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Flight attendants hand out refreshments to a packed Delta Airlines flight traveling from Ronald Regan National Airport to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport on Friday, May 21, 2021. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Workers' rights advocates accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of putting business interests ahead of public health Tuesday after the agency released new guidelines for asymptomatic Americans with Covid-19, while experts expressed concern that the guidance will result in confusion and more transmission of the disease.
The CDC announced late Monday that instead of isolating at home for 10 days, people who contract the coronavirus will be advised to isolate for five days immediately after testing positive. If the person is asymptomatic after five days, they may return to work, school, and other activities but should wear a mask everywhere, including at home if they live with others, for five more days.
"We do SO much just to find people who are positive in [the] first place. When we do identify them, we should do everything possible to keep them from spreading."
People who still exhibit symptoms after five days of isolating should continue to stay home until they are asymptomatic, the CDC said.
The agency said the guidance was revised because scientists now understand people with Covid-19 to be most contagious in the two days prior to showing symptoms and for three days afterward.
CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky also said concerns about economic activity provoked the new guidelines, as the fast-spreading Omicron variant overwhelms airlines, hospitals, and other businesses.
Sick crew members forced the cancellation of thousands of flights on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and the spread of the variant is "significantly diminishing" the healthcare workforce at hospitals across the country, according to the American Public Health Association.
"We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science," Walensky told the Associated Press.
As Common Dreams reported Sunday, the CDC's amended guidance for healthcare workers--who as of last week are advised to stay home for seven days instead of 10 if they are asymptomatic and test negative--alarmed the nation's largest nurses' union, which said the guidelines were changed in the interest of hospitals' "business operations, revenues, and profits."
The CDC's new guidelines for the larger public come after officials at Delta Air Lines and JetBlue Airways wrote to the agency asking them to consider shortening the advised isolation period for people with Covid-19.
Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, acknowledged that the CDC provided a medical explanation for the new guidance, but emphasized that "the fact that it aligns with the number of days pushed by corporate America is less than reassuring" and warned that businesses may use the guidelines to pressure employees out of isolation before they are ready to return to work.
"If any business pressures a worker to return to work before they feel better we will make clear it is an unsafe work environment, which will cause a much greater disruption than any 'staffing shortages,'" Nelson said in a statement. "We cannot allow pandemic fatigue to lead to decisions that extend the life of the pandemic or put policies on the backs of workers."
Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University, also expressed concern that the new guidelines "will too easily move to 'go back to work when you have symptoms'" and that many people who come out of isolation after just five days will not wear face masks after the isolation period.
\u201cb. As a healthcare worker - whose colleagues were sent to the frontlines **in a bandana and a garbage bag** [[I was lucky and just had to REUSE my PPE] - this feels like it will too easily move to "go back to work when you have symptoms." \ud83d\ude40\nhttps://t.co/qWEn8YXK8U [2020 LINK]\u201d— Megan Ranney MD MPH \ud83c\udf3b (@Megan Ranney MD MPH \ud83c\udf3b) 1640651944
Dr. Aaaron Glatt, a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, pointed out that the shortened isolation timeframe will make it more likely that people return to normal activities when they are still infectious.
"If you decrease it to five days, you're still going to have a small but significant number of people who are contagious," Glatt told the AP.
Some observers also urged the CDC to clarify the guidance, as the agency's website suggested people can come out of isolation if they are asymptomatic or if their "symptoms are resolving after five days."
While calling the new guidance "reasonable" and noting that the shorter isolation period could push people to get tested who otherwise would not have, Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Ashish Jha said the CDC should include more precautions to help prevent transmission as people come out of isolation.
Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina noted that he has previously recommended a shorter isolation period to the CDC, but pointed out that recommendation "was always with a negative test."
Pushing people to return to normal activities without a negative test is "reckless," Mina tweeted.
In the U.K., epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding pointed out, two negative tests are required before people can exit isolation.
"But somehow a five-day exit with zero negative test is okay in [the U.S.]?" he said. "American exceptionalism does not apply to a pandemic virus."
With the highly transmissible Omicron variant, Mina said, "Someone KNOWN to be positive for five days is, in my view, still one of the highest risk individuals in society for onward spread."
"We do SO much just to find people who are positive in [the] first place," he added. "When we do identify them, we should do everything possible to keep them from spreading."
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
Workers' rights advocates accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of putting business interests ahead of public health Tuesday after the agency released new guidelines for asymptomatic Americans with Covid-19, while experts expressed concern that the guidance will result in confusion and more transmission of the disease.
