On this episode, we go over what preventative steps for COVID you can take if you or someone you know ended up traveling for Thanksgiving. Also, we talk about Biden’s inaugural committee (bideninaugural.org) and nominations for his economic advisers. Then, we discuss Mark Kelly’s swearing in and our pet project: the Utah monolith.
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Mostly accurate transcript:
IF YOU TRAVELED
I want to start out the show by sharing recommendations from experts about what steps to take if you or someone you know actually did end up traveling for Thanksgiving. I also want to make it clear, there’s no judging if you did, or if a close family member did; just make sure you or they take the proper precautions going forward.
Dr. Deborah Birx, who’s sort of the head of the White House COVID task force since she’s a little kookier than Dr. Fauci, has several pieces of advice. First, if you traveled, assume you were exposed to the virus and that you’re infected. Second, make sure that if you develop any symptoms at all, you should get tested so that doctors can count it as a confirmed case. This isn’t some conspiracy theory to make the positive test numbers higher, it’s just so doctors can start treating you as a COVID patient; remember, the treatments we have now work best early in the disease, not when you’re about to go on oxygen.
Admiral Brett Giroir is leading the federal government’s testing response, and he said that you need to be extra careful when you get home, but that you may not need to do a strict quarantine. He does say you should decrease unnecessary activities for a week, and get tested about 3-5 days after you get home. I’m going to step in here and say that if you can, just do the 10-14 day quarantine. We want to prevent as many infections as we possibly can.
Dr. Abraar Karan from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical school pretty much agrees. He said if you traveled but don’t have known exposure (so exposure confirmed by someone testing positive), you should quarantine for 10 days automatically. If you have known exposure, then quarantine for two weeks. He also recommends getting tested when you get back from traveling, as well as 3-5 days later. This is because it might take the virus a little while to incubate and actually create enough of itself to show up on a test.
Dr. Karan stresses that quarantining correctly is also important. You should stay in your room as much as humanly possible, and wear a mask and avoid other people when you have to leave it.
Just some more general information about what we can expect: the incubation period for the virus in your body ranges from 2-14 days, and people usually start feeling symptoms around day 5 or 6. This means that we’ll start seeing the effects sometime between the first and third weeks of December, according to Dr. Tom Frieden, who used to be the director of the CDC.
And, obviously, if you test positive for COVID, make sure to tell everyone you saw at a gathering, or make sure whoever tests positive tells you.
By the way, the CDC is actually studying if they should shorten the quarantine period from 14 days down to maybe something closer to 7-10. Surprisingly, this is supported by a lot of the leading doctors, including that Dr. Frieden (he’s the one I trust most because he was Obama’s CDC pick). He says that the most risky time for asymptomatic people is in the 4-7 days after being exposed. They’re looking at this change because it’s easier for people to swallow one week away from their normal lives, as opposed to two, so in theory they’ll follow the rules. Dr. Fauci even said that this two week period discourages people from getting tested because if they come back positive, they have to miss work, and people are pretty concerned about losing that pay.
BIDEN/HARRIS UPDATES
Let’s do a quick check in on the Biden/Harris Administration and what they’re working on. They announc
