U.S. President Joe Biden is back to traveling after testing negative for Covid-19 for two … [+]
You know what’s longer than five days? How about seven days? That’s how many straight days U.S. President Joe Biden ended up testing positive for Covid-19 after suffering what I described for Forbes on July 31 as a Paxlovid rebound.
You know what else is even longer than five days? How about 15 days? That’s how many days elapsed between Biden first testing positive for Covid-19 on July 21 and the last day that he tested positive on August 5. Biden was finally able to really discontinue isolation this past weekend after testing negative for two straight days on August 6 and 7, according to the following statement from the White House and Biden’s physician Kevin C. O’Connor, DO:
So Biden is back to traveling and interacting with the public. That’s assuming that he doesn’t suffer a rebound of his Covid-19 rebound and that his negative Covid-19 tests this past weekend don’t turn out to be false negatives.
Yes, both 15 and seven days are longer than the five days that the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines indicate that you should stay isolated after testing positive for Covid-19. Their exact words are “Stay home for 5 days and isolate from others in your home” and “End isolation after 5 full days if you are fever-free for 24 hours (without the use of fever-reducing medication) and your symptoms are improving.”
Note that the CDC doesn’t say “your symptoms are gone,” just that they are improving. So, in theory, someone with active Covid-19 symptoms can return to school or work, board airplanes, spend hours browsing for a sweater vest in a clothing store, or whatever that person may do in the course of a day. That’s a bit of a yikes when you consider that most Covid-19 precautions have the way of the sweater vest in many schools and businesses.
The one exemption that the CDC lists is “If you got very sick from Covid-19 or have a weakened immune system, you should isolate for at least 10 days. Consult your doctor before ending isolation.” But the description “got very sick” can be rather subjective, and not everyone may realize that they have a weakened immune system.
Naturally, most people don’t have the luxury and wherewithal to have an on-site physician and be tested for Covid-19 every single day as Biden has. Being President of the U.S. has its advantages.
What would have happened had President Joe Biden instead been Joe Schmoe or Joesphine Schmoe, an everyday person. Based on current CDC guidelines, chances are that everyday person would have ceased isolating on July 26, five days after the first positive test, especially after a having negative test on July 27. His or her workplace may have said, “get the bleep back into work.” In other words, not everyone can “Biden” their time in returning to full unrestricted work. That everyday person may not have gotten re-tested on July 30, which is when Biden had tested positive again several days after completing a five-day course of Paxlovid.
Thus, that everyday person could have gone back to work, school, traveling, and shopping, unknowingly spreading the virus to others, may others. Umm, isn’t that what isolation guidelines are supposed to prevent? Biden is certainly not the only person to have suffered such a Paxlovid rebound, which is when you start having positive Covid-19 tests after you completed a five-day course of Paxlovid and tested negative for Covid-19. In fact, as I covered for Forbes previously, the Paxlovid rebound suffered by Anthony Fauci, MD, Chief Medical Advisor to Biden, resulted in worse symptoms than what Fauci had at the beginning of the illness, as I covered for Forbes.
Someone self-dubbed “Dr. Mild Yet Still Mysterious” wondered aloud on Twitter (because people don’t wonder silently on Twitter) why people are being told to return to work just five days after testing positive for Covid-19:
All of this further questions whether the CDC’s decision to shorten the recommended isolation period from 10 days to five days was a case of premature isolation reduction. The original 10-day isolation recommendation emerged in 2020 after studies had shown that a significant percentage of people continue to shed the virus beyond five and even seven days, as I covered for Forbes then. It’s not as if the viruses have said since 2020, “Hmmm, we seem to be keeping people from returning to work sooner. Maybe we should stop being so selfish and stop shedding as long.” At least, they didn’t say such things in human language.
If you or anyone else you know get infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), you may want to stick to the original isolation recommendation of at least 10 days. While you can’t expect your employer, your school, and others to give your the Presidential treatment all the time, this is one situation where it benefits everyone in the longer term to think about what happened to the U.S. President.