The CDC announced late Monday that instead of isolating at home for 10 days, people who contract the coronavirus will be advised to isolate for five days immediately after testing positive. If the person is asymptomatic after five days, they may return to work, school, and other activities but should wear a mask everywhere, including at home if they live with others, for five more days.
"We do SO much just to find people who are positive in [the] first place. When we do identify them, we should do everything possible to keep them from spreading."
People who still exhibit symptoms after five days of isolating should continue to stay home until they are asymptomatic, the CDC said.
The agency said the guidance was revised because scientists now understand people with Covid-19 to be most contagious in the two days prior to showing symptoms and for three days afterward.
CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky also said concerns about economic activity provoked the new guidelines, as the fast-spreading Omicron variant overwhelms airlines, hospitals, and other businesses.
Sick crew members forced the cancellation of thousands of flights on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and the spread of the variant is "significantly diminishing" the healthcare workforce at hospitals across the country, according to the American Public Health Association.
"We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science," Walensky told the Associated Press.
As Common Dreams reported Sunday, the CDC's amended guidance for healthcare workers--who as of last week are advised to stay home for seven days instead of 10 if they are asymptomatic and test negative--alarmed the nation's largest nurses' union, which said the guidelines were changed in the interest of hospitals' "business operations, revenues, and profits."
The CDC's new guidelines for the larger public come after officials at Delta Air Lines and JetBlue Airways wrote to the agency asking them to consider shortening the advised isolation period for people with Covid-19.
Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, acknowledged that the CDC provided a medical explanation for the new guidance, but emphasized that "the fact that it aligns with the number of days pushed by corporate America is less than reassuring" and warned that businesses may use the guidelines to pressure employees out of isolation before they are ready to return to work.
"If any business pressures a worker to return to work before they feel better we will make clear it is an unsafe work environment, which will cause a much greater disruption than any 'staffing shortages,'" Nelson said in a statement. "We cannot allow pandemic fatigue to lead to decisions that extend the life of the pandemic or put policies on the backs of workers."
Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University, also expressed concern that the new guidelines "will too easily move to 'go back to work when you have symptoms'" and that many people who come out of isolation after just five days will not wear face masks after the isolation period.
\u201cb. As a healthcare worker - whose colleagues were sent to the frontlines **in a bandana and a garbage bag** [[I was lucky and just had to REUSE my PPE] - this feels like it will too easily move to "go back to work when you have symptoms." \ud83d\ude40\nhttps://t.co/qWEn8YXK8U [2020 LINK]\u201d— Megan Ranney MD MPH \ud83c\udf3b (@Megan Ranney MD MPH \ud83c\udf3b) 1640651944
Dr. Aaaron Glatt, a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, pointed out that the shortened isolation timeframe will make it more likely that people return to normal activities when they are still infectious.
"If you decrease it to five days, you're still going to have a small but significant number of people who are contagious," Glatt told the AP.
Some observers also urged the CDC to clarify the guidance, as the agency's website suggested people can come out of isolation if they are asymptomatic or if their "symptoms are resolving after five days."
While calling the new guidance "reasonable" and noting that the shorter isolation period could push people to get tested who otherwise would not have, Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Ashish Jha said the CDC should include more precautions to help prevent transmission as people come out of isolation.
Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina noted that he has previously recommended a shorter isolation period to the CDC, but pointed out that recommendation "was always with a negative test."
Pushing people to return to normal activities without a negative test is "reckless," Mina tweeted.
In the U.K., epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding pointed out, two negative tests are required before people can exit isolation.
"But somehow a five-day exit with zero negative test is okay in [the U.S.]?" he said. "American exceptionalism does not apply to a pandemic virus."
With the highly transmissible Omicron variant, Mina said, "Someone KNOWN to be positive for five days is, in my view, still one of the highest risk individuals in society for onward spread."
"We do SO much just to find people who are positive in [the] first place," he added. "When we do identify them, we should do everything possible to keep them from spreading."
Workers' rights advocates accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of putting business interests ahead of public health Tuesday after the agency released new guidelines for asymptomatic Americans with Covid-19, while experts expressed concern that the guidance will result in confusion and more transmission of the disease.
The CDC announced late Monday that instead of isolating at home for 10 days, people who contract the coronavirus will be advised to isolate for five days immediately after testing positive. If the person is asymptomatic after five days, they may return to work, school, and other activities but should wear a mask everywhere, including at home if they live with others, for five more days.
"We do SO much just to find people who are positive in [the] first place. When we do identify them, we should do everything possible to keep them from spreading."
People who still exhibit symptoms after five days of isolating should continue to stay home until they are asymptomatic, the CDC said.
