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If this person has COVID-19, should they not socially distance with extreme vigilance for a very long time?

I must be misinterpreting you, are you really saying you'd be comfortable being around people right after peak symptoms of a COVID-19 infection?

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There's mounting evidence that people are no longer infectious from day 8 after symptoms first appear onward. A German study tracked only a handful of patients, but tracked them very rigorously, with multiple swabs each day for 30 days and were unable to cultivate a live viral isolate after day 8 in ALL cases, even when the patient's viral load was still extremely high. (But in fairness, a bunch of viruses work this way, where patients are still sick and their viral load is high, but they cease being contagious after a few days. Eight days is still a long time, but you shouldn't have to quarantine for a month, we hope.)

Do you have a link to the study?

For those who wonder, it's a preprint[1].

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502v...

parent is using CDC guidelines (I think?). I agree with your take, however.

Yeah, those were (and maybe still are) CDC guidelines:

2 negative tests at least 24 hours apart OR

7+ days since symptom onset, AND 72+ hours without fever (with no meds) AND significant improvement in respiratory symptoms

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