Speaker 1: It's Thursday, December three. I'm Oscar Ramrors from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Lots of news out of the CDC recently when it
Speaker 1: comes to COVID nineteen. First, the CDC said that the
Speaker 1: standard fourteen day quarantine can be shortened to ten days
Speaker 1: or even seven days of certain criteria are met. It
Speaker 1: can be ten days if you're showing no symptoms at all,
Speaker 1: and seven days if you get a negative test. New
Speaker 1: guidelines were also released when it comes to testing before
Speaker 1: and after travel. Joel Achenbach, science reporter at the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: joins us for the latest guideline adjustments. Thanks for joining us, Joel,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about some
Speaker 1: new guidance from the CDC. This has to do with
Speaker 1: quarantine periods. For a while now, we've heard that if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be quarantining, it's gonna be fourteen days. Now
Speaker 1: the new guidances, they're dropping that down to ten days,
Speaker 1: possibly seven days, depending on the circumstances of it all.
Speaker 1: So Joel, help us walk through some of these new guidelines.
Speaker 1: Now is a little complicated, so I'll do my best
Speaker 1: and you know, this is a science based decision, but
Speaker 1: it's also one based in how do people actually behave
Speaker 1: They felt that anecdotally they were hearing from the various
Speaker 1: public health agencies, you know, the county health departments. Hey,
Speaker 1: people are not cooperating with the quarantines. They're not doing it.
Speaker 1: So keep in mind, let's say you've become exposed to
Speaker 1: the virus. That's when you get quarantined. Not that you
Speaker 1: have it, not that you're infected, but you might have it.
Speaker 1: You get identified it through contact tracing. You were at
Speaker 1: the party where someone was known to have the virus.
Speaker 1: The health department says, okay, you got a quarantine for
Speaker 1: fourteen days. Well, what happens is people they don't want
Speaker 1: to do that for fourteen days. It's too long. They're
Speaker 1: gonna miss work, they're gonna lose their job, maybe they
Speaker 1: need the money, and it creates a kind of a
Speaker 1: lack of cooperational, lack of compliance. So they looked at
Speaker 1: it and said, okay, what if we make it a
Speaker 1: little bit easier, will still get captured most potential infectious people.
Speaker 1: Will make it a little bit easier. Will give two alternatives.
Speaker 1: One is ten days if you monitor symptoms every single
Speaker 1: day and never have any symptoms. You're supposed to make
Speaker 1: sure that you don't have a fever, don't have a cost,
Speaker 1: aren't fatigued. The second thing is you can cut it
Speaker 1: to seven days if you have a negative test within
Speaker 1: forty eight hours of the end of that seven day period.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is kind of what a lot of people were probably
Speaker 1: doing already keeping quiet about it. Let's see if I
Speaker 1: have any symptoms. If not, I'm all good in their heads, right,
Speaker 1: because they want to avoid this very strict fourteen days.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, for a lot of people, they can
Speaker 1: miss work, they could lose out on a job, a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff like that. So definitely it makes sense
Speaker 1: that they could reduce it that way. But it also
Speaker 1: depends on testing. You know, you've got to make sure
Speaker 1: you get tested in the right period of time. I
Speaker 1: did ask this and they clear find that either of
Speaker 1: the two main kinds of tests can be used in
Speaker 1: that last forty eight hour period, either the rapid response
Speaker 1: antigen test or the PCR test. The PCR is more accurate,
Speaker 1: but it takes a little longer to get the result
Speaker 1: and sometimes a couple of days or more the three days.
Speaker 1: But you know, to some extent, like you said, people
Speaker 1: are doing what they're gonna do. The government is not
Speaker 1: going door to door checking on people. A lot of
Speaker 1: this is voluntary. But the contact tracers, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: trying to do their job. They call someone up and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we think you may have been exposed. People
Speaker 1: don't answer the phone when when they get a call
Speaker 1: from the health department. They're like, hey, I don't want
Speaker 1: to know about it. I don't want to be part
Speaker 1: of this system. So they're trying to get better compliance.
Speaker 1: The eases the burden on the health departments and it's
Speaker 1: a little more realistic for people, and it will still
Speaker 1: capture probably the cases. Obviously, they hope that if the
Speaker 1: quarantine period is lower, you might be more willing to
Speaker 1: cooperate with a contact tracer. The CDC also released new
Speaker 1: guidelines about testing before and after traveling. We know that
Speaker 1: was a huge issue with Thanksgiving people just rushing to
Speaker 1: go get tests and Christmas and New Year's is coming up.
Speaker 1: What's the new guidance there? What they said before I
Speaker 1: mean like a week or so ago is and what
Speaker 1: people have said as well, try to get a test
Speaker 1: before you take a trip. Now they've gotten a little
Speaker 1: more specific. They're saying one to three days before your trip,
Speaker 1: get tested. Number one. Number two is when you return
Speaker 1: for a trip three to five days afterwards, get tested.
Speaker 1: And there's another wrinkle in it, which, now that I
Speaker 1: think about it, I need to maybe add to my
Speaker 1: latest story. Is they're saying that when you come back
Speaker 1: from a trip you should essentially stay home. You should
Speaker 1: essentially quarantine when you get back from the trip, as
Speaker 1: if you got it on the trip. And they're saying
Speaker 1: for seven days, cut out all non essential activities, which
Speaker 1: is again like are people really gonna do that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I you know, I I have not been traveling, but
Speaker 1: I have friends who are, and you know, when they
Speaker 1: come back from a trip, they come wandering by, you know,
Speaker 1: socially distance. So I mean it's been I think it's
Speaker 1: good to put the message out there that when't you
Speaker 1: have been on the road or in an airplane, when
Speaker 1: you come home, you need to spend seven days of
Speaker 1: assuming that you might have gotten no parties, no running around,
Speaker 1: just take it easy for seven days. And that's a
Speaker 1: tough thing to write when people take some vacation time,
Speaker 1: days off of work. They only a lot the days
Speaker 1: that they're actually gonna be gone, and when you come
Speaker 1: back on you know, Saturday or something, you're back to
Speaker 1: work on Monday. And this is the difficulty in controlling people.
Speaker 1: People are gonna do what they want. It's tough. That's
Speaker 1: why they say it's not worth it. Maybe just don't
Speaker 1: go travel. But yeah, I mean it's very tough all around.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how these new guidance maybe helps, but
Speaker 1: who knows. I just still get this overwhelming sense that
Speaker 1: people are gonna do what they want to do. And
Speaker 1: that's and that's the tough part. When we just cases
Speaker 1: rising everywhere. People are gonna do, They're gonna behave in
Speaker 1: a certain way. But if you can nudge behavior toward
Speaker 1: a better path, that will make a difference, particularly you
Speaker 1: know right now where we're in the middle of a
Speaker 1: bad period and I think people understand what's going on,
Speaker 1: but it bears repeating that we're in the middle of
Speaker 1: a surge and the numbers are gonna keep going up
Speaker 1: as the virus spreads more easily in some of the
Speaker 1: big population centers over the next few weeks, and so
Speaker 1: We're in for a very rough patch before we hit
Speaker 1: the sunshine, if that makes any sense. Joel Achenbach, science
Speaker 1: reporter at the Washington Post, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: joining us. Well, thank you for having me. I'm Oscar
Speaker 1: Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget the
Speaker 1: difference today's big news stories. You can check me out
Speaker 1: on the Daily Dive podcast every money to Friday, so
Speaker 1: Alwison I, Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.