New CDC Guidelines: Work 'til you Drop

Continuing its anti-science, anti-worker guidelines, the CDC considers once again weakening isolation recommendations for COVID+ people

In disastrous but truly unsurprising news, reports emerged this week that the CDC is now considering weakening COVID isolation guidelines yet again. The move, which hasn’t officially been announced yet, would encourage people to leave isolation within 24 hours if their cases are “mild,” a vague metric that has absolutely no bearing on how “mild” COVID will be for those an ill person goes on to infect.

Of course, people have been functionally ignoring isolation guidelines for some time; Trump supporters since Trump told them COVID was mild and Biden supporters since Biden told them COVID was mild. Moreover, those who do attempt to follow the guidelines are often pressured by bosses and social norms to get back to work anyway. Parents and even doctors are reluctant to test for COVID, knowing it will trigger isolation protocols. And lest we forget, the original COVID isolation recommendation of fourteen days- the one that was, ya know, actually based on how long people are infectious- was already reduced to ten days, and then five days in winter 2021 after the CEO of Delta Airlines asked nicely.

NPR reported at the time: “The CDC says its decision is also based on the science showing that a majority of COVID-19 illnesses get passed around in the first few days of the infection. Other public health experts say that's true — but there's still a chance that transmission to others could happen after the five-day benchmark.” Literally everything stated here is misleading. The CDC’s decision was based on the CEO of Delta Airline’s inability to keep flights staffed because of the staggering level of illness among its workers. “A majority of COVID-19 illnesses get passed around in the first few days” is a strange, casual, inexact formulation that attempts to reframe the goal of isolation as “isolate when you’re most contagious” rather than “isolate when you’re contagious”. The phrase “other public health experts say that’s true” links out to another NPR piece titled “New CDC isolation guidelines raise concerns among health experts,” in which various experts call the move “reckless” and note that “20 to 40% of people are still going to be able to transmit COVID after five days.”

The phrase, “There’s still a chance that transmission could happen to others after the five-day benchmark,” is purposely ambiguous and minimizing, implying that we can’t be sure whether or not transmission happens beyond five-days, and that in any case it’s rare. What is “a chance”? What percentage “chance”? Let’s bring some science into the conversation, something NPR brazenly choose not to do.

A study in The Lancet found, “under a crude 5-day self-isolation period from symptom onset, two-thirds of cases released into the community would still be infectious.”

A study in the BMJ found the peak period of viral shedding to be between days 3-6.

A study in The Journal of Infection found that immunocompromised patients were shedding virus for a median of four weeks.

And let’s not forget asymptomatic transmission, which the CDC has been memory-holing since at least 2021. A JAMA study found that “at least 50% of new SARS-CoV-2 infections was estimated to have originated from exposure to individuals with infection but without symptoms.”

NPR’s both-sides reporting purposely obscured that the CDC chose to change their isolation guidelines in direct opposition to what “the science” says about COVID transmission. Responsible coverage would’ve stated the established scientific fact that most people with COVID will be infectious beyond five days. Science-driven isolation guidelines would require multiple negative tests to exit quarantine and would recommend routine asymptomatic screening- as many Hill staffers were required to submit to weekly for years to protect their bosses.

This time, the CDC isn’t even pretending its decision has anything to do with health, science, or disease control. They simply point out that no one is following their guidelines anyway, so why bother? This is akin to the CDC no longer recommending condoms or seatbelts because some people don’t use them. It also belies the reality that people are not isolating because they have been denied the tools to do so- paid leave, easy access to tests- and propagandized into believing COVID is mild over a period of years. The CDC continues to ignore the high rates of long-term post-COVID illness and disability, and the public is unaware that their next infection may long-term disable them.

This decision will do nothing - and is designed to do nothing- but provide cover for employers trying to force workers back to work while they are actively sick and COVID+. Obviously, the five-day isolation period isn’t short enough when your long-term plan for COVID is to reinfect every worker as often as possible. That adds up to a lot of sick days!

None of the CDC’s decisions, it has been clear for some time, are based on scientific findings whatsoever, or indeed any desire to slow or halt the spread of COVID-19. Since early 2020, CDC guidance has been designed to protect employers, protect the economy in the short-term (the long-term economic implications of repeatedly sickening workers are actually quite negative), and appease the conservative business interests that comprise the political donor class.

As a recent CIDRAP article summarizes:

guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promulgated the disproven idea that SARS-CoV-2 was primarily transmitted through droplets and didn't incorporate traditional OSHA strategies for controlling airborne exposures (eg, ventilation, air cleaning)

The article, titled “US government failure to protect frontline workers from COVID led to thousands of deaths, scientists say,” details the finding of this BMJ report:

"It is now clear that the CDC (as well as the World Health Organization) erred in clinging to the droplet dogma," the study authors wrote. "CDC's insistence that the virus could be controlled by limiting exposure to droplets through surgical masks, distancing, and handwashing contributed to OSHA's inability to promote optimal control measures."

Workers also had very limited access to personal protective equipment (PPE) early in the pandemic and faced reprisal for complaining about the lack of protections. When OSHA received thousands of worker complaints, it responded to only a tiny proportion of them and levied small fines that the authors said likely had little deterrent effect.

