ISOLATION JOE

NOT so fast, Joey…please go back to the resident’s quarters immediately.

Our 46th president first positive for COVID-19 on July 21st; after five days of isolation, he tested negative last Tuesday night, and returned to the Oval Office on Wednesday, declaring that his relatively mild case demonstrated how much progress had been made in fighting the virus that has killed more than one million Americans.

Slow the roll, Joe!!!

Yesterday morning, Biden tested positive for the Coronavirus again, becoming the latest example of a rebound case after taking the Paxlovid treatment that has otherwise been credited with broadly impressive results in fighting the virus and suppressing its worst effects.

The “‘rebound’ positivity,” as Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the White House physician, termed it, meant Biden was forced to resume “strict isolation procedures” in keeping with medical advice.

Biden had tested negative on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday before receiving a positive antigen result on Saturday morning.

What this does is it re-ignites the national firestorm as regards vaccinations once again.

Paxlovid rebound has become a source of debate within the scientific community and among COVID patients; initial clinical studies of the drug, which is made by Pfizer, suggested that only about 1% to 2% of those treated with Paxlovid experienced symptoms again.

But…

The anecdotal accounts of Paxlovid rebound – including a case involving Dr. Tony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser – have echoed widely, causing many to wonder whether the reported data was still accurate ??! as the new and much more contagious BA.5 subvariant sweeps through communities and reinfects even patients who recently recovered from COVID-19.

Instead of the narrative of beating the virus, however, the Biden’s rebound case reinforces the unpleasant reality that the pandemic refuses to go away.

Although death tolls have fallen dramatically, COVID-19 remains a fact of life for Americans, some of whom have been infected multiple times.

h/t: Johns Hopkins University and Becker’s Hospital Review.