The agency said the guidance was revised because scientists now understand people with Covid-19 to be most contagious in the two days prior to showing symptoms and for three days afterward.
CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky also said concerns about economic activity provoked the new guidelines, as the fast-spreading Omicron variant overwhelms airlines, hospitals, and other businesses.
Sick crew members forced the cancellation of thousands of flights on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and the spread of the variant is "significantly diminishing" the healthcare workforce at hospitals across the country, according to the American Public Health Association.
"We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science," Walensky told the Associated Press.
As Common Dreams reported Sunday, the CDC's amended guidance for healthcare workers--who as of last week are advised to stay home for seven days instead of 10 if they are asymptomatic and test negative--alarmed the nation's largest nurses' union, which said the guidelines were changed in the interest of hospitals' "business operations, revenues, and profits."
The CDC's new guidelines for the larger public come after officials at Delta Air Lines and JetBlue Airways wrote to the agency asking them to consider shortening the advised isolation period for people with Covid-19.
Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, acknowledged that the CDC provided a medical explanation for the new guidance, but emphasized that "the fact that it aligns with the number of days pushed by corporate America is less than reassuring" and warned that businesses may use the guidelines to pressure employees out of isolation before they are ready to return to work.
"If any business pressures a worker to return to work before they feel better we will make clear it is an unsafe work environment, which will cause a much greater disruption than any 'staffing shortages,'" Nelson said in a statement. "We cannot allow pandemic fatigue to lead to decisions that extend the life of the pandemic or put policies on the backs of workers."
Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University, also expressed concern that the new guidelines "will too easily move to 'go back to work when you have symptoms'" and that many people who come out of isolation after just five days will not wear face masks after the isolation period.
\u201cb. As a healthcare worker - whose colleagues were sent to the frontlines **in a bandana and a garbage bag** [[I was lucky and just had to REUSE my PPE] - this feels like it will too easily move to "go back to work when you have symptoms." \ud83d\ude40\nhttps://t.co/qWEn8YXK8U [2020 LINK]\u201d— Megan Ranney MD MPH \ud83c\udf3b (@Megan Ranney MD MPH \ud83c\udf3b) 1640651944
Dr. Aaaron Glatt, a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, pointed out that the shortened isolation timeframe will make it more likely that people return to normal activities when they are still infectious.
"If you decrease it to five days, you're still going to have a small but significant number of people who are contagious," Glatt told the AP.
Some observers also urged the CDC to clarify the guidance, as the agency's website suggested people can come out of isolation if they are asymptomatic or if their "symptoms are resolving after five days."
While calling the new guidance "reasonable" and noting that the shorter isolation period could push people to get tested who otherwise would not have, Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Ashish Jha said the CDC should include more precautions to help prevent transmission as people come out of isolation.
Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina noted that he has previously recommended a shorter isolation period to the CDC, but pointed out that recommendation "was always with a negative test."
Pushing people to return to normal activities without a negative test is "reckless," Mina tweeted.
In the U.K., epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding pointed out, two negative tests are required before people can exit isolation.
"But somehow a five-day exit with zero negative test is okay in [the U.S.]?" he said. "American exceptionalism does not apply to a pandemic virus."
With the highly transmissible Omicron variant, Mina said, "Someone KNOWN to be positive for five days is, in my view, still one of the highest risk individuals in society for onward spread."
"We do SO much just to find people who are positive in [the] first place," he added. "When we do identify them, we should do everything possible to keep them from spreading."
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy called President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs "a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy."
Analysts puzzling over the bizarre formula the Trump administration used to calculate its country-by-country tariff rates are wasting their time, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said in a response to the American president that has gone viral in recent days as global markets continue to nosedive.
"It's not economic policy, it's not trade policy," Murphy (D-Conn.) said in remarks recorded after Trump announced the sweeping tariffs last week. "It's a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy."
While President Donald Trump's universal tariffs on imports make no sense as an effort to rectify the failures of the status quo trade regime and bring back offshored U.S. jobs, they are comprehensible when viewed as "a tool to try to compel pledges of loyalty, this time from companies and industries in the United States," Murphy argued.
"You have to understand that everything Donald Trump is doing is in service of staying in power forever—either him or his family or his handpicked successors," the Democratic senator continued. "He's trying to destroy our democracy."
Murphy contended that the president designed the tariffs to be so widespread that corporations across private industry would have to come to the White House and "make an agreement with Trump in which he gives them tariff relief in exchange for a pledge of political loyalty."
