fartman posted:

I am also visiting Europe and can confirm, somehow even less people wear masks here than in the United States.

Joburg posted:

What’s the thread consensus for quarantining these days? My husband has COVID and I don’t. So far he’s isolating upstairs but he’s probably going back to work after 5 days, per the CDC guidelines. After the 5 days should he continue isolating when at home? Just wear a mask in common areas? Throw parties?

Oracle posted:

Test after five days. Aim for two negative tests in a row. If he’s positive he should stay home til he tests negative. If that’s not financially possible he should n95 up at work at all times (including eating/drinking, go outside and eat in your car/drink outside. If people complain compare it to a smoke break, no one bitches about those).
Air out the room he’s quarantining in, throw open those windows and turn on a fan with the door to the house closed. Should be fine after a few hours. Then wash everything.

Joburg posted:

What about at home? Should I assume he’s not contagious after 5 days and negative tests?

PostNouveau posted:

He can still be contagious. The most likely time is up to 10 days. Stay away from him and get multiple negative tests before he leaves quarantine.

Joburg posted:

What’s the thread consensus for quarantining these days? My husband has COVID and I don’t. So far he’s isolating upstairs but he’s probably going back to work after 5 days, per the CDC guidelines. After the 5 days should he continue isolating when at home? Just wear a mask in common areas? Throw parties?

HazCat posted:

It's 14 days, the 10 days was a concession to business.

And RATs are so inaccurate now I wouldn't recommend 'testing out' of quarantine. Assume he's contagious for 14 days, then test and only continue quarantining if he's still positive. No number of negative RATs should lead you to shorten quarantine below 14 days.

Joburg posted:

What’s the thread consensus for quarantining these days? My husband has COVID and I don’t. So far he’s isolating upstairs but he’s probably going back to work after 5 days, per the CDC guidelines. After the 5 days should he continue isolating when at home? Just wear a mask in common areas? Throw parties?

Joburg posted:

What about at home? Should I assume he’s not contagious after 5 days and negative tests?

How are u posted:

Or you won't, it's a weird virus and the vaccines are miraculous. My partner caught it a month ago and I didn't mask inside, we shared the same space, slept in the same bed, didn't change anything, and I didn't catch jack poo poo. I figured welp, I'm getting it now and it just...never happened. I do not say this to tell you to not take precautions, OP, but hopefully if you do take precautions you can feel a little more hopeful.

droll posted:

How many PCR tests did you take and at what interval? How did you rule out you gave it to her 10 days prior from an asymptomatic infection?

Iron Crowned posted:

The 5 days thing is gaslighting from the CDC because Delta Airlines complained to the Biden administration, HTH.

Falcorum posted:

Blame the UK, they started openbiden as soon as possible so they could go on about the benefits of brexit, so other EU countries followed them right after. At least in Portugal people still seemed to be masking well into late last year, gently caress knows now that Summer temps are approaching though

Koos Group posted:

What is openbiden?

quote:

Most working-age Americans who died of COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic were so-called essential workers in labor, service and retail jobs that required on-site attendance and prolonged contact with others, according to a recently published study led by a University of South Florida epidemiologist.

The study looks back on COVID-19 deaths in 2020 and affirms what many had already known or suspected — that Americans who could not work from home and who labored in low-paying jobs with few or no benefits, such as paid sick leave and health insurance coverage, bore the brunt of deaths during the pandemic’s first year, said Jason Salemi, an associate professor in USF’s College of Public Health and co-author of the study.

Salemi said the finding, while perhaps expected, left him with two takeaways: That essential workers need more protections during an infectious disease pandemic, and that society’s desire to “return to normal” will mean different things for different people — with inequitable consequences.

“If I say I want things to return to normal, I’m in a position of advantage,” Salemi said. “I can work from home most days. I have access to a primary care physician, and paid sick leave. There are people in this study for whom that may not be the case.”

***

The study found:

▪ The death rate of low socioeconomic position adults — those whose education attainment level did not go beyond a high school diploma — was five times higher when compared to high socioeconomic position adults, and the mortality rate of intermediate socioeconomic position adults was two times higher.

▪ White women made up the largest population group considered high socioeconomic position. By comparison, nearly 60% of Hispanic men were in a low socioeconomic position.

▪ The death rate of low socioeconomic position Hispanic men was 27 times higher than high socioeconomic position white women.

Salemi said the finding that stood out for him was that among all 25- to 64-year-old adults in 2020, people in a low socioeconomic position made up about one-third of the working-age population but accounted for two-thirds of COVID-19 deaths for the same age group.

Koos Group posted:

Could you link to more info about this?

quote:

With the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, the 10-day isolation for those who are fully vaccinated may significantly impact our workforce and operations. Similar to healthcare, police, fire, and public transportation workforces, the Omicron surge may exacerbate shortages and create significant disruptions.

[…]

To address the potential impact of the current isolation policy safely, we propose a 5-day isolation from symptom onset for those who experience a breakthrough infection. Individuals would be able to end isolation with an appropriate testing protocol. As part of this policy change, we would be interested to
partner with CDC and collect empirical data.


