Vidcast:  https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=955970275479680&ref=sharing

The CDC has erased the current 5 day quarantine rule that applies after you test positive for CoVid.  It now says that you can go out in public as soon as 24 hours after diagnosis as long has you have no or improving symptoms and no fever over that 24 hour time.  

Actually, the new CDC rules apply to anyone with any respiratory infection including CoVid, the flu, RSV, and even the common cold.  The reason I say any respiratory infection is that only in the case of CoVid do we have a readily available, reasonably priced home test to determine whether or not you have CoVid.  Oh yes there is Lucira, a Pfizer test for both CoVid and influenza, but that will set you back $40 on Amazon for a single test.  That’s 7-8 times as expensive as the $5-6 for each CoVid test.

Back to the guidelines.  Besides the 24 hour rule with no symptoms or improving symptoms and no fever off any fever-reducing medications such as Tylenol, acetaminophen, Advil-Motrin, ibuprofen, or aspirin, it also states that, for the next 5 days you should take precautions to avoid any disease spread including wearing a tight-fitting mask, distancing from others, hygiene with hand washing, and cough/sneeze covering, and testing.  The last provision is vague but ultra-important.

We know that for CoVid, and possibly for other respiratory diseases, you can be highly infectious and yet asymptomatic.  You want to be responsible to your family, friends, co-workers, especially if some of them are in high risk groups including older persons, those with weak immunity, and those with chronic disease such as diabetes or cancer.  To be responsible, you really to modify your behavior for more than 24 hours.

In the case of a positive CoVid test with no symptoms, the blanket 5 day rule is not enough without follow up testing.  A safer interval is 10 days, since we know that the virus does hang around the long.  Then, your CoVid home test must be negative before you can go out in public or around vulnerable people without a tight-fitting or preferably an N95 mask with distancing as far as you can.  Even with the mask, safety is iffy.  That means you can’t dine indoors taking off the mask until your test is negative.  If your test is positive, even a bit, you must mask and distance and should stay away from vulnerable people.

For the flu and RSV, if you know for certain that you have either, and even a cold, you should mask and distance for 5 days after your symptoms and fevers abate.  Since these diseases are not as potentially devastating as Covid to your or to anyone you might infect, the CDC rules as they stand make sense.  I say it again:  for CoVid, rely on home testing to tell you when you are no longer infectious.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0301-respiratory-virus.html

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