"What could that pledge look like?" Murphy continued. "Well, maybe they agree to champion his economic policy publicly. Maybe they agree to make contributions to his political campaign. Maybe they agree to police their employees to make sure that nobody that works for that company works for the political opposition."
Politico reported late last week that businesses across corporate America "fear Trump's wrath" and are thus declining to criticize the president's tariff policies even as they wreak havoc worldwide and threaten to spark a devastating recession.
"There is zero incentive for any company or brand to be remotely critical of this administration," one unnamed public affairs operative told Politico. "It destroys your ability to work with the White House and advance your policies, period."
"While the United States has plenty of real problems to deal with, Trump is ignoring them to manufacture the fake emergencies he needs to further enlarge and centralize his power."
Murphy is hardly alone in seeing Trump's tariffs as an instrument of power consolidation.
Robert Reich, the former U.S. labor secretary, wrote Monday that "we're turning into a dictatorship" as Trump conjures "fake national emergencies" to jack up tariffs, deport people en masse without due process, gut efforts to combat the climate crisis, and dismantle large swaths of the federal government.
"As Trump declares emergency after emergency to justify his reign of terror, he's simultaneously eliminating America's capacity to respond to real emergencies," Reich wrote. "Make no mistake about what’s really going on here. While the United States has plenty of real problems to deal with, Trump is ignoring them to manufacture the fake emergencies he needs to further enlarge and centralize his power."
One analyst, Zack Beauchamp of Vox, argued the tariffs are more a symptom of the decline of U.S. democracy rather than a cause of it.
"Trump's tariffs will, if fully implemented, be remembered as their own cautionary tale. While he campaigned on them, he wouldn't have been able to implement the entire tariff package had he gone through the normal constitutionally prescribed procedure for raising taxes," Beauchamp wrote. "The fact that America isn't functioning like a normal democracy, with public deliberation and multiple checks on executive authority, is what allowed Trump to act on his idiosyncratic ideas in the manner of a Mao or Putin."
"It's still possible that Trump steps back from the brink," he added. "But even if he does, and the worst outcome is avoided, the lesson should be clear: The long decay of America's democratic system means that we are all living under an axe. And if this isn't the moment it falls, there will surely be another."
"If the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."
U.S. President Donald Trump late Sunday openly embraced the global chaos sparked by his sweeping tariffs, careening headlong into a potentially catastrophic trade war as worldwide financial markets plummeted and American retirees began to panic.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump declared that his tariffs are "already in effect, and a beautiful thing to behold."
"Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!" Trump wrote as recent retirees and people near retirement expressed fear and astonishment at the swift damage the president's policy decisions have done to their investment accounts.
One retiree, a 68-year-old former occupational health worker in New Jersey, told NBC News that she is "just kind of stunned, and with so much money in the market, we just sort of have to hope we have enough time to recover."
"What we've been doing is trying to enjoy the time that we have, but you want to be able to make it last," the retiree, identified as Paula, said on Friday. "I have no confidence here."
Trump's post doubling down on his tariff regime came as Asian markets cratered and U.S. stock futures opened bright red, signaling that Monday will bring another broad sell-off in equities. One of Trump's top economic advisers claimed in a Sunday interview that the president is not intentionally crashing the stock market, even as Trump—returning from a weekend golf outing in Florida—characterized the tariffs as "medicine."
"I don't want anything to go down," the president said. "But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something."
Bloomberg's John Authers wrote early Sunday that "if the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."
Though the stock market and the economy are not synonymous, economist Josh Bivens recently noted that they are currently "mirroring each other: Stock market weakness is reflecting broader economic weakness."
"While the stock market isn't the economy, the stock market declines we have seen in recent weeks are genuinely worrying," wrote Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "They are a symptom of much larger dysfunctional macroeconomic policy that will likely soon start showing up in higher unemployment and slower wage growth for the vast majority."
"This was an illegal act," said U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis.
A federal court judge on Sunday declared the Trump administration's refusal to return a man they sent to an El Salvadoran prison in "error" as "totally lawless" behavior and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to repatriate the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, within 24 hours.
In a 22-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis doubled down on an order issued Friday, which Department of Justice lawyers representing the administration said was an affront to his executive authority.
"This was an illegal act," Xinis said of DHS Secretary Krisi Noem's attack on Abrego Garcia's rights, including his deportation and imprisonment.
"Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of [immigration law]," the decision states.
Once imprisoned in El Salvador, the order continues, "U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors."
Trump's DOJ appealed Friday's order to 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Virginia, but that court has not yet ruled on the request to stay the order from Xinis, which says Abrego Garcia should be returned to the United States no later than Monday.