That reasoning enraged many Americans who have long argued that exact sentiment and wondered how long this fact has been known by the medical establishment.
On ABC News' "Good Morning America," Walensky stated Wednesday morning that the PCR tests can show positive cases for as long as three months.
The newly updated CDC guidelines don't require testing at the end of isolation because PCR tests can stay positive for up to 12 weeks, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told "Good Morning America" Wednesday.As The Daily Wire reported earlier Wednesday, Walensky also said that the CDC shortened the isolation period in part based on their opinion of what the American people could "tolerate." Walensky's comments came during an interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins:
"So we would have people in isolation for a very long time if we were relying on PCRs," Walensky said.
Walensky also addressed Tuesday's news from the FDA that, according to early data, rapid antigen tests may be less sensitive when it comes to the omicron variant.
"We do know that the most sensitive test you can do is a PCR test," Walensky said. "So if you have symptoms and you have a negative antigen test, we do ask you to go and get a PCR to make sure those symptoms are not attributable to COVID."
"So from what you are saying, it sounds like this decision had just as much to do with business as it did with the science," Collins pushed back.In response, hundreds of conservatives were outraged over the apparent failure of PCR tests to accurately capture the threat of the virus.
"It really had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate," Walensky replied, adding, "We have seen relatively low rates of isolation for all of this pandemic. Some science has demonstrated that less than a third of people are isolating when they need to. We really want to make sure we have guidance in this moment where we were going to have a lot of disease that could be adhered to, that people were willing to adhere to, and that spoke to specifically when people were maximally infectious. So it really spoke to both behaviors and to what people were able to do."
"This means that for the past 21 months, people sat home for extra days and weeks because their test came back with an irrelevant positive. We didn't know this 6, 12, 18 months ago? Really?" political commentator Yossi Gestetner tweeted.
"I'm old enough to remember when we were called conspiracy theorists for telling people that PCR tests were terribly unreliable. 2 years later the CDC finally caught up and acknowledged reality," congressional candidate Robby Starbuck tweeted.
"Hundreds of billions of dollars lost in the U.S. economy, millions with mental health issues locked away for months at a time all because, until now, the CDC was too afraid to admit PCR tests are flawed," politico Daniel Bostic added.
Comment: The WHO admitted this fact literally a year ago. The CDC is obviously a little slow on the uptake (deliberately so, undoubtedly).
See also: