CDC warns Americans to self-quarantine

No, a Negative Coronavirus Test Does Not Mean You Can Safely Socialize

A negative test is helpful, scientists and doctors say.

But it doesn’t mean you should skip other measures, like quarantining, masking and distancing.

In the lead-up to Thanksgiving, Americans are no stranger to planning. But this year, as they prepare to let turkeys brine and pie crusts thaw, people across the country are waiting for something extra: a coronavirus test they hope can clear them to mingle with loved ones.

Many people consider a negative coronavirus test to be a ticket to freely socialize without precautions. But scientists and doctors say this is dangerously misguided. It is one precautionary measure but does not negate the need for others, like quarantining, masking and distancing.

The main reason is that a test gives information about the level of the virus at one point in time. A person could be infected but not have enough virus yet for it to register on a test.

Or, a person may become infected in the hours or days after taking a test.

“If you require all of your guests to email you a negative test result before your Thanksgiving dinner, it will definitely decrease the risk of an outbreak — but not completely,” said Dr. KJ Seung, chief of strategy and policy for the Covid response at Partners in Health. Yet this is a common misperception contact tracers hear when talking to people, he said.

The experts agreed that tests were very useful for one thing: If someone receives a positive test, that person knows to stay home and isolate.

But a negative test, while helpful, is not sufficient, said Dr. Esther Choo, an emergency medicine physician and a professor at Oregon Health and Science University.

A test “filters out those who are positive and definitely shouldn’t be there,” she said. “Testing negative basically changes nothing about behavior. It still means wear a mask, distance, avoid indoors if you can.”

Not all tests are created equal.

  • Different tests for the coronavirus give different information.
  • Laboratory tests that rely on a technique called polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R., can detect the virus when it’s present even at very low levels.
  • Antigen tests are faster, less expensive and more convenient — they can deliver results in a matter of minutes — but are also more prone to missing the virus when it’s scarce.
  • To receive emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, antigen tests for the coronavirus need to detect only 80 percent of the infections found by P.C.R.
A person who tests negative with an antigen test might test positive by P.C.R. — raising the risk that a negative antigen test could give someone a false sense of security en route to Thanksgiving dinner, said Paige Larkin, a clinical microbiologist at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Chicago, where she specializes in infectious disease diagnostics.

Taking multiple tests over a period of days gives a clearer answer.

But experts cautioned that no test — regardless of how many times it’s taken in succession — can definitively determine whether someone infected by the coronavirus is contagious, or no longer poses a transmission risk to other people.

The October outbreak at the White House is a good example of what can happen when a group of people rely heavily on testing and ignore other strategies to limit the spread of the virus.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said in a New York Times interview with Elisabeth Rosenthal that he will not be seeing his three adult daughters this Thanksgiving.

Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist at Harvard, said that people could combine a negative test with a two-week quarantine.

Avoiding any contact with other people for a week or more before taking a test is a powerful tool, said Jeffrey Townsend, a professor of biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health.

Not only does it decrease exposure, but it also gives the virus more opportunity to reach detectable levels in infected people, his research has found.

“You can do more quarantine, and it is quite helpful,” he said. “But the test on exit really helps, and it really drops your chance.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/21/upshot/coronavirus-test-thanksgiving-plans.html
 
Here's How Infectious Disease Doctors and Public Health Experts Are Safely Celebrating Thanksgiving This Year

This year for Thanksgiving, experts and public health officials have made it clear that getting together with a large group of people from outside your immediate household increases the risk of transmission at a time when infections are soaring in the U.S. and the country's Covid-19 death toll is now above 250,000.

The Centers for Disease Control advises Americans not to travel during the Thanksgiving period.

White House advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said he plans to have a "very, very closed family type of thing," and would not be getting together with his own adult children for Thanksgiving.

As you rethink your holiday plans and brainstorm creative solutions, you might be wondering what steps you should take to celebrate safely.

Here's how five experts are spending Thanksgiving during the pandemic.

"We're going to have a family Thanksgiving, but it's just going to be our nuclear family," Jeffrey Townsend, a biostatistician at the Yale School of Public Health, tells CNBC.

Townsend has three children (ages 10, 11 and 13) with his wife, Alison Galvani, who is a professor of epidemiology at Yale University and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis.

Townsend says video chatting during the pandemic has helped him stay in touch with friends and family members who he otherwise wouldn't see. "I feel more in touch with the people who are most important to me than I did pre-pandemic," he says.

Dr. Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious diseases physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and chair of the HIV Medicine Association, says he is not planning to travel or host anyone from out of state for the holidays.

Typically, his two siblings, one of whom lives in another state, as well as his out-of-state elderly parents would join, but not this year.

"Cases are just too unpredictable right now," Gandhi tells CNBC.

Gandhi keeps "a pretty tight social bubble" during the pandemic.

Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, is briefly getting together with relatives for only one hour before he goes home for dinner.

"We're eating separately," he tells CNBC.

While indoors, everyone will be wearing a mask and maintaining at least six feet of social distance.

Dr. Iahn Gonsenhauser, chief quality and patient safety officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, is doing Thanksgiving at home with his children and wife. "We will be celebrating with my sister's family via Skype, and asking grandmas and other family also to join us virtually," he says.

"We can all use the break, we can all use the time away," Gonsenhauser says. "There are needs right now that are far too great to put my personal interests ahead of the interests of our communities."

Dr. Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, the nation's largest philanthropy focused solely on state and local public health, tells CNBC: "This year, we will be here by ourselves."