The WHO and CDC chose, at the outset of the pandemic, to assume that COVID was transmitted via droplet. Not only did this assumption turn out to be wrong, said assumption was presented to the public as a scientific fact, rather than what it was - an overly optimistic guess informed by bias and motivated reasoning. This original sin of the pandemic was not a case of misinterpreted or ambiguous findings. Global health bodies decided to declare the virus droplet-borne because of long-held, incorrect prejudices, and the logistical and legal nightmare that airborne infection control would have represented.

FOIA’d emails between two former White House Medical Unit Directors sent in early 2020 show that some initial CDC statements which did point to the possibility of airborne transmission were harshly internally criticized. On April 7, William Lang wrote, “‘Transmission via aerosols is currently uncertain’… this sentence is generating significant concern in organization management…. ‘It is unknown how long the air inside a room occupied by someone with confirmed COVID-19 remains potentially infectious’….Managers are reading this and freaking out. We’ve been telling people this virus is not infectiously airborne beyond 6’ and this paragraph undercuts this concept.”

FOIA’d emails between Richard Tubb and William Lang

Lang goes on to say:

These blanket statements are confusing organizations that are trying to manage safety for their employees, and, importantly, liability issues. Lawyer to employer: ‘CDC said right here [this paragraph] that the virus is airborne and potentially infectious for an unknown period of time, and you did not put everyone in the space in N95 masks? Obviously, you were negligent.’

Richard Tubb, another former White House physician, forwarded Lang’s email on to a long list of prominent doctors and US government officials, co-signing it with the phrase, “Excellent points and on target, Bill.”

In other words, if the CDC says COVID may be airborne, people will be able to sue their employers for not implementing airborne precautions. This would cost employers money. Therefore, COVID isn’t airborne.

In the months that followed, the CDC repeatedly and publicly claimed with complete confidence that COVID could not spread beyond 6’ and could not hang in the air like smoke- leading to widespread usage of surgical masks and “social distancing” guidelines, both of which are inadequate airborne infection control. The legacy of this utterly false claim- that COVID was droplet spread, not fully airborne- is still with us today. The public does not know the difference between a surgical mask and an N-95 respirator. The public still thinks standing six feet from an infectious person is enough to protect them.

The public does not know that the entire initial attempt to control the spread of COVID-19 was based on incorrect droplet-based infection control protocol that could never have halted the virus. This also biases folks against any new attempts to control COVID; after all, we did an entire year of (pseudo) lockdowns and (surgical) masking, right? If that didn’t work, nothing will!

From the very beginning, debates that should have been scientific were muddled by business interests. A responsible public health organization would have at least expressed their uncertainty as to the droplet/airborne nature of COVID and advised the public to implement airborne infection control measures while the issue was studied. Instead, the CDC chose to advance bad science because the alternative would’ve meant too much money, too much disruption, and too much liability. Better employers kill frontline workers than possibly face future legal troubles.

The WHO and CDC’s reluctance to call attention to their massive, massive lie- their claim that they knew for certain that COVID was not airborne when they did not- continues to condemn the public to poor understanding of how the virus does transmit, and how airborne infection control measures like better ventilation and filtration would drastically reduce the spread of COVID.

Now, after years of minimizing propaganda, most of the public feels completely powerless to control the spread of COVID-19. At a time when technology has never been better equipped to take on the challenge of airborne infection control, the public has been pushed into a state of learned helplessness, repeatedly and incorrectly told that “there’s nothing anyone can do.” People with “believe science” signs in their yards admit that COVID is simply “here to stay” and sigh as their children contract their fourth, fifth or sixth infection. It is against this backdrop of total surrender that the CDC has continued to roll back what meager worker protections remained.

Public consent for reducing and eliminating isolation periods has come at the tail end of a long series of misinformation, designed to push people to accept forever reinfections. If there’s nothing that can be done to control COVID, after all, why should anybody isolate? It’s simply another cup of water in the ocean of virus we all have to swim in now.

Of course, one would think that the obvious violation of basic worker rights- the rights to safety and health- would motivate the unions and leftist organizers to take action. But they too, have been drowned in a sea of normalizing propaganda, the crux of which is the demonstrably false claim that nothing can be done to reduce or control the spread of COVID. Nothing except vaccinations- which most Americans have failed to keep up with.

Biden’s CDC no more believes or promotes “the science” than Trump’s before him. COVID is a virus, not a supernatural phenomenon beyond all human understanding. Like all viruses, it can be controlled and reduced with proper infection control protocols. Like all viruses, it can be eliminated from indoor air rapidly with high quality ventilation and filtration. Like all viruses, it cannot infect more hosts when the sick isolate and are paid to stay home from work.

The CDC’s desire to eliminate isolation is yet one more step toward disappearing the virus from public consciousness, because a government that isn’t fighting COVID-19, isn’t losing to COVID-19. If COVID is everywhere, COVID is nowhere. If the other kids at school all have a permanent cough, maybe my kid’s permanent cough is “normal”. So as hospitals remain overwhelmed, staffing shortages worsen, economies buckle, disability and long-term illness hits new records, kids miss school and workers lose their livelihoods, we’ll continue to do nothing more than turn to each other and wonder why.