As of March 1, 2024, the Centers for Disease Control have finally conceded the obvious, and effectively declared COVID-19 to be “just the flu”—quite literally (although not explicitly). Their latest recommendations unify responses to COVID-19, influenza, and RSV—the leading causes of Influenza Like Illness.
CDC released today updated recommendations for how people can protect themselves and their communities from respiratory viruses, including COVID-19. The new guidance brings a unified approach to addressing risks from a range of common respiratory viral illnesses, such as COVID-19, flu, and RSV, which can cause significant health impacts and strain on hospitals and health care workers. CDC is making updates to the recommendations now because the U.S. is seeing far fewer hospitalizations and deaths associated with COVID-19 and because we have more tools than ever to combat flu, COVID, and RSV.
Four years after the Pandemic Panic upended pretty much the entire world, the CDC has finally acknowledged what was patently obvious from the moment the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first identified as a coronavirus: COVID-19 is another form of Influenza Like Illness—it is by definition “just the flu”. The reason all the mass testing was utterly ineffective at stopping the virus was because it is in every particular an influenza like illness.
By far the most significant aspect of the new unified guidelines is the ending of extended period of isolation for COVID patients.
When people get sick with a respiratory virus, the updated guidance recommends that they stay home and away from others. For people with COVID-19 and influenza, treatment is available and can lessen symptoms and lower the risk of severe illness. The recommendations suggest returning to normal activities when, for at least 24 hours, symptoms are improving overall, and if a fever was present, it has been gone without use of a fever-reducing medication.
In other words, if you’re sick, stay home, get some rest, and let your body fight it off—exactly the way parents have been treating their sick children for decades.
Four years of hysteria, panic, and propaganda, and the CDC has landed exactly where the Pandemic Panic all started—with COVID-19 being “just the flu”.
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Even corporate media has not been able to avoid the admission that COVID is now “just the flu”, although media outlets have, by and large, avoided that rather obvious phrasing.
That people who test positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus no longer need to isolate was the lede for most of the media coverage of the new guidelines.
The CDC’s new guidance now matches public health advice for flu and other respiratory illnesses: Stay home when you’re sick, but return to school or work once you’re feeling better and you’ve been without a fever for 24 hours.
Americans with Covid or other respiratory infections need not isolate for five days before returning to work or school, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday, a striking sign of changing attitudes toward the coronavirus.
People with respiratory illnesses may resume daily activities if they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the aid of medications and if their symptoms are improving, agency officials said.
The Wall Street Journal acknowledged in its headline that COVID was “like the flu”.
The Wall Street Journal also conceded that COVID was “no longer an emergency.”
A case of Covid no longer means isolating for five days, according to the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday. It’s the latest sign of the virus’s normalization four years after it upended our lives.
You should now follow the same precautions with Covid as you take with the flu, according to new guidelines from the CDC. That means staying home until you’ve gone a day with no fever and improving symptoms. Take other precautions for the next five days, including wearing a mask and limiting close contact with others.
Those are the same steps the CDC recommends for other respiratory viruses.
“Covid-19 is still an important public health threat, but it is not the emergency that it once was,” said Dr. Brendan Jackson, who leads the respiratory virus response for the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease, on Friday.
ABC News went so far as to concede—well down in their reporting—that the new guidelines were comparable to longstanding recommendations for all Influenza Like Illness:
The newer guidelines are in line with what the CDC has recommended for the flu "for decades," the agency said.
"The bottom line is that when people follow these actionable recommendations to avoid getting sick, and to protect themselves and others if they do get sick, it will help limit the spread of respiratory viruses, and that will mean fewer people who experience severe illness," Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a statement. "That includes taking enhanced precautions that can help protect people who are at higher risk for getting seriously ill."
CBS News reported that the CDC acknowledged that COVID was “no longer the emergency it once was”, and that it was ending special guidance for COVID in favor of the unified approach to Influenza Like Illness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday it would wind down much of its remaining guidance specifically targeted at COVID-19, including an official end to a pandemic-era plea for Americans to stay home for five days after testing positive.
The agency cited improvements in the rates of hospitalizations and deaths inflicted by the virus this past season for the change in its recommendations.
"COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses," the agency said Friday in a report justifying its decision.
Not only has the CDC “thrown in the towel” on COVID as a dire public health threat, but the corporate media has now completely abandoned and declared “finis” on the Pandemic Panic Narrative.
COVID is no longer the urgent public health threat of our time—not that it ever was.