Castrucci and his wife have two kids, ages 9 and 11. "I remind them that the only person's behavior that you can control is your own," he says.



https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/bus...lebrating-thanksgiving-this-year/2739616/?amp
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Good for them. Me? I won't let a stupid flu ruin my holiday. Screw them, and their useless warnings.
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I agree. I haven't changed anything I have done since this bogus threat started, why should I start now?

I pretty much don't give a flying fuck gets the Wu Flu. I never cared if someone got the common cold, or the flu or H1N1 or rhinovirus or any other virus. Why would I start now?

Our Thanksgiving plans are proceeding as they always do. Zero changes. Anyone who doesn't like it can fuck off. They aren't invited anyway
 
Trump will be celebrating Thankstaking and hoping that the turkey will pardon him.
 
eating with a mask doesnt work

pacman-mask.gif
 
We're in the home stretch. We could save some lives & help the economy if we all made essentially minor sacrifices.

It's too bad that some still see it as a political thing.
 
The CDC Released More Recommendations For Thanksgiving Amid The COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 cases have continued to skyrocket in the United States, topping more than 150,000 new cases per day several times in the last week. The CDC has also continued to provide updates to its recommendations for having the safest Thanksgiving gathering possible as the holiday is right around the corner.

The CDC recommends, as always, keeping your gatherings small and/or virtual, with the safest and most recommended option being limited in-person interaction to those within your household.

In this update, they clarify that "your household is anyone who currently lives and shares common spaces in your housing unit," such a family members or roommates.

They add that "college students who are returning home from school for the holidays, should be considered part of different households."

The entire CDC post is worth a read, as is an interview from CBS with Dr. Anthony Fauci who echoes their advice, noting that even if you test negative for COVID-19 and wear a mask, there will still always be a risk of contracting COVID-19 at any gathering.

He argues people should then consider the "risk/benefit ratio" of seeing family and friends in person this holiday, even if everyone quarantines and wears a mask.


https://www.delish.com/food-news/a34239209/cdc-thanksgiving-coronavirus/
 
BartenderElite said:
We're in the home stretch. We could save some lives & help the economy if we all made essentially minor sacrifices.

It's too bad that some still see it as a political thing.
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^Fucking Retard thinks that losing your business or your job is a minor sacrifice. You sheep are beyond merely stupid.

tenor.gif
 
Celebrating virtually or with members of your own household (who are consistently taking measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19) poses the lowest risk for spread.

Your household is anyone who currently lives and shares common spaces in your housing unit (such as your house or apartment).

This can include family members, as well as roommates or people who are unrelated to you.

People who do not currently live in your housing unit, such as college students who are returning home from school for the holidays, should be considered part of different households.

In-person gatherings that bring together family members or friends from different households, including college students returning home, pose varying levels of risk.

Organizers and attendees of larger events should consider the risk of virus spread based on event size (number of attendees and other factors) and take steps to reduce the possibility of infection, as outlined in the Considerations for Events and Gatherings.


https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/holidays.html
 
Truth Detector said:
^Fucking Retard thinks that losing your business or your job is a minor sacrifice. You sheep are beyond merely stupid.

tenor.gif
Click to expand...

Covid-19 is a case study in how universal basic income can fix hunger.

Starting in 2017, a group of economists at MIT and other universities set out to study the impact of universal basic income.

In rural Kenya, they identified about 10,000 poor households to receive no-strings-attached cash payments—some as a lump sum of $500, others with that amount spread out over two years, and still others who would receive the equivalent of 75 cents per person per day for 12 years. Another 4,000 households would go without the extra help.

Universal basic income (UBI) is popular in theory among some economists and policymakers as a means to confront poverty.

But it has been tested in the real world only a few times, and many questions remain about how to make it work. One the researchers were keen to investigate was the degree to which the payments could help Kenyan families weather an unanticipated economic crisis.

Normally, this is impossible to test—you can’t just flip a switch to destabilize the economy.

In this case, they didn’t have to. In the midst of the experiment, the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe—and in September, the researchers reported that the cash transfers proved decisively effective.

People who received cash payments were up to 11% less likely to report experiencing hunger (defined here as missing at least one meal in a day) than the regional average, and up to 6% less likely to report an illness.


https://qz.com/1918579/covid-19-demonstrates-how-universal-basic-income-can-fix-hunger/
 
Biden Transition Team said:
Covid-19 is a case study in how universal basic income can fix hunger.

Starting in 2017, a group of economists at MIT and other universities set out to study the impact of universal basic income.

In rural Kenya, they identified about 10,000 poor households to receive no-strings-attached cash payments—some as a lump sum of $500, others with that amount spread out over two years, and still others who would receive the equivalent of 75 cents per person per day for 12 years. Another 4,000 households would go without the extra help.

Universal basic income (UBI) is popular in theory among some economists and policymakers as a means to confront poverty.

But it has been tested in the real world only a few times, and many questions remain about how to make it work. One the researchers were keen to investigate was the degree to which the payments could help Kenyan families weather an unanticipated economic crisis.

Normally, this is impossible to test—you can’t just flip a switch to destabilize the economy.

In this case, they didn’t have to. In the midst of the experiment, the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe—and in September, the researchers reported that the cash transfers proved decisively effective.

People who received cash payments were up to 11% less likely to report experiencing hunger (defined here as missing at least one meal in a day) than the regional average, and up to 6% less likely to report an illness.

https://qz.com/1918579/covid-19-demonstrates-how-universal-basic-income-can-fix-hunger/
Click to expand...

Good luck getting the money to do it...
 
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