Good morning everyone. Happy Friday. This is Mandy Cohen, director of

CDC. So I'm going to start. So the CDC finally updated their guidance about what to do if you have COVID and you need to figure out

whether you should stay home, which of course I had scooped two weeks earlier.

You don't have to include that part.

That is Lena Sun, my intrepid colleague

here at the post who covers public health

and infectious diseases.

So today, CDC is updating our respiratory viral illness guidance to streamline advice to people on how they can protect themselves and others from severe illness caused by common

respiratory viruses like COVID, flu, and RSV.

This briefing last Friday was the first time since 2021. The CDC has updated its COVID isolation guidance.

And what's notable isn't just what they're recommending,

but what they've stopped recommending.

CDC's central recommendation here is simple.

When you get sick, stay home and away from others.

This is crucial to reducing the spread of illness

and protecting others.

Before, they had said you needed to isolate for five days.

Instead, now they're saying, okay, that's not realistic for a bunch of reasons we can go into. But they're basically saying, you can go back to resuming normal activities after your

fever has broken for 24 hours without taking Tylenol or other medication and your overall symptoms are improving.

So basically, if it's day three of you having COVID, but you're already feeling better and you've been fever-free, then you can go back to work or to school or to wherever.

We're in a different place, both in the level of protection people

have against these illnesses and the tools we have available. We have

...