woo, or low information detached cranks, there have always been such.
But they have, up until now, been isolated cranks and fringers.
But now they have the benefit of a 24/7 media empire and a major political party at their back.
Which brings us back to my original point.
Namely, that until the Fox News/ Republican universe reverses course, there is nothing the rest of us can do except accept that life will never, ever get back to normal.Report
It’s a choice to let them hold a veto over how you live. And if you live in a high vaccination rate area they aren’t an immediate threat to your ability to go about your business, except of course to the extent the authorities decide to put on theatrics as though they are.
Eventually they’ll all get it and either develop some level of natural resistance or die.Report
Public health is NOT an individual consumer choice.
If a large group of people choose not to get vaxxed, this introduces all manner of plagues and epidemics into our society.
I can’t live any sense of a normal life while hospitals and shipping ports and airlines and restaurants and businesses are shutting down due to sick employees.Report
At some point it’s just going to be the flu. The flu can still be dangerous but we did all those things with it. Smart and responsible people got vaccinated annually to mitigate but not everyone did. If delta and now omicron are our trajectory of very high transmission rate combined with low mortality and hospitalization strains I think we are probably well on our way there.Report
What makes you think that?
Luckily, omicron is less lethal than previous versions.
But that’s just luck, not some iron law of biology.
There isn’t any reason to think the next variant won’t be more lethal, or more transmissable, or both.
That’s the thing about viruses, they don’t play by our rules.Report
The reason to think that is that it’s usually true. Viruses tend to mutate to become less lethal. That and our vaccine technology is holding up pretty well through 3 big waves now. Obviously it’s possible there will be a set back and also possible there will be a brand new virus unrelated to this one that wipes us off the face of the Earth.
But there’s also a point where you have to say we’ve done what we can to make this manageable. Time to take the same calculated risks we all do every day.Report
No that’s not how viruses work because while THIS virus may mutate into a milder form, there is always another one right behind it that isn’t.
How many types of flus have we seen prior to Covid? Bird Flu, SARs,…And upcoming ones that haven’t even been identified.
And here’s the kicker. Anti-vax beliefs don’t conveniently stop with Covid. Once this becomes embedded as a core political belief (as it happening now) it spreads across ALL vaccines.
Measles, mumps, rubella, polio…there is a new crop of children being born to parents who have embraced the anti-vax gospel, who will see all vaccines in the same light.
Even prior to Covid, we have seen outbreaks of measles in hotspots of anti-vax communities. The only saving grace is that these communities (before Covid!) were small fringe isolated groups.
When the most highly watched media empire and major political party have made anti-vax woo the centerpiece of their world view, its absurd to say “we’ve done what we can to make this manageable”.
What “WE’VE” done is surrendered to the lunatic fringe by allowing their woo to go unchallenged.Report
I mean, the conversation was about covid. As for the other stuff, yea, it’s certainly a problem. I don’t see how endlessly hyperventilating about it will solve anything though. Like, what are you saying people like me are supposed to do? Remain in a constant state of panic?Report
NO, Chip is clearly telling you to join the push back. To call the anti-vaxxers out on their sh!t. To actually agitate – and vote – for people who make good public policy that’s not based on woo.
He’s also telling you – as am I – that you need to keep up your precautions no matter what the media and the woo mongers say, because we are not yet at endemic for this.Report
Please spare me the sermon. I’ve done what I’m supposed to do, and was vaccinated and boosted as soon as I was eligible. Doesn’t mean I’m obligated to turn my brain off.Report
At least half the people you’re calling anti-vaxxers are anti-mandate. They’ve been vaccinated. They’re mostly opposed to the inconsistencies of the policies, have lost faith in the CDC, and/or are concerned about the limited testing and seeming ban on opposing views. There’s no reason to think this will carry over to other vaccinations.Report
The CDC may well have finally jumped the shark. Politically anyway. Sure a LOT of their guidelines have been best described as being honored in the breech, but for COVID they really needed people to be heading them.
Of course, this bring sup the ugly side of unfettered (or in our case less fettered) capitalism, and its antipathy to labor (i.e. people) since it appears once again that maintaining a certain level of profit and economic production was put before people’s lives.
But I digress …Report