Breaking: CDC ordered by higher-ups within Trump WH to modify its guidelines this week to not test people without overt symptoms of #Covid19.

Worse, the directive “came from the top down”, and it was “not written by the C.D.C. but were imposed”!!
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/world/covid-19-coronavirus.html

I can’t emphasize how dangerous not testing asymptomatic people is. Models suggest that about half of transmission events can be traced back to individuals still in this so-called pre-symptomatic stage, before they start to feel ill — if at all. #covid19 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0869-5?referringSource=articleShare

3) Secondly, for WH to issues public health guidelines over the heads of the CDC and force it to swallow it’s political directive over CDC advice is wholly dangerous.

This is not a winning strategy. THIS IS HOW TO LOSE TO A GODDAMN PANDEMIC!!! Why Trump why?

4) “newest version of the guidelines amended CDC guidance to say that people who have been in close contact with an infected individual — typically defined as being within 6 feet of a person with the coronavirus & for 15 minutes — “do not necessarily need a test” if no symptoms.

5) ... epidemiologists wanna vomit when we hear this crap. We are absolutely certain that people infected with the virus can spread it even if they show no symptoms! And up to HALF of all transmission can be from asymptomatic/ presymptomatic people! This new rule is insane!!!

6) “At a moment when experts have almost universally come forward to encourage more frequent and widespread testing, especially to reach vulnerable and marginalized sectors of the population, the CDC update appears counterintuitive and “very strange” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/health/covid-19-testing-cdc.amp.html

7) A more lax approach to testing, experts said, could delay crucial treatments, as well as obscure, or even hasten, the coronavirus’s spread in the community.

8) “I think it’s bizarre,” said Daniel Larremore, a mathematician and infectious diseases modeler at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Any move right now to reduce levels of testing by changing guidelines is a step in the wrong direction.”

9) BOTTOMLINE: This new CDC no-testing-of-asymptomatic guideline is sketchy and unscientific. It’s also politically sketchy given it was released quietly without much announcement or press conference at all. Added now indicators of WH meddling to force CDC makes is even worse!

10) All the while, today, a CDC journal report put out a clear case of asymptomatic transmission on board an airplane, in which a woman used an inflight bathroom after asymptomatic people did—and caught it likely from sharing bathroom. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1298725905443905537?s=21

11) Quick summary of that airplane case— a woman wore an N95 mask entire trip EXCEPT when she used the bathroom after another asymptomatic person did. She was seated too far away otherwise and was home quarantined before trip and didn’t use public transit. Hence likely plume.

12) p.s. toilet plume or could have been lingering aerosol after the previous asymptomatic person used the bathroom. Since we know virus aerosols can last 20 min to 4 hours.