CDC says asymptomatic people don't need testing, draws criticism from experts

The Hill ^ | 08 26 2020 | Peter Sullivan

[yesthatjallen]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly changed its guidance on Monday to now say that asymptomatic people do not need to be tested for coronavirus, even if they have been in close contact with an infected person.

The agency made the move by updating its website but did not make any public announcement or explain the reasoning behind the major revision.

The guidance now states: “If you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms: You do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your health care provider or State or local public health officials recommend you take one.”

That is a stark change from the previous CDC guidance, which emphasized the importance of testing people who were in close contact with infected people. “Testing is recommended for all close contacts of persons with SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the previous guidance said. “Because of the potential for asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission, it is important that contacts of individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection be quickly identified and tested.”

The move drew widespread criticism and confusion from public health experts, who said that testing to identify asymptomatic people with the virus is important and that the change could undermine contact tracing, a core strategy to slow the spread of the virus.

“Without explanation, the @CDCGov made remarkable and troubling changes to their guidelines on coronavirus testing this week,” tweeted Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington.

SNIP

[Revolutionary]

They are trying to pump the numbers up again.
I believe we have reached herd immunity and the numbers will keep on dropping.

[grumpygresh]

When the prevalence of a condition is low, as is the case with an asymptomatic patient with CoVid, the false positive rate exceeds the prevalence rate.

This means that a false positive is more likely than a true positive.

But, you’ll still have to be quarantined.

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

CDC quietly acknowledging that asymptomatic transmission is a myth. It is rare enough to ignore.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32513410/

If you test positive PCR, and are asymptomatic, or 9 days after 1st symptom, you are flat out immune. No mask needed, no social distancing crap. Have fun.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/duration-isolation.html

[Sacajaweau]

They're finding to many positives and they ain't dying or even going into hospitals. It's calling...controlling the statistics.

Have been saying for a while...at this point they should be testing for antibodies if you don't test positive.

[viewfromthefrontier]

Reversals on masks, reversals on testing, must be time to try to pump the numbers back up - gotta keep this thing going until November!

[lightman]

Pandemic paranoia: too precious to waste.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Clueless.

Effing clueless, the whole lot of them.
Trump needs to clean house. Fire them all and go
recruit some REAL doctors.

[Buckeye McFrog]

The only consistent and good advice is to wash your hands, but twenty seconds isn’t what I call a good hand wash.

The TV show Mythbusters inadvertently proved that it is.

They were testing the myth on which is more sanitary in a public restroom, paper towels or a hand dryer? They built two mock-up bathrooms, one with a towel dispenser and one with a blow dryer. They lined up 200 volunteers and sprayed all of their hands with an inert bacteria. They had half wash with soap and water for 20 seconds in the towel restroom and had the rest do so in the room with the blower. Then they swabbed various locations in the rooms and took cultures.

The first test TOTALLY FAILED because 20 seconds with soap and water kills 95% of anything growing on your hands. They could not get anything growing in their cultures. They had to redo the entire experiment with a water rinse only.

Round Two proved paper towels to be infinitely better. Since an air dryer can not be hot enough to kill germs or it would scald you, all it manages to do is to blow the germs around and distribute them evenly throughout the room.

[mewzilla]

‘Rat fight!!!!!!

[mewzilla]

They’re cutting their losses and moving on to the next plot.

God help us.

[Wuli]

The media helped the tyranny of the idea that asymptomatic people were more of a threat than they actually are. THAT helped cement the idea that ANYONE you encounter could be a potential viral contaminant agent, so everyone should be suspicious of everyone - thus universal 100% 24/7 masking and universal 100% 24/7 social distancing.

That was the only way they could obtain next door neighbors none of whom were ill nor knew anyone who was ill and who always masked up when shopping, would only have a conversation with each other standing quite away from each other in their separate yards.

[zeestephen]

Re: “Asymptomatic - that is exactly what a vaccinated person is.”

That’s news to me. Asymptomatic, but infected, persons can and do spread infections to other people.

Re: “Healthy or infected without symptoms - Why do you need to know?”

Because it is not possible to create a useful epidemiology unless you know how many are infected, but not sick.

[Shethink13]

Because it is not possible to create a useful epidemiology unless you know how many are infected, but not sick.

So we've never created a useful epidemiology for any other virus? Because this is the only time in history we have done this ridiculous amount of testing for any virus.

That’s news to me. Asymptomatic, but infected, persons can and do spread infections to other people.

A vaccinated person, if the vaccine actually works as intended, merely has developed temporary antibodies to a specific protein (not the actual organism itself) from the targeted virus. It does not prevent that individual from becoming infected and spreading that infection to other people.

If you do not believe that a vaccinated person can become infected, please cite the biological process that would prevent any circulating pathogens from entering their body through the nose, mouth, eyes. Do you believe a virus knows who is vaccinated and who is not? Do you think a vaccine creates a magic force field that prevents the virus from entering?

Not to mention the fact that, in the case of the flu vaccine, the efficacy rate at best is between 40-50%, which means at least half of those vaccinated are still getting the flu and thus are capable of spreading it. Check out the following statistics from the CDC concerning flu vaccine efficacy:

2018-19 flu vaccine efficacy (CDC)

You are not alone in blindly accepting the nonsensical conventional wisdom that getting vaccinated protects those around you, kind of like wearing the mask. It's an effective tool to guilt you into doing something that they cannot convince you to do with provable statistical data.

[zeestephen]

Re: Epidemiology

I thought it was obvious that I was talking about COVID-19.

If you have no sample number of asymptomatic infections, how can you estimate herd immunity or case fatality rate or other useful metrics?

Re: Asymptomatic, but infected, persons can and do spread infections

Once again, I thought it was obvious that I was talking about COVID-19.

I have no idea why you wrote 5 paragraphs about vaccines and vaccinated persons.