But what the CDC is not acknowledging is how hospitalizations have not come even close to matching the initial peaks for roughly two years now.
The Omicron wave was truly the end of the COVID “pandemic” (assuming we should still call the infection waves a pandemic). The data made that plain by the end of 2022, when the “waves” that had occurred in this country peaked well below prior waves—and the 2023-2024 winter wave of COVID peaked well below the 2022 waves.
But when we look at the trend since the beginning of the “pandemic”, it is even more apparent with COVID deaths than with COVID hospitalizations that the “emergency” ended long ago.
COVID stopped being majorly lethal to anyone in the US by the spring of 2022. It took the CDC two years to admit what their own data has been showing unambiguously since then.
We should be glad that the CDC is admitting the obvious. This much is absolutely good news.
But we should also not forget that the CDC is only now acknowledging a truth that has been evident for years, since the start of the Pandemic Panic. Even the clinical research has shown that COVID has been less of a health threat than Respiratory Syncytial Virus and only somewhat more of a threat than influenza.
Throughout 2022, Omicron was demonstrably not the greatest infectious disease threat facing Swedish pediatric patients. Respiratory syncytial virus was, and by a wide margin.
Equally important was that Omicron was not that much greater a threat to pediatric patients than influenza.
Yet while an individual case of “the flu” may be mild or severe, the public health impact of cases of “the flu” are typically minimal. The CDC data sets demonstrate this in abundance.
On a nationwide basis, combined Emergency Department visits for COVID, Flu (Influenza) and RSV never exceeded 10% of all ED visits.
Even if we break it down by state, such as in California, we still do not see all respiratory virus activity accounting for more than 10% of ED visits.
While it is good news that the CDC is acknowledging the reality of COVID today, we should not forget that the CDC has been complicit along with the corporate media in denying that the reality of COVID today has, in large measure, been the reality of COVID all along.
COVID is not a public health emergency today, and yes, it is right for the CDC to acknowledge that.
What is wrong is for the CDC to still pretend that COVID ever was a public health emergency.
What is wrong is for the corporate media to still pretend that the Pandemic Panic—and all the lunacies and lockdowns that resulted—were ever justified. That was shown to be false over a year ago.
The “emergency” the CDC says no longer exists has never existed. The data has shown from the beginning that the “emergency” never existed. The Pandemic Panic Narrative was never anything but an easily debunked and disproven lie.
Panic and fear are never a good response to disease, and are a poor basis for any public health policy. Propaganda is destructive in any circumstance, but in the realm of healthcare it is downright lethal.
The data on COVID since the beginning has shown us this.
Bureaucrats are horrible at healthcare, and politicians are positively dangerous when they decide to muck around in healthcare.
The data on COVID since the beginning has shown us this.
Be glad the CDC is conceding the obvious, that COVID is not now a public health crisis. But do not stop being outraged and infuriated that the CDC will not concede that COVID was never a public health crisis. Do not stop being angry at the lies that have been told, at the corruption that has been not just tolerated, but actively celebrated. Do not stop seeking not just answers but accountability.
The CDC is finally acknowledging the truth about COVID. They also need to acknowledge their role in trying to conceal that truth for the past four years.
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Yes, I agree that the lockdowns did more harm than good. But I feel like they are still hiding the truth about this flu virus. AND the danger of the vaccines. They are still pushing them!
I would say, "Like the flu" since early in 2022 when Omicron displaced the previous variants.
Before that it was considerably worse than the flu, at least for some people.
A friend of mine died at age 49 in April of 2021. Yes, he had some comorbidities, obesity chief among them.
An employee of mine in her early 40s spent a week in the hospital in the spring of 2021. Not an ounce of extra weight on her. Hospital staff was puzzled. "You're too young and too skinny to have gotten it this bad".
I've never known anyone who was hospitalized for flu, much less died of it.
Yes, I agree that the lockdowns did more harm than good. But I feel like they are still hiding the truth about this flu virus. AND the danger of the vaccines. They are still pushing them!
I would say, "Like the flu" since early in 2022 when Omicron displaced the previous variants.
Before that it was considerably worse than the flu, at least for some people.
A friend of mine died at age 49 in April of 2021. Yes, he had some comorbidities, obesity chief among them.
An employee of mine in her early 40s spent a week in the hospital in the spring of 2021. Not an ounce of extra weight on her. Hospital staff was puzzled. "You're too young and too skinny to have gotten it this bad".
I've never known anyone who was hospitalized for flu, much less died of it.