NY Post Editorial Board: The CDC Finally Catches Up (Sort Of) To Reality

After years of absurd COVID theater, the Centers for Disease Control has at long last eased its guidelines on quarantine, social distancing and testing. 

Hallelujah! But it’s not enough. 

Good to at last ditch the false idea that standing six feet away from someone while still sharing their airspace will stop you from getting COVID. (We now know that it’s all about good air circulation.) But the bureaucrats took more than a year to catch up with the science, even as the directive did endless social damage. 

As for the insane requirement that vaxxed people merely exposed to the virus need to isolate for more than a week: it did nothing for overall COVID outcomes in the US. But it did cripple businesses and interrupt schooling against a backdrop of learning loss already massive from closures.

But much damage is already done (and likely irreversible for kids). 

The CDC also changed its tune on wide-scale testing of the asymptomatic. Makes sense: the actual science has shown testing is worse than useless as a blunt-force instrument. 

But the agency won’t let go of its attachment to masks, still recommending them indoors in areas with high “community levels” of COVID — though mask mandates have had zero noticeable effect on the pandemic.

Notably, the CDC’s shift comes at an opportune moment for Democrats, who need some big wins heading into November. 

Then again, most Americans have been ignoring the prior CDC guidelines for months, treating the virus as the low-level risk it is for almost everyone. 

COVID “is here to stay,” said a CDC epidemiologist. So good for the agency on catching up partway to reality — while showing yet again that our public health “experts” are anything but.