On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta updated its official guidelines for patients testing positive for the COVID-19 virus. The new guidelines appear remarkably similar to the guidelines for influenza or other communicable diseases of the respiratory system.

The CDC’s new guidance now matches public health advice for flu and other respiratory illnesses: Stay home when you’re sick, but return to school or work once you’re feeling better and you’ve been without a fever for 24 hours.

The shift reflects sustained decreases in the most severe outcomes of Covid since the beginning of the pandemic, as well as a recognition that many people aren’t testing themselves for Covid anyway. 

“Folks often don’t know what virus they have when they first get sick, so this will help them know what to do, regardless,” CDC director Dr. Mandy Cohen said during a media briefing Friday.

Over the past couple of years, weekly hospital admissions for Covid have fallen by more than 75%, and deaths have decreased by more than 90%, Cohen said. 

In other words, the COVID scare is well and truly over, and has been for some time. The public's patience is exhausted, and we're still dealing with the aftermath of the closures, lockdowns, and school shutdowns.

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The CDC seems to be on the trailing edge of this amazing discovery on the transmissibility of the COVID-19 virus.

Many doctors have been urging the CDC to lift isolation guidance for months, saying it did little to stop the spread of Covid.

The experiences of California and Oregon, which previously lifted their Covid isolation guidelines, proved that to be true. 

“Recent data indicate that California and Oregon, where isolation guidance looks more like CDC’s updated recommendations, are not experiencing higher Covid-19 emergency department visits or hospitalizations,” [Dr. Brendan Jackson, head of respiratory virus response at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases] said.  

Someone at the CDC appears here to have suffered a sudden rush of brains to the head. The revised guidelines are the same as for any upper-respiratory infection, which makes a certain amount of sense, with one exception:

CDC’s main tips for reducing Covid spread:

• Get the Covid vaccine whenever it is available. Cohen said that 95% of people who were hospitalized with Covid this past winter had not received the latest vaccine. 
• Cover coughs and sneezes, and wash hands frequently.
• Increase ventilation by opening windows, using air purifiers and gathering outside when possible. 

I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on television. That being so, I will not offer any medical advice to anyone, in any form. But speaking just for me, that first bullet is a hard no. The others are no more than common sense; my grandmother knew enough to cover coughs and sneezes, wash hands, and get plenty of fresh air. She would have added "Drink lots of water and tea with honey," which is good advice at any time.

The COVID lockdowns, not to mention the dump of trillions of fiat dollars into "stimulus" plans, were ruinous not only to the United States economy but to most of the civilized world; Sweden seems to be one of the few holdouts that took little or no action, and suffered little or no economic hardship, accordingly.

Best of all, this step back from the CDC's former stringent COVID panic measures could place a spike strip on the road to panic when the next, new virus pops up.