The CDC Gets Real
THE most interesting publichealth development of the pandemic era came this week with a radical course revision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The policy change has COVID hawks trembling with fear and rage and bafflement — while those who believe we need to find a way to move on from topdown regulatory measures are very confused by the possibility the CDC just became an ally rather than an enemy.
Simply put, the CDC appears to have decided that there’s just too much COVID around now to continue its previously draconian efforts to contain it through forced human separation.
Its new guidance says people who test positive for COVID can end their isolation (or quarantine or whatever is the word of the week to explain how to stay away from people) after five days rather than 10 if they’re asymptomatic. They don’t need to test their way out.
How could this be, when we’re in the middle of the biggest surge in COVID cases since the pandemic’s start? The surge is the reason.
Omicron is moving so fast and is structured in such a way that it eludes containment — and given its speed, pursuing such containment would require measures that would make the lockdowns of spring 2020 look like Times Square during the ball drop.
What’s key here is the implicit acknowledgment that Omicron is far less damaging than its predecessor, the Delta variant. And the danger recedes the more vaccine you’ve gotten.
As of today, two-thirds of the population of the United States over the age of 5 is considered fully vaccinated. So it isn’t a hard choice to make — balancing the danger of breakthrough cases that are very likely to be mild against the threat to the public’s economic and psychic well-being that would result from severe lockdowns.
Once such choices were harder. But that was before the vaccines.
As we bring the horrendous year of 2021 to an end, every unvaccinated person in America has made a conscious and longstanding choice to risk it (or had that choice made for them by their parents). The guidance implicitly says the CDC will no longer intervene on their behalf, especially since they don’t want the intervention.
And what about children under 5, who cannot get vaccinated? Even COVID hawks like Dr. Paul Offit are not seeing an increase in the threat level: “We test anybody who’s admitted to the hospital for whatever reason . . . and we’re definitely seeing an increase in cases. However, we’re really not seeing an increase in children who are hospitalized for COVID or in the intensive care unit for COVID.”
Because we have vaccines to save us from the worst of COVID, because we’re weeks away from a pill that will treat COVID and because Omicron is both more contagious and less harmful, there is no longer any case to be made for avoidance as a public-policy approach.
This has proved displeasing to many. Virologist Angie Rasmussen, who has more than 300,000 followers on Twitter, declared: “Can’t believe I’m saying this but on this one, ignore the CDC.” She went on with an implicit accusation that the agency had changed its guidelines in order to please . . . Delta Airlines.
I guess it’s fine for the CDC to have its guidance directed by teachers unions but not by the needs of the larger American economy. Remember that the American economy is not some abstract thing. It’s the ecosystem in which we live, and we are going to live with the consequences of having disrupted it the way we did for at least a decade.
We don’t really understand how this happened this way, but it’s an acknowledgment of new realities and new possibilities — and the first time since the pandemic began that the publichealth panjandra seem to be grappling with the real-world costs of their top-down dictates. That is to be welcomed by all.