Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly spelled the reporters name as “Neil Ganga” instead of “Neil Gagna.” The error has since been corrected.
The CDC put out a statement on March 1st recommending that if people are sick with COVID or another respiratory virus, that they stay home until their symptoms stop, after which they only need to wait 24 hours before returning to school or work.
With not only COVID, but the flu and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) still going around it could be dangerous to have sick students going back too soon, considering how crowded classrooms can get.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, it was standard for sick people to quarantine and wait two weeks before returning to normal life, but these guidelines have been reduced over time.
Recent research points to COVID being contagious as long as five to ten days after symptoms begin, meaning that even after an infected person feels better they can still carry the disease to spread to others.
The more time passes since the national shutdown for COVID, it seems that professors make it harder and harder to make up missed assignments making getting sick an increasingly scary experience for students.
Another reason this causes risk is because school at Long Beach City College is not built for social distancing, the classrooms are small and group work is common meaning that close interaction between students is inevitable.
One solution to the problem is for more professors to implement similar teaching methods used during the pandemic such as uploading lectures online or having options for sick students to stay home.
While there is the consequence of students skipping class because it is easier to make work up, the benefit of preventing the spread of respiratory illness vastly outweighs the potential negatives.
Caution should be especially applied as the long term effects of COVID are still unknown, especially potential health problems later in life.
Society has done a great job of moving on from the COVID shutdown in 2020 and that is the correct response after such a major event, but at the same time health protocols should not be forgotten and the dangers of COVID cannot be ignored.
Attending school around others while not fully recovered is a potentially life threatening danger to people who have suppressed immune systems and are more at risk of serious harm from sickness than most of the population.
Even though the CDC is usually a reliable source for COVID information, this recommendation is dangerous for college students and nobody should return to school until they are healthy and non-symptomatic.