The US Just Scrapped Its Final Covid Protection Measure

The CDC is about to scrap the five day isolation period for covid.

By doing this the US is getting rid of the final public health measure in place to control Sarscov2 transmission.

The justifications would be laughable if they weren’t so deadly.

The story in the Washington Post tells us that the changes reflect the new reality that ‘most’ have immunity.

The new reality — with most people having developed a level of immunity to the virus because of prior infection or vaccination — warrants a shift to a more practical approach, experts and health officials say.

This will be a surprise to the 2,300 people who died of covid in the US last week and the near 10,000 that died of covid in January.

There is no lasting immunity to covid. Among all the obvious things we have found out over the last four years, this is about the most obvious to everyone.

Apart from the people we rely on to deliver public health policy it seems.

The reduction to a five day isolation period in 2021 itself was in response to corporate protestations, led by Delta Airlines, that ten days was too long and hurting profits.

The latest change is nothing more than eugenics for capitalism again.

One expert said it was about ‘being realistic’ and ‘getting the most out of people.’

Public health has to be realistic,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota. “In making recommendations to the public today, we have to try to get the most out of what people are willing to do. … You can be absolutely right in the science and yet accomplish nothing because no one will listen to you.”

But this change doesn’t ask people to do anything. It explicitly tells them they don’t need to do anything other than drag themselves to work.

It’s a lie that this change is motivated by what people are or aren’t willing to do. No one is demanding to be put back to work when sick! This is about business interests and greed. This is about greasing the wheels of capitalism with the mucus of covid-sickened bodies.

‘Being realistic’ as an approach essentially signals the end of public health as applied to covid in the US. It is a declaration of defeat.

But the message is even more sinister than this. What Osterholm is essentially saying is that it is ‘unrealistic’ in the current system to save lives and protect people from disability.

The ‘realistic’ thing, we’re being told, is to accept that people must be pushed sickly into capitalism’s buzz saw.

The political logic of ‘what can realistically be achieved’ has paved many paths to fascism. Realism has always been the death of progressive politics.

The new approach apparently will ask people to isolate based on symptoms.

The CDC plans to recommend that people who test positive for the coronavirus use clinical symptoms to determine when to end isolation.

The majority of Sarscov2 spread is driven by asymptomatic cases. There is also evidence that the virus is evolving to evade the immune system and trigger fewer symptoms in the acute phase. This doesn’t mean your body isn’t fighting disease. It just means it is creeping more stealthily into your organs without a fight.

They say the change will bring recommendations for covid in line with flu and RSV. But the point is that covid isn’t flu or RSV.

It is a more serious disease with a far wider range of outcomes.

The scrapping of five day isolation is a perfect recipe for more covid transmission and greater death. The ideal policy to boost record high disability numbers.

With no federal guidelines for employees to push back with, employers will have even more of the upper hand in demanding people show up for work regardless of how sick they are.

Rest after covid is critical in determining longer term outcomes.

Five days wasn’t much, but it was something.

This change will mean people work themselves into long covid disability.

Another expert justified it by saying it was about relieving the burden on certain groups.

California’s state epidemiologist Erica Pan said the societal disruptions that resulted from strict isolation guidelines also helped spur the change. Workers without sick leave and those who can’t work from home if they or their children test positive and are required to isolate bore a disproportionate burden.

This is the sort of logic that can only come from a deadened system of capitalist exploitation. There is no thought that the solution to workers without sick leave is to give workers sick leave. Or that the solution for those who can’t work from home is to cover lost pay or provide a system of childcare.

The solution to these problems apparently is to kill and disable people.

While we have a ruling class that believes it is ‘unrealistic’ to control a pandemic virus, as long as death and disability is normalised as the acceptable price of business-as-usual, we cannot move forward.

We cannot heal.

The future can only be more dangerous and precarious.

And eventually everyone becomes the vulnerable who once-upon-a-time were sacrificed for normality.

Even billionaires.

This needs to change.