In this Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020 file photo, travelers walk through the Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City, a day before Thanksgiving. On Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging Americans to stay home over the upcoming holiday season and consider getting tested before and after if they do decide to travel. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
By Lindsey Tanner
Don’t travel over the upcoming holidays. But if you must, consider getting coronavirus tests before and after, U.S. health officials urged Wednesday.
The agency also announced new guidelines that shorten recommended quarantines after close contact with someone infected with coronavirus. The agency said the risk in a shorter quarantine is small, but that the change makes following the guidance less of a hardship.
The no-travel advice echoes recommendations for Thanksgiving but many Americans ignored it. With COVID-19 continuing to surge, the CDC added the testing option.
“Cases are rising, hospitalizations are increasing, deaths are increasing. We need to try to bend the curve, stop this exponential increase,” the CDC's Dr. Henry Walke said during a briefing.
He said any travel-related surge in cases from travel would likely be apparent about a week to 10 days after Thanksgiving.
The virus has infected more than 13.5 million Americans and killed at least 270,000 since January.
“The safest thing to do is to postpone holiday travel and stay home," said Dr. Cindy Friedman, another CDC official. "Travel volume was high over Thanksgiving,'' and even if small numbers were infected, that could result in ’’hundreds of thousands of new infections.”
‘’Travel is a door-to-door experience that can spread the virus during the journey and also into communities that travelers visit or live," she added.
For those who decide to travel, COVID-19 tests should be considered one to three days before the trip and again three to five days afterward, the CDC said. The agency also recommended travelers reduce non-essential activities for a full week after they return or for 10 days if not tested afterward. And it emphasized the importance of continuing to follow precautions including masks, social distancing, and frequent hand-washing.
The revised quarantine guidance says people who have been in contact with someone infected with the virus can resume normal activity after 10 days, or seven days if they receive a negative test result. That’s down from the 14-day period recommended since the pandemic began.
The change is based on extensive modeling by CDC and others, said the agency's Dr. John Brooks..
Terrell Jermaine Starr, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and host of the Black Diplomats podcast joins Cheddar News to discuss Russia's attempt to invade Ukraine.
With an increasing number of teachers and staff calling out sick by the day, the state of Oklahoma is turning to an unusual solution. Republican Governor Kevin Stitt has issued an executive order that permits state employees to work as substitute teachers. Shaily Baranwal, founder and CEO of Elevate K-12, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the stance of the U.S. and its allies should Russia make any forays into Ukraine, a seeming response to President Biden's remarks that should Putin engage in something short of a full invasion, there might be some indecision among allied nations regarding what to do. Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the think tank Atlantic Council, joined Cheddar to discuss the difficulty faced by Blinken wrangling unity as tensions run high in the region. "There'll be a smaller incursion, and the president implied, there'll be a weaker response because our European allies have created this horrible situation where they are dependent on Moscow for their gas supply," Cohen explained.
During a nearly two-hour press conference on Wednesday, President Biden spoke on his accomplishments and challenges from the first year of his presidency, and what his administration hopes to accomplish in the coming year. However, his approval ratings are underwater as COVID remains a big concern for voters — as does inflation, noted Tom Bevan, co-founder and president of polling aggregator RealClearPolitics. "The public thinks [inflation] is priority number one, and the administration is concerned about it, they talk about it, but they're not spending enough time on it as far as the public is concerned," said Bevan.
The drama surrounding tennis star Novak Djokovic continues after he was deported from Australia over the weekend due to the nation's COVID-19 vaccine requirements. Djokovic was forced to leave the country on the eve of what was to be his first match in defense of his Australian Open title after three judges ruled in favor of his removal and revealed their reasoning for doing so. Adding to his woes, a law recently passed in France is putting his chances of defending his French Open title in jeopardy. The director of Marist's Center for Sports Communication, Jane McManus, joined Cheddar to discuss the ongoing fallout.
As the midterm elections get ever closer, candidates have been getting creative with their campaigns to stick out and to connect with voters. Gary Chambers, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Louisiana, has definitely attracted attention with an advertisement featuring him smoking a blunt, making a point about the inequity of anti-cannabis laws. "We wanted to bring the seriousness of the moment," he said of the ad. "But we also wanted to make sure that people understand that there are 19 states that are legal right now but Black people and brown people are being over-incarcerated in mostly Southern and Midwestern states in America for cannabis possession."
If some members of Congress have their way, there might finally be a 'TLDR' on sites' terms of service, introduced by the terms-of-service labeling, design, and readability act – or TLDR for short. With this act, users will actually understand what they're agreeing to or the many ways in which their data is being used before pressing 'accept.' J.D. sat down with co-sponsor of the bill and Senator Bill Cassidy, to discuss.
President Joe Biden's first year in office is wrapping up. What has he achieved, and what else remains on the table while the Democrats have control of Washington? Amid an ongoing pandemic and rising inflation, Biden's approval rating is at an all-time low and his party is plagued by infighting. Will he be able to continue pushing key parts of his agenda? Paul Glastris, former Bill Clinton speechwriter & Editor-in-chief of 'Washington Monthly,' joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss the president's achievements in his first year, where he's fallen short, and what he must do in order to get more of his agenda signed into law.
Tech giants Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple are faced with a bipartisan antitrust legislation effort underway in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The companies stand accused of promoting their own goods and services over smaller competitors on their platforms, holding too much monopolistic power via their app stores and services. Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, a technology industry trade group, joined Cheddar to argue that the bills that are being debated currently could end up hurting consumers, rather than helping.
