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I put the link in the alt text. Honestly, as an RN who cares about people, I feel a strong obligation to otherwise not disseminate that information.

Digging a bit, the Dept of HHS provides an informative page about COVID treatment options, which are important to reduce the risk of severe disease.

https://aspr.hhs.gov/COVID-19/Treatments/Pages/Possible-Treatment-Options-for-COVID19.aspx

Treatment helps prevent diseases, sure. Take STDs— if a person gets gonorrhea, they can prevent transmission w/ treatment IF they stop having sex until they are done w/ the treatment.

With respiratory diseases like COVID, Flu, or RSV, however, there is nothing to stop doing short of breathing because the viruses are spread in the air.

So we help prevent spread w/ proper mask wearing, distancing, handwashing, vaccination, etc.

And we help reduce the risk of severe complications w/treatments.

@kdnyhan Yes, exactly—it’s technical language.
My concern is that people will forego wearing N95s & taking other measures to prevent spread while they rely on antiviral medication that the CDC is now referring to as a “core prevention strategy” (but not to reduce spread—the CDC’s website states in several places that this “core prevention strategy” is to REDUCE the risk of severe disease/complications —not to reduce or prevent spread, or even to prevent severe disease)

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@kdnyhan I have a friend who works for the CDC who had pointed out the technical strategy before— and I totally get that— but for lay people, it simply means cool, I don’t have to wear a mask and I can just take some pills and I’ll be good.

In reality, though, there is no guarantee that they or anyone else near them will be all right. To try to stop the diseases from spreading in the first place seems like a better choice, but maybe the CDC has given up on that?

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@callisto Yeah I can see that if people take steps to prevent it from spreading once they know they have it.
This treatment as prevention is another strategy I saw developing many months ago when they started focusing on the number of hospitalizations (not cases) as the key evaluation metric.