Also, symptoms are not a great indicator of infectiousness (just thinkg of a lasting cough that lingers, or congestion & headache that could indicate your body is killing the virus before it gets a chance to replicate)
Or the many with NO symptoms who ARE highly infectious!
4/
Here we go again with this asinine cautious approach to testing for H5N1
CDC is NOT recommending that people with no symptoms - but who have had contact w infected animals - be tested at all… and certainly are not recommending a swab w any frequency.
Though we should have learned it in 2020, Here’s why this doesnt make sense:
1/
Firstly, tests are our eyes for viruses. It’s literally how we see where viruses are
If we wait until people are getting sick, we may have missed a major opportunity to find viruses jumping into humans before they learn to become so efficient in us that they cause disease
2/
So waiting until we actually have highly pathogenic strains harming humans - when we have a pretty discreet population at the moment to survey - is short sighted
3/
A particularly deadly consequence of measles is its erasure of previously acquired immune memory - setting kids and adults up for infections that they shouldn’t be at risk from!
We found for example that measles can eliminate as much as 80% of someone’s previously acquired immunity to other pathogens! science.org/doi/full/10.11…