We look forward to continuing our partnership with the CDC to protect the health and safety of our people, customers and communities as the pandemic evolves.

quote:

“The reason is that with the sheer volume of new cases that we are having and that we expect to continue with omicron, one of the things we want to be careful of is that we don’t have so many people out,” Fauci told CNN’s Jim Acosta. “I mean, obviously if you have symptoms you should [be out], but if you are asymptomatic and you are infected we want to get people back to jobs — particularly those with essential jobs to keep our society running smoothly.”

quote:

WALENSKY: Well, you know, really, what we’re trying to do here is this confluence of events. This is the science that we have seen. And of course, there is a bit of transmission that still can occur in those last five days. But what we started to see over this last several days is what’s going to happen here with omicron, with a really large anticipated number of cases. And as we’ve seen that, we also want to make sure that we can keep the critical functions of society open and operating. We started to see challenges with that, you know, with airline flights and other areas. We started first with doing the health care workers last week to make sure that we could make - keep our hospitals functioning safely and open.

SHAPIRO: So I hear saying that while the science is a factor, the science isn’t operating in a vacuum. There are economic and societal concerns beyond just health and safety. Given that people can still shed the virus after five days, why not mandate masking or even require people to test negative before they end isolation?

WALENSKY: Yeah, I really am glad you asked that question. So of course, we can’t take science into a vacuum. We have to put science in the context of how it can be implemented in a functional society, so we always do that. Your question, though, is really important. And that is, you know, the vast majority of transmission happens in that first five days. And there’s probably a little bit that might happen after those five days, which is why we’ve really put in the strong recommendation to mask those last five days.

droll posted:

How many PCR tests did you take and at what interval? How did you rule out you gave it to her 10 days prior from an asymptomatic infection?

Gio posted:

The Science —during the worst of the Omicron wave—told them people weren’t infectious after five days.

James Garfield posted:

You are misrepresenting the Walensky quote, the point is that the benefit of isolation depends on how much of the population is infected. If (arbitrary numbers) someone without symptoms 5 days after a positive test has a 2% chance of being contagious, and 5% of the general population are contagious, it doesn't make sense for them to continue isolating.

Part of why there are strict isolation rules for tuberculosis is that there's almost no community transmission.

James Garfield posted:

You are misrepresenting the Walensky quote, the point is that the benefit of isolation depends on how much of the population is infected. If (arbitrary numbers) someone without symptoms 5 days after a positive test has a 2% chance of being contagious, and 5% of the general population are contagious, it doesn't make sense for them to continue isolating.

Part of why there are strict isolation rules for tuberculosis is that there's almost no community transmission.

Stickman posted:

That's complete bullshit. Reducing exposure by continuing precautions reduces transmission regardless of what proportion of the population is currently infected.

Stickman posted:

It's extra bullshit in the context of advising people that leaving isolation after 5 days is safe advice on the individual level, because following that advice will be extra risk for the people closest to you (which is presumably the people you asking for).

James Garfield posted:

This is an argument for isolating the entire population. Isolating the entire population is obviously not possible, so it doesn't figure into CDC guidelines.

James Garfield posted:

CDC advice isn't targeted to individuals who want to minimize risk at all costs.

Slow News Day posted:

I'm happy to report that, here in Texas, the pandemic has been over since like a year ago, when people started getting vaccinated en masse. There has of course been the occasional wave, but people have learned to deal with them, for the most part. Most places are open, almost no venue requires masks, and there's no mask-shaming, at least not anymore. A bunch of my friends have gotten covid recently (the newest variant) and they were sick for a few days, and then recovered.

Inferior Third Season posted:

James Garfield posted:

This is an argument for isolating the entire population. Isolating the entire population is obviously not possible, so it doesn't figure into CDC guidelines.

CDC advice isn't targeted to individuals who want to minimize risk at all costs.

Electric Wrigglies posted:

Speaking of wishing all the strong NPI measures not going away, where are we at with monkey paw virus? It is starting to cause anxiety even here in W. Africa.

Inferior Third Season posted:

Fritz the Horse posted:

There are 24 confirmed cases so far in the US https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/world-map.html and it appears to be spreading significantly through sexual contact between gay, bisexual, or men who have sex with men. Monkeypox spreads through close contact, I recall reading a week or two ago that the R0 for monkeypox is less than 1, my understanding is it doesn't really have the potential to become a pandemic on the scale of COVID-19.

It's making news because it's a rare disease and unusual to cause an outbreak like this. Personally I'm a lot more worried about the ongoing COVID pandemic and how we prepare for the next pandemic respiratory disease (it's coming sooner or later) than I'm concerned about monkeypox. It's worth noting that monkeypox causes a rash which makes it easier to identify--there's far less risk of cases going undetected like there is with asymptomatic or mild COVID.

edit: the outbreak seems to have started at a sauna (a bathhouse or sex club) in Spain https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/spain-reports-14-new-confirmed-monkeypox-cases-total-21-2022-05-20/.

Fritz the Horse posted:

There are 24 confirmed cases so far in the US https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/world-map.html and it appears to be spreading significantly through sexual contact between gay, bisexual, or men who have sex with men.

spankmeister posted:

It's true that the cases have been disproportionately within the male gay community, but we need to be very wary of framing this as a gay disease, intentionally or not. Let's not repeat the mistakes we made with HIV/AIDS.