Go Back To Ignoring the CDC's Impractically Cautious Guidance
Health officials will never give people permission to be unhealthy. Who cares?
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is expected to release new guidance on Thursday permitting fully vaccinated people to gather indoors, in small numbers, without masks or social distancing. It's encouraging that the agency is giving even this much ground, because top government health officials and leaders—everyone from Bill de Blasio to Anthony Fauci to President Joe Biden himself—have routinely stressed that vaccinated Americans should keep taking all the same precautions. (De Blasio urged the vaccinated to wear not just one mask, but two.)
Still, the CDC will likely recommend that the vaccinated continue to be cautious when in public, even though there's now solid evidence that vaccines significantly reduce transmission (rather than just serious disease), and even though case numbers are plummeting and the most at-risk population—the elderly—is rapidly becoming immune through vaccination.
Biden has said that there will be vaccines for all Americans who want them by the end of May, meaning the effective end of the pandemic could be weeks away. But anyone who is waiting for the CDC to give permission to resume life as normal will be waiting much longer.
It's important to keep in mind that the CDC has always urged people to follow impractically cautious health guidelines. For instance, the CDC currently recommends that men consume no more than two alcoholic drinks and that women consume no more than one drink, each day. The agency's clear preference is for people not to consume alcohol at all. It recommends that all women who possess the capacity to be pregnant abstain from drinking entirely. It would be very funny, then, if the CDC suddenly published guidance that it was once again safe to flock to bars and restaurants. That's not something the CDC believed, even in normal times. If COVID-19 vanished from the earth overnight, government health officials would still urge you to never eat raw cookie dough.
Various officials have stressed that things might be completely normal by next year, while others have said they still expect mask-wearing until Christmas. The truth is that people should be prepared for government health experts to preach excessive caution indefinitely because that's what the experts have always done. Normal does not mean the CDC grants permission to enjoy life again; normal means ignoring the CDC and enjoying life anyway.
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Just got this in my inbox. Details changed to obscure the company I work for:
Dear US Employees,
As you may be aware some of the states including Texas, Iowa, Missouri and Oklahoma recently announced that they are rolling back all COVID-19 safety measures including the wearing of masks.
We want to stress that ALL Corporate facilities must continue to adhere to all of the safety measures and protocols that we have put in place over the last year, including the wearing of masks. We believe that the pandemic is not over yet and we strongly encourage you to wear masks, social distance and sanitize your hands frequently even when outside our facilities.
That sucks. The university I work for is “considering” it. Fingers crossed, but I suspect students will through a hissy fit lol.
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Go Back To Ignoring the CDC’s Impractically Cautious Guidance…Normal does not mean the CDC grants permission to enjoy life again; normal means ignoring the CDC and enjoying life anyway.
FINALLY. An article that simply doesn’t accept that maybe even if they are right about the virus it may no longer matter.
We would have been much better off imo if we had chosen a militia approach to dealing with this rather than a full-time permanent bureaucrat approach. Because that militia approach creates an automatic – ok no mas – end/victory condition. If that point is now (vaccine distribution or some serological % positive), then it is now. The militia goes home because things are more normal again. And they – not the bureaucrats make that decision. But they also have understood what the virus actually is and was – so are better prepared to understand how it might mutate or something. A smarter public.
Instead we are now irreconcilably political. The Karens and experts are all more than a little drunk on their power trip and want to keep it going. And the this is just the flu crowd just want to continue to believe that the disease was never anything and it was entirely fabricated by socialists in order to put flouride in the drinking water or rfid chips in people’s brains or contrails or something.
The other practical feature of a militia is that when ‘called out’ by the government, they can say “no”.
Militia members are not subject to orders until after they volunteer to submit the the government authority, and then are able to place conditions on their service. They may limit their service to the home county, or just to serve until the harvest, or for just one year. Using militia instead of a large standing army gives reality to the question of the sixties, “suppose they gave a war and nobody came?”
