It's Never Going Away

The best we can hope for is it muddles along at roughly the current rate, with brief local flare ups, and doesn't get much worse because enough people have adjusted their lives to minimize transmission possibilities in various ways, such as mask wearing.

Infectious disease experts are not only confused but also troubled by a change in testing guidelines made by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said people without symptoms may not need a test – even if they’ve been exposed to the coronavirus.

“Our work on the ‘silent’ spread underscored the importance of testing people who have been exposed to COVID-19 regardless of symptoms,” tweeted Alison Galvani, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at Yale School of Medicine. “This change in policy will kill.”