Everyone should care about the updated CDC guidelines. These will harm vulnerable populations the most - chronically ill/immunocompromised people, disabled people, the elderly, the working class, people of color, LGBTQ people, children. But this doesn't mean anyone is safe.
If you are not educated about the dangers of COVID, and you are “sick of” being reminded of COVID’s existence, you may be inclined to celebrate the new guideline changes. But make no mistake: the guidance is to minimize sick days of employees, allowing them to come back to work in 24 hours and spread COVID. And you will experience the dangerous repercussions of this if you haven't already. Children are being sacrificed through this guidance too, as many schools have started adopting this policy for student absences.
If you don't understand what the new guideline is or why it's bad, here's how I would explain the danger of it. Basically, we have known for years that COVID spreads asymptomatically or pre-symptomatically (before symptoms show up) for years now. We also know many have mild symptoms they think are just a “cold” or “allergies” or a “mystery virus” - they don't test, or they take one test at home and end up with a false negative not realizing how ineffective these tests can be compared to the more difficult to access PCR tests (thanks CDC). But NOW, even with all this COVID that people are unknowingly spreading, we add another danger into the mix: positive tests that allow people to return to work or school the next day if they are “fever free.” This does not mean their infection is harmless to them or that it won't put someone else in a hospital or worse. It doesn't mean they don't need to rest longer than a day to avoid Long COVID. Being fever free means very very little and this guideline is clearly based more on capitalism and what your boss might prefer than actual science. Because remember, your boss does not actually care about your health, they only care that you make them money and they'll replace you if you get too sick or die. This also further reveals how little those making the biggest decisions in “public health” actually care about our health. Any trust you had in the CDC should be gone at this point.
I've wished it was enough to care about people who have the highest risk of serious consequences from COVID infection - whether that's due to a medical condition, lack of access to adequate healthcare, lack of access to social distancing when necessary. But apparently people love to imagine COVID is harmless to them and only something people with less privilege should worry about. It is not much different than people who didn't worry about HIV because they thought it was a “gay disease” - which we know turned out to be false, as anyone can get it, even if LGBTQ people and other “vulnerable populations” were disproportionately impacted. The CDC is once again not helping with this misconception that gives people a deeply misguided sense of false safety from disease.
Every new guideline that comes out turns out to not only be extremely dangerous for people who are “high risk” (and I define this term more broadly than the CDC does), but harmful to everyone else as well, whether they realize it or not. Until we have better vaccines and treatments, there is no way to safely drop guidelines and go around without a mask. There is no way to safely repeatedly catch COVID, a disease that has been proven to have many negative health impacts with an increased risk every time. There is no way to know how many infections your body can handle. Most of us have had it at least once. Do we really want to test a disease so many have died from?
A lot of the people I see not caring about COVID are relatively “healthy” and they have health insurance. I would encourage them to get it through their heads that their health is not guaranteed, especially when a deadly and disabling virus is allowed to spread unchecked. I would encourage them to learn more about viruses, how they have always been capable of permanently negatively impacting one's health, from serious organ damage to immune function to triggering conditions like autoimmune diseases and ME/CFS. Some autoimmune diseases have been known to increase risk of cancer. Studies have repeatedly shown that COVID is especially dangerous. And whether you're insured or not, access to adequate medical care isn't guaranteed either - from long waiting periods to doctors who are unwilling to fully investigate more complex health problems, not to mention medical gaslighting. Then there's the expensive specialists, tests and treatments many with Long COVID and other chronic illnesses end up needing to see. Sometimes you can't find a treatment that works for you, other times there is no good treatment for what you have at all. Just ask many people with ME/CFS, Long COVID, POTS, Fibromyalgia.
I actually have several of the conditions many are getting from COVID. The first is Fibromyalgia - which I was diagnosed with at age eleven, back in 2004. I have had to deal with many who don't understand my illness, whether they think I'm faking or exaggerating, my whole life. The pain is bad enough and the lack of understanding from others makes it worse. I had many viruses as a kid, and it's likely that one of them triggered my Fibromyalgia. Now COVID is causing Fibromyalgia along with other Long COVID symptoms and comorbidities. I also have POTS, which means my heart rate goes up a lot when I stand and this leads to dizziness, exhaustion, and sometimes fainting. Even with medications it isn't always easy to treat. Many with Long COVID are getting POTS, which leads to more awareness of POTS, but more hardships for people with Long COVID and medical gaslighting is common with this condition. Lastly, I have Hashimoto's Disease, an autoimmune disease that impacts the thyroid. I'm lucky I have found a treatment that works for me, but many aren't. I've read that many are ending up with thyroid issues, including Hashimoto's Disease, as well as many other autoimmune diseases following COVID infection. It is likely COVID activated these conditions for them. None of these conditions are easy to live with. I would not advise increasing your risk of getting one or more of them by getting COVID multiple times.
There are so many things I wish “healthy” people would consider. Your health so far is not due to personal accomplishments, it is not anything you've earned or worked hard for, it is not something that reflects your values or worth as a human being. You might think it is, but it's not. It is due mostly to luck, possibly some privileges you have compared to others but even with those privileges, you're one virus or autoimmune disease away from it all changing. You may go to the gym constantly, eat healthy, get enough sleep, minimize drug or alcohol use as much as you'd like, and you feel that this is why you are healthy and others who have chronic health conditions simply aren't doing those things. But that's just not the case. The CDC's reliance on the distinction between “those with underlying health conditions” and those without them has furthered a divide that has kept the “healthy” in the dark about the health risks repeated COVID infections pose to them. It has allowed them to feel indifferent towards COVID death tolls because they assume “those people would have died anyway,” an example of the eugenics that shapes COVID policy.
Compared to many of the pandemics of the past, we have come a long way, yet not far enough, and we are only moving backwards. Not only do we have a liberal and conservative anti-mask movement, as well as an anti-vaccine movement telling people their immune system is strong enough (health supremacist logic) and that vaccines cause autism which is worse than the risk of deadly disease (ableist and completely false), but we also have a public health agency promoting ableist, eugenic ideology (“the people dying are sick anyway,” the idea that the immunocompromised live separately from everyone else and must continue to live in isolation) and removing our remaining protections. All I know is we can't allow this to go on, we can't keep going backwards. It's time for those in denial to wake up, realize we are all vulnerable to this virus, and help us fight for more COVID precautions. All of our futures depend on it.
"Your health so far is not due to personal accomplishments, it is not anything you've earned or worked hard for, it is not something that reflects your values or worth as a human being." Amen. I never thought about how much of this attitude pervades the COVID "just get over it" rhetoric. Thanks for another great post on this topic.