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And the this is just the flu crowd just want to continue to believe that the disease was never anything and it was entirely fabricated by socialists in order to put flouride in the drinking water or rfid chips in people’s brains or contrails or something.
The flu has killed people in the past, even more people in a single year, and will continue to kill people into the future. They weren’t “It’s just the flu.” because they didn’t think people would die but because they could foresee that even if we adopted some cockamamie militia approach, Karens and powermongers would still try to take control of them, expand their mandate and dominion, and possibly even conscript people when enough people weren’t willing to play along with their scheme. The fact that they made and enforced more far-reaching mandates and still cling to them as people walk away should demonstrate that such conclusions, while far-fetched, are well within the realm of plausibility.
Youre talking to chicken little.
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If you are not careful a brush fire is going to get started among all the straw men in there. I would not have guessed you could get so much wrong in such a short regurgitation.
We would have been better off if we had demanded cost benefit analyses before setting the economy on fire and consigning thousands of young people to suicide, avoided one-size-fits-all solutions, let individuals assess their own risks, and recognized that flattening the curve prolonged the agony with no fewer lives lost. In other words, nothing you advocated for.
No, flattening the curve did save lives, because during that period we learned how to treat cases better. It was a fairly short period, though, ending long ago.
You are almost always safe to assume the CDC is a collection of ninnies warbling about something that could happen.
There will be those scolds who want zero risk. Just ignore them and walk away, they will soon become a minor irritant.
Now that the pandemic is starting to ease up expect serious assault on firearms ownership.
The bureaucrats at the CDC have to try to justify the agency’s existence and it’s “need” for mo’ money.
Yes. Before the coronavirus, the CDC was focusing on teen vaping. Mission creep.
“[E]ven though case numbers are plummeting and the most at-risk population—the elderly.”
It is surprising close to the rate than nationwide cases have dropped in the same period.
Worse, the overall death rate has dropped much slower than the overall cases rate.
Unless something changes, rolling out vaccines to the elderly appears to have been a bad strategy. Instead they should have gone to people like to cause more infections like large households and people working closely with others.
Isn’t it odd that the CDC didn’t recommend a strategy Centered on Disease Control and Prevention?
I agree. The thing that I learned the most from early on was how little the disease spread in WA. It went into the nursing homes early but didn’t spread much from there. A dead end. And it makes behavioral sense
The focus should imo have been prioritized as medical workers/patients, high churn work locations, individually vulnerable, everyone else. Instead turns out to be medical, older white people getting govt checks, government employees, essential voting groups, nonessential surplus people.
I don’t even think your list is centered enough of disease control and prevention (possibly because of miscommunication). High churn jobs like retail and restaurants are not spreading much. Medical, outside of residencies medical is not spreading much either.
I would even say that we should have ignored who is likely to die from an infection altogether. Instead I would have worked to reduce the reproduction number in communities to be below 1 as fast as possible. The majority of infections came from coinhabitants. So, I would focus on the largest households first.
Additionally, I would have vaccinated entire communities to a point where the reproduction rate is below about .7 before moving on to vaccinate the next community. The theory is that unless the reproduction rate is well under 1, no one is getting any advantage from others being vaccinated.
What you’re suggesting is how people should have been isolated/quarantined to reduce the spread. We never did any of that – and hell we didn’t even contact trace so we have no idea where the spread occurred outside a family that all gets sick because they are all isolated together once one of them gets sick.
But a vaccine to reduce the spread is specifically useful where you can not identify the spread by name. The biggest superspreader events in countries that have done actual public health to identify spread are meetings of some significant duration and large public events where people are either squashed together or drunk or both. Those superspreader events have created about 80% of community transmission. Those things won’t occur until after the vaccinations happen though. And since they are event risks of choice, it seems unfair to elevate a vaccine priority above those who have no choice.
Great article on the Scoldish nature of the CDC. Anytime there is not a “To Be Sure” Robby demonstrates Libertarian thought
I think over the last year Robbie had been much more of a hard-assed libertarian. I think Robbie is their best writer. Perhaps eclipsing Sullum.
How can I go back to something I never left?
I haven’t believed a thing from the CDC since they claimed ‘gun violence’ was a disease.
“I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me.” –George Carlin
“Normal does not mean the CDC grants permission to enjoy life again; normal means ignoring the CDC and enjoying life anyway.”
The libertarian premise rises again!
Amen.
’bout time Robby.
Nanny cunts gotta, well, you know.
And the social justice cunts will milk the pandemic forever if they can, and never allow anyone to have the “privilege” of freedom as long as they can invent even the slightest claim of unfairness, and blame it on COVID.
But govt funds millions of unhealthy lifestyle welfare recipients. Guess they are already controlled. Need to go after the productive folks.
My God you people are a bunch of whiny little bitches.
Get a real problem.
STFU Tony
Headline:
TONY SHOOK BY PEOPLE MAKING DECISIONS FOR THEMSELVES, NOT FOLLOWING BUREACRAT RECOMMENDATIONS
People who decide to become disease vectors because a shock jock told them to are too stupid and dangerous to make decisions for themselves.
You dumbasses think freedom means you don’t have to practice any responsibility. It’s your core intellectual error.
Intellectual error is when government nannies decide how many items a box can hold due to a belief that boxes with springs in them are magic. They think some diktat can tell a box to only hold 10 rounds without regard to whether it’s 223 Rem, 6.5 Grendel, or 450 Bushmaster.
Kinda like the don’t need a mask, do need a mask, make it two masks, don’t need two masks, flip flop quote of the week. Sure, I heard, they didn’t want healthcare workers running out yet still gave away most of our stock to China in the early days.
Translation:
Don’t care if you die
As long as you do comply
Control is not yours
“The truth is that people should be prepared for government health experts to preach excessive caution indefinitely because that’s what the experts have always done. Normal does not mean the CDC grants permission to enjoy life again; normal means ignoring the CDC and enjoying life anyway.”
The problem isn’t the CDC issuing overly cautious guidelines, the problem is politicians turning those guidelines into enforceable law. Kindof hard to ignore the CDC when your governor is having people arrested for it
Follow the CDC’s titles, ignore the text:
“The epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 indicates that most infections are spread through close contact, not airborne transmission”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/scientific-brief-sars-cov-2.html#:~:text=The%20epidemiology%20of%20SARS%2D,%2C%20not%20airborne%20transmission.
Do a search on CSLewis “On living in an Atomic Age”. All of the whiners and weenies need to give it a good read, and take it to heart. And not just about Covid19….
Time to grow a pair and get on with it!
don’t tell Bailey.
If we’re ignoring CDC guidelines and recommendations again, does that mean that I can have my eggs poached / over easy?
May my steaks be grilled to medium-rare? (CDC recommends you eat it like Trump – Well-done and with ketchup)
Is it OK to eat sushi? The raw fish kind – not fruit sushi.
Ye gads.
As long as there aren’t police issuing citations for ordering a rare steak
Nope, citation are only for ordering a well done steak. That is a crime.
I’ve been ignoring them from the beginning. So life has remained normal. While I live in Illinois, we’re fortunate enough to live near the Wisconsin border, our favorite places remained open, mask-free with no anti-social distancing. Southern Wisconsin residents owe a big “thank you” to fatboy Pritzker for the big boost to their economy.
If you had followed all the CDC guidelines up to now you would be twisted into one big pretzel.
Some flour stinks, batch after batch, like it has too many ground-up weta bugs in it.
This COVID-19 thing could make for good compare with other times peoples have dusted themselves under the rug for an honorable ideal.
CDC guidance… What a joke!
I ignore the “experts”.
Why? Because for hundreds of years, the “experts” have ALWAYS been wrong.
“Guidance” doesn’t “permit” someone to do anything. I tapped out of this article very quickly. Low IQ author means not worth my time.