COVID-19 is becoming more like the flu and, as such, no longer requires its own virus-specific health rules, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday alongside the release of a unified “respiratory virus guide.”

In a lengthy background document, the agency laid out its rationale for consolidating COVID-19 guidance into general guidance for respiratory viruses—including influenza, RSV, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, enteroviruses, and others, though specifically not measles. The agency also noted the guidance does not apply to health care settings and outbreak scenarios.

“COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including influenza and RSV,” the agency wrote.

The most notable change in the new guidance is the previously reported decision to no longer recommend a minimum five-day isolation period for those infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Instead, the new isolation guidance is based on symptoms, which matches long-standing isolation guidance for other respiratory viruses, including influenza.

  • Pretzilla@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Fuck you CDC. Long Covid is real.

    Just leave 5 days as a recommendation. What’s the harm in that? fuckers.

    Ed: CDC could do better to protect people, but instead bend to capitalist (mostly GQP) forces to ignore that edict and get sick people back out working.

    • candybrie@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I think it’s that case that a lot of these viruses have “long” versions. We just call it things like ME/CFS.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Long CoVID is indeed real but the same issue happens with many other diseases including the flu. That said, Covid is still much deadlier than the flu should not be treated as such.

      • Liz@midwest.social
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        7 months ago

        Long COVID happens at a WAY higher rate than ME/CFS does with any other illness. In an oversimplification, they’re basically the same thing. COVID is the first disease we’ve found that can reliably trigger ME/CFS, to the point where it got its own name.

      • Pretzilla@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Please show me where they addressed long Covid there?

        Anyway, to your point, the casual public fuckhead only sees the headline and just goes out sick and unmasked.

        Same as they did forever when they were sick with a cold to invite some company to their misery.

      • Drusas@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        And in what way do you think that addresses the fact that long Covid is real and common?

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    7 months ago

    COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses, including influenza and RSV," the agency wrote.

    Instead of treating COVID like Influenza and RSV, let’s treat Influenza and RSV like COVID. Cough more than twice in 24 hours, put on a fucking mask.

  • NovaPrime@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Fuck the cdc. They’ve made one bad call after another on this thing since the start. Becoming like the flu? Last time I caught this shit a few months ago I was in bed for 2 weeks before I could even function at a base level again. And that’s with being fully boosted, otherwise healthy, in shape, and using paxlovid.

        • stoly@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I have HIV. I have taken these meds before. Had to stop because the side effects were life-stopping.

          I’m not anti med, but I have personal experience in this area.

      • NovaPrime@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        Perhaps, but last time I had covid (two years ago) without Paxlovid it was even worse. I ended up in the ER and my oxygen hung around 82-85% for days. I think I’m just one of the lucky few who won the shitty body prize when it comes to covid response.

        Edit: For reference, I’m not in the at-risk age group, I bike 5-7 miles a day, practice yoga regularly, eat a vegetarian diet and get blood tested every 6 months to make sure I’m not nutritionally deficient, I stay on top of my boosters, wear masks when out in crowds…etc. I think it’s just the luck of the draw with some people when it comes to this weird virus.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    It still kills multiple times the number of people that the flu does. They are not the same.

  • SpeedLimit55@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    After mask mandates lifted people actually seemed to be conscious around illness and stayed home or kept their kids home if they were sick. Lately it seems like sick people are everywhere especially this winter. In the past two months we had both covid and norovirus in the house.

    • Overzeetop@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      There are a lot of never-maskers out there, but I’d say that I’ve seen at least an order of magnitude increase in general usage even years after the lock downs and mandate have been lifted.

  • FraidyBear@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Fuck the CDC and late stage capitalism. One of my best friends is in a wheelchair for the rest of her life because of Long COVID, she can’t walk a few feet without being so out of breath she passes out. My mom got Long COVID the first and now the second time she’s been infected. She still coughs every time she walked around or does any activities. She has to carry an inhaler now but she doesn’t have asthma, just Long COVID. She got COVID only a few weeks ago and it’s was most definitely NOT like the flu for her or anyone I’ve known that’s gotten it.

  • Player2@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    I would call it ‘stupid’ but there is 100% a more malicious reason for this

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Man, last time most of my relatives died of the flu 😷 that must have been pretty bad. But good thing the flu never killed my immediate relatives like my grandparents, my parents or my siblings. The others that did get killed by the flu probably had it coming. El flu es muy bueno! Y sabroso! Yeah! Baby!

    But now here comes COVID 19 trying to be a copycat. Sure if you get COVID you might get long COVID and never recover and die eventually. Sure if you got autoimmune stuff going on like HIV, colitis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, MS and such with suppressants, you could actually die of COVID. But we’re here to make money not to worry about if you’re gonna die from a deadly disease or not. So fine COVID you can be flu like.

    We’ll miss you guys! Specially my mom. I’m gonna miss her. And my sister with her MS. But hey, McDonald’s gotta make a buck! We can’t be holding the line mom! Sorry! We can work on a nice eulogy while you don’t have COVID yet. I’ll call you sometime! 😉

    • Tabooki@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Except the original COVID was literally killing 1% of the people that caught it. I lost many friends. Nobody I know died of the flu. Especially in the same year.

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        Physics Girl on YouTube (https://youtube.com/@physicsgirl?si=hsr7n5xi2VRCEZMV) contracted COVID a year ago and has been totally crippled since.

        Scary shit man.

        I’ve had it 3 or 4 times and it was a minor cold. My fiancé lost her sense of taste for over a year and was knocked out every other time she had it.

        I don’t know. What can you do? The world goes where the world goes. Just gotta ride until we die.

      • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Just think about what you just wrote. Really think about all aspects of it. Look a few things up too. It was never 1 percent mortality. Barely point one.

        • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          Yeah man, just make shit up…

          In the USA we had:

          • 111,558,488 cases
          • 1,216,367 deaths

          That’s a 1.09% mortality rate.

            • BreakDecks@lemmy.ml
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              Yes, the actual rate of infection is probably higher than the official numbers because of underreporting, but if the goal is to compare COVID to the flu, this hardly matters, because the flu rate is even more underreported. Factor that in, and it just further reinforces the fact that COVID-19 was and is a far more serious illness than influenza, even in an especially bad flu season (peak annual death toll of 60k).

              COVID has had an average annual death toll of ~300k since the pandemic began.

              • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
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                Yeah I’ve had it 4 or 5 times. Like I said, if everyone gets the fucking flu, well…I’m not even a statistic neither are most had it.

      • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
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        Nah 3 years of watching numbers and basic math skills. They didn’t care about accuracy when fear was the game

          • John_McMurray@lemmy.world
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            Wasn’t really hard when certain government organizations would say shit like there’s been 1.5 million cases, 55,000 deaths and .2 percent mortality in the same fucking press release. Either it was 20 million cases or the .2 was a lie. From what I’ve seen .1, .2 was accurate.

            • boyi@lemmy.sdf.org
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              7 months ago

              again, what your p-value? and based on how many samples? What’s your population?what’s your margin of error?

                • boyi@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  of course their number is the data. How do you analyze the number? what’s you methodology. I need to make sense of your research.