A Cornucopia of COVID Confusion

Congratulations, despite doing everything you were asked to do – wearing a mask, getting vaccinated twice, boosted once and keeping six feet away from anyone coughing up chunks of lung in the produce aisle of your local grocery store – you still got COVID.

Now what?

According to the CDC you’re supposed to isolate for five days and then wear a mask anytime you leave your lunar module for another five days. Got it; five and five, easy to remember and follow…but what if you’re still testing positive after nine days?

Not to worry, the internet has an answer.

In fact the internet has so many answers you won’t know which one to believe or what guidance to follow and let’s start our trip through the Internet Twilight Zone with this helpful quote from the Today show website which I looked up yesterday and I’m completely prepared to go into a lengthy digression about whether or not the Today show technically becomes the Yesterday show the day after it’s on TV, but things are going to get complicated enough, so let’s ignore that option and focus on this quote from what would now be the About Four Days Ago show:

“If you test positive for COVID-19, you can end your isolation after just five days if you never developed symptoms, according to the latest guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Wait.

When did they add the part about never developing symptoms and why would you test yourself if you didn’t? As anyone who is not currently living in a cave high in the Himalayas or certain parts of Alabama already knows, tests are now hard to get because everybody’s getting sick.

Another Today show article suggests getting tested after you’ve been exposed to someone with COVID, but what if you’re asymptomatic and the person you were exposed to is also asymptomatic and now you’re both walking around like Typhoid Mary and possibly Larry, getting other people sick because neither of you know you’re contagious?

And now, yet another confusing Today show quote:

“After an exposure, people who are not fully vaccinated should quarantine for at least five days.”

Once again, when did they add the “not fully vaccinated” clause which seems to suggest if you are fully vaccinated you don’t need to quarantine?

Another internet source suggests replacing your mask if you cough into the one you’re wearing, which makes it seem like you should avoid coughing while wearing your mask which is pretty much precisely the reason you wear a mask in the first place and also assumes we all have unlimited supplies of masks and right now I’ve got one that’s so old there are loose fibers that get into my mouth so I’m probably contracting asbestosis while trying to avoid the coronavirus.

Back to that five-and-five rule

For a long time the CDC recommended 10 days of isolation and you might wonder why they cut that in half and here’s some more information from the Almighty Internet that might explain it:

“The CDC says that its guidelines were updated to reflect growing evidence that suggests transmission of COVID-19 often occurs one to two days before the onset of symptoms and during the two to three days afterward. 

‘This has to do with data from the CDC that really showed after seven days there's virtually no risk of transmission at this point,’ Arwady said. ‘And in that five-to-seven-day window, you know, there's some depending on whether people have been vaccinated, underlying conditions, etc., but the risk drops a lot and the feeling is that in the general population, combined with masking, etc. the risk really is very low.’ "

At this point I’m really wishing I had kept track of who “Arwady” is while collecting contradictory quotes off the internet, but I didn’t and I’m not going back to find out so let’s assume he’s somebody worth quoting and focus on his weasel words like “virtually” and “some” and “a lot” and “very low” which sound OK if you don’t think about it, but you can’t help but notice he didn’t say “never” or “always.”

As Sherlock Holmes would say: Hmmm.

According to the Washington Post, between December 29th and January 10th, 8.8 million workers were not working because they were sick with the coronavirus or caring for someone who was, which is really making a mess of the Biden Administration’s attempts to get things back to normal and if you’re a cynic you might wonder if the CDC suddenly decided you only needed to isolate for five days instead of 10 in a politically-motivated attempt to get people back to work.

And if you’re not a cynic, pay attention and you soon will be.  

Now more confusing internet information:

“For those without symptoms, CDC guidance states they are considered contagious at least two days before their positive test.”

Once again, this assumes you’re testing every day even though you don’t have symptoms and pretty much nobody is doing that because we don’t have enough tests. Other than that, rock-solid advice. And make the mistake of continuing to look for helpful information and you might stumble upon the fact that “quarantine” and “isolation” are not considered the same thing:

“Those who believe they have been in contact with someone who has COVID and are unvaccinated should quarantine. Those who test positive, regardless of vaccination status, must isolate.”

And now let’s give the CDC and their spokesman Professor Irwin Corey a chance to explain the difference and we’ll start with “quarantine”:

“Those who have been within six feet of someone with COVID for a cumulative total of at least 15 minutes over a 24-hour period should quarantine for five days if unvaccinated, or if they are more than six months out from their second vaccine dose, according to updated CDC guidance issued Monday.”

So now the assumption is you not only have an unlimited supply of masks and tests, you’re walking around with a tape measure, stopwatch and a clipboard, adding up how many seconds you’re within six feet of someone with COVID (who may be asymptomatic, so you need to keep statistics on everyone, not just the people coughing up those major chunks of lung) over a 24-hour period which will require you to turn your den into one of those Serial Killer Planning Rooms with charts and graphs and pictures on the wall, so you’ll probably need to go to Office Max to stock up on materials while you’re out buying your Lifetime Supply of masks and tests, so put that on your To-Do List and let’s move on.

“Those who are both fully vaccinated and boosted do not need to quarantine if they are a close contact of someone with COVID, but should wear a mask for at least 10 days after exposure. The same goes for those who are fully vaccinated and not yet eligible for their booster shot.

Local health authorities can also make the final determination about how long a quarantine should last, however, and testing can play a role.”

So now you don’t need to quarantine if you’re vaccinated or boosted, but you might want to check with your local city council member who up until his or her election was an unsuccessful real estate agent with an unpaid college loan and two divorces, but is now dispensing medical advice.

Now back to the Sometime Last Week show website for more confusing information:

“And when it comes to PCR tests, people may test positive for even longer, Dr. Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi, associate professor of pathology, molecular and cell-based medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, explained. ‘You can still have positivity that may persist for weeks and even months,’ he explained, noting that positive tests on PCR have been recorded for up to 60 days.”

So according to the mysterious expert “Arwady” after seven days there’s “virtually” no risk of transmission, but according to Dr. Alberto you can still test positive after two months?

WTF.

Also, it turns out there are “antigen” tests and “PCR” tests and you might test positive in one of the tests and test negative in another, which won’t do a hell of a lot to clear things up and if you get really unlucky (which is exactly how I’m currently feeling) you can test for positive for 2 months straight which means you’ll get out of your family room just in time for Opening Day which you can then attend (assuming there’s not a baseball strike) and catch another round of whatever brand of COVID will be going around by then.

Hold on…didn’t I say somebody was going to explain the difference between “quarantine” and “isolation.” Yup, I went back and checked and I definitely said that, so here’s so more information from the same article:  

“Isolation

People who are positive for COVID should stay home for five days, the CDC said Monday, changing guidance from the previously recommended 10 days.

At the end of the period, if you have no symptoms, you can return to normal activities but must wear a mask everywhere — even at home around others — for at least five more days.

If you still have symptoms after isolating for five days, stay home until you feel better and then start your five days of wearing a mask at all times.”

If that sounds exactly like what they said about “quarantine” congratulations, you’ve been paying attention and since that wasn’t very helpful now let’s go to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website for their explanation:

“Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.

Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick. These people may have been exposed to a disease and do not know it, or they may have the disease but do not show symptoms.”

So they are the exact same thing and assuming I can read English, which a day spent browsing the internet will call into question, the difference is whether or not the person is showing symptoms and either way you go sit in a room all by yourself for a minimum of five days which the medical community could have made clear up front, but as we’ve already seen, making things clear is not their best thing.

And now one final bit of confusing information and it’s best appreciated if you imagine Monty Python’s John Cleese staring deadpan into a camera and saying the following:

“How do you calculate your isolation period?

According to the CDC, ‘day 0 is your first day of symptoms.’ That means that Day 1 is the first full day after your symptoms developed.

For those who test positive for COVID but have no symptoms, day 0 is the day of the positive test. Those who develop symptoms after testing positive must start their calculations over, however, with day 0 then becoming the first day of symptoms.”

Which really clears things up enormously unless you test positive for 60 straight days and then you won’t know what the hell to do and should probably move to a leper colony and wait for the next confusing announcement from the CDC.

See you on Opening Day.