This Thanksgiving I’m grateful for the scientific efforts that have brought us safe and effective vaccines, accurate tests, and a clear understanding of how the virus spreads. These advances are allowing me to host a multigenerational, multifamily dinner inside our home for the first time since March 2020.
Ours is a modest group: five adults and two children, from three households within a 25 mile radius. Everyone is vaccinated “as much as they can be” and we’re careful about masking and avoiding crowded indoor events.
Despite the fact that in my role at AAMC I have worked almost exclusively on issues related to COVID testing and vaccination for the past 22 months, I still struggled with assessing and mitigating risks for all of us. Thanksgiving dinner felt like a complex law school final exam question: “to this straightforward scenario add one recent plane trip from Florida, an immunocompromised adult, an unrelated and unexpected overnight guest in one home, 2 children who just got their first vaccine doses, and 2 adults with scheduled boosters next week.”
The big unknown was what role testing should play in our preparations. Luckily, all agreed to take a rapid antigen test Thanksgiving morning. Luckier still, I was able to find and afford enough rapid tests for all the guests. That’s not the case for many others around the country.
“What if one of us is positive but doesn’t have symptoms?” I was asked. I started to explain that there was not a good system for reporting results from at-home tests and that this was one of the reasons that @Atul Grover and I wrote this First Opinion in STAT News today on how the nation needs to use testