Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
True though!
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It's certainly an argument worth making.
Isolation makes sense, where the risks of having the person out to others are obvious.
Less so when the person being infectious is less of a risk to others they may infect.
So this can go several ways. And it all depends on the exact situation.
If you have something like noro, which usually goes away after a day or so, after making your room look like a scene from Bridesmaids, and in most cases doesn't really make any lasting effects on people, the unpleasantness of the illness is a bit meh but the vast majority will recover perfectly fine, though you'd still be a bit of a dick to infect others which is why a lot of schools and workplaces do prefer 48 hours after last puke or diarrhoea before allowing people back - which is a form of isolation isn't it?
Colds, yeah, they're mild and unpleasant but people don't usually think about stopping when they do get one, maybe they should. Maybe we shouldn't be so phobic of getting mild illnesses, this has only recently become a thing (aside from practising good hand hygiene etc).
Flu kind of forces it because - aside from the serious infections still progressing to more severe outcomes - most people recover but whilst ill don't feel up to doing much. But again the virus itself is forcing the isolation isn't it?
So where did covid sit at various points in the pandemic?
Well, at the start it was a virus we knew very little of besides a fair amount of short term effects, medium and long term effects were not known, it hadn't been around enough, more crucially, we had no idea how to treat it, and nothing to prevent it. We knew it could put people in hospital, we knew it could cause deaths, so isolation to prevent others getting infection was a very sensible policy.
Where were we with vaccination? Well, they always have and still do prevent severe outcomes, and have an effect if not complete on infection and transmission: this effect has waned with various variants with Delta (where you'd need a booster to nigh-on prevent it) and Omicron (where the protection usually causes some illness once infected). Isolation in a vaccinated population makes significantly less sense when the progression to more severe outcomes is lessened.
And Omicron? So yeah, we know by now it's very infectious, we know it can partially sidestep immunity from infection or vaccination, we also know that especially in these situations, the illness which does arise may well be unpleasant but is milder, and NPIs make less effect because of the transmissibility gains. So, isolation is starting to make less sense.
All of this is making covid progress into a more cold/flu like illness, which of course doesn't have mandatory isolation. If the response is proportionate, then something's not consistent there.
FWIW, I do think people should consider - or limit - leaving home if they have any signs of infectious disease, and though the effect is partial at best, should consider a face covering to try and reduce the amount of virus they emit. But, then, if the virus isn't going to cause more than an illness for 2-3 days, how much benefit does this have?
It's a classic case of risk balancing, there's answers, but not a single correct one which suits every situation.