Thread by @davidalim

Really interesting and telling interview by @chrislhayes with Anthony Fauci tonight on CDC's isolation guidance.

Gives insight into what CDC and top admin health officials were thinking.

Really blunt discussion of trade offs to keep society running during upcoming weeks.

🧵:

Fauci: "So many people — now and likely in the next few weeks — who will be infected by this wave of infections that we're getting with Omicron ... that might have a negative impact on our ability to maintain the structure of society."

@chrislhayes: "You are talking about a policy judgment in a context of tradeoffs between different consequences."

Contrasts stopping spread of Covid-19 vs having a water treatment facility have its technicians all out sick for 10 days.

Fauci nods yes and responds: "Correct."

Fauci: "Nothing is going to be 100%. And this is one of those situations when you're dealing with a very difficult situation. We often say, you don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good."

Notes people are more like to be infectious at the start of an infection.

Fauci continued: "The CDC feels and I don't disagree with them at all, that wearing a mask is ample protection during that second half of a 10 day period, when you balance that against the importance of trying to get people back functioning in society."

When asked by @chrislhayes if CDC's guidance change was in response to the Delta Airlines letter or other big employers, Fauci pushes back.

"No, that's not so at all," Fauci said. "That was not the basis of the CDC decision."

Fauci: "We're trying to have a good balance of preserving and protecting the public health, at the same time that we don't have to have the draconian decision of shutting down the country."

Says there would be "a lot more devil advocates yelling" if the U.S. was "shut down."

Fauci on why the CDC didn't require a test at the end of five days of no symptoms:

"If you look at the predictive capability of a test, to say whether or not you are infective, is much, much more weighted towards the earlier first five days."

Fauci cont. on test performance:

"Once you get into the latter part of that, the predictive value of that in telling you whether or not you're infective or not, there's no real data to say that, there's very little known about that. And that was the basis of the CDC decision."

Fauci on authorized test uses:

"In fact, if you look at what the FDA validated the test for, was never as a prediction of whether or not after X number of days, you're going to be infective or not ... that wasn't one of the indications."

Would encourage folks to watch the whole interview for the whole context, body language: msnbc.com/all-in/watch/d…