New CDC guidelines not only ditched quarantines, they put less emphasis on social distancing, routine testing & contact tracing. You no longer have to stay 6-feet away. But CDC leadership is in disarray so it's best to act the best interest of your health https://t.co/cPSwTwwCpP
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) August 12, 2022
The CDC effectively throws up its hands:
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Aug. 8-9
NOTE: Next update will be Friday morning, Aug. 12. See you then!
Fauci warns of ‘trouble’ for those w/ BA.5 variant if not up to date on vaccines. The nation’s top infectious diseases expert says he understands people are exhausted, but is urging those not up to date on vaccines to get the shots —BA.5 is no joke https://t.co/2eSLG5qL8E
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) August 7, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Aug. 4-5
NOTE: Since there’s not much being reported that won’t be just as important 48 hours later… Barring some major change, I’m going to switch to a twice-weekly, Tuesday & Thursday posting schedule for the next few weeks.
So my next update here will be on the morning of Tuesday, August 9. Have a great weekend, everybody!
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CDC expected to ease #Covid recommendations, including for schools. The agency wants to de-emphasize regular screening for Covid in schools. Instead, it's considering testing on community levels https://t.co/WS5rjttwjZ
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) August 5, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Tuesday / Wednesday, Aug. 2-3
President Joe Biden’s “loose cough” has returned as he faces a rebound case of COVID-19, his doctor said, though he “continues to feel well.” Biden will remain in isolation through at least Thursday under CDC guidelines. https://t.co/XBL6QEEsh0
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 2, 2022
… More than 2½ years into the pandemic, and with a highly contagious version of the virus circulating, the CDC guidelines for what to do when falling ill — and when to return to public life — continue to stoke as much confusion as clarity. That’s a reflection of the changing nature of the virus, the inherent unpredictability of an infection, and the demands and expectations of work and home life.
With new research showing that people are often infectious for more than five days, the CDC guidance has drawn criticism from some infectious-disease experts. The Biden protocol strikes many of them as the right way to go — because it’s empirical evidence that a person isn’t shedding virus…
The CDC’s guidance has been under internal review in recent months. A revamped set of recommendations is expected to be rolled out in coming weeks, according to three administration officials and advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions. A draft of the updated guidance at the moment does not include a requirement to test negative before exiting isolation, they said.
The existing CDC guidance says patients can end isolation five days after their first day of symptoms, so long as their symptoms have improved and they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without fever-reducing medication. The CDC encourages people who become very sick or have weakened immune systems to isolate for 10 days…
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at how long people could shed virus that could be cultured in a laboratory — the best test of infectiousness. The result: People shed such virus for eight days, on average, before testing negative…
CDC has more than 600 websites related to its covid response, each with different messages on testing, ventilation and masking in different settings, the adviser said. The agency wants to share “important messages that everyone needs to hear in all settings across the country … and then make sure that all of the other guidance underneath it reflects those key messages.”…
How quickly a rapid test turns positive can help guide behavior, Mina said.
“If you have a really dark line that shows up in five seconds before the control line even shows up … you probably really want to stay in isolation,” Mina said. “If you start to see the line in 10 seconds, and it gets really, really dark, you are teeming with virus.”
If there is a weaker or fainter line, “it’s likely that you have less virus there, but you still do have virus. And there’s no way to define the cutoff at which you’re likely to transmit to other people,” Barczak said.
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Sunday / Monday, July 31 – Aug. 1
Guy next to me on plane: “Why are you wearing a mask? You don’t need to anymore.”
Me: “It helps me mind my own business.”
— John V (@RedactedJohn) July 28, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, July 28-29
The Biden administration now expects to begin a Covid-19 booster campaign with retooled vaccines in September because Pfizer and Moderna have promised that they can deliver doses by then, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
With updated formulations apparently close at hand, federal officials have decided against expanding eligibility for second boosters of the existing vaccines this summer. The new versions are expected to perform better against the now-dominant Omicron subvariant BA.5, although the data available so far is still preliminary…
In internal deliberations, some senior health officials argued that eligibility for a second booster should be broadened before the reformulated version is ready because coronavirus infections are on the rise again. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, and Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the White House pandemic response coordinator, both advocated that position.
“I think there should be flexibility and permissiveness in at least allowing” a second booster for younger Americans, Dr. Fauci said in an interview this month. One alternative discussed was offering the shots only to a subset of younger, at-risk individuals, such as pregnant women…
“You can’t get a vaccine shot Aug. 1 and get another vaccine shot Sept. 15 and expect the second shot to do anything,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. “You’ve got so much antibody around, if you get another dose, it won’t do anything.”
“The antibodies stop that next dose from working” if the next dose is given too early, he added — a pattern that applies to other vaccines, such as tetanus or flu shots, as well…
At a late June meeting of an F.D.A. advisory committee, independent vaccine experts overwhelmingly agreed with the need to update the coronavirus vaccines because the virus is now more deft at dodging their protection. But both Pfizer and Moderna were reluctant to commit to delivering doses with a revised formulation at the start of fall.
Kathrin Jansen, the head of vaccine research for Pfizer, said at the meeting that her company was prepared to deliver doses by early October. Dr. Stephen Hoge, the president of Moderna, said his company would be able to deliver reformulated shots only by late October or early November.
But more recently, both companies assured federal officials that they could speed up their timetables and be ready in early September, according to people familiar with the discussions.
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Tuesday / Wednesday, July 26-27
… To kick off the effort, the White House is gathering key federal officials, top scientists, and pharmaceutical executives including representatives of Pfizer and Moderna for a Tuesday “summit” to discuss the new technologies and lay out a road map for developing them.
“These are vaccines that are going to be far more durable, that are going to provide far longer-lasting protection, no matter what the virus does or how it evolves,” Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said in an interview. “If we can drive down infections by 90% … Covid really begins to fade into the background, and becomes just one more respiratory illness that we have to deal with.”
Jha acknowledged that such a campaign would likely require more money from Congress, though he declined to provide a specific estimate.
The summit is the strongest sign of support to date for developing a new generation of Covid-19 vaccines — an effort that several prominent researchers have long advocated, but that has languished due to lack of investment. Several of those scientists praised the new White House initiative, expressing hope that it is a harbinger of bigger steps that will yield a next generation of Covid vaccines…
“We have fantastic vaccines that are actually doing a lot of good right now and are quite safe,” Jha said. “And so the bar for approving new vaccines is going to be that it has to be better than that. And that’s going to be a high bar.”
While hospitalization rates remain low compared to the devastating Covid waves of January 2021, September 2021, and January 2022, they have steadily climbed since April, as contagious viral variants including BA.4 and BA.5 have rapidly spread. There is really no predicting, experts say, what the virus will throw at society next.
“There’s a sense that we’re playing catch-up with the virus,” Jha said. “The virus is constantly evolving. We’re having to evolve with it, that’s fine. But over the long run, we really need a serious breakthrough.”
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In a normal timeline, the story below would’ve been the lead — or even deserving of its own, prime-time post. But the America-first grifters, the conspiracy theorists, and the media enabling them have dug in so deeply that it’s going to make absolutely no bloody difference in this one. For the record — here’s the first of a long, meaty thread with lots of links:
Where did the pandemic begin?
Was it from nature or a lab?
Since the start, this fundamental question has gone unanswered.
Until now.
Out in @ScienceMagazine: SARS-CoV-2 emerged into humans via the live animal trade at the Huanan Seafood Market.https://t.co/hnl9j3E6j6
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) July 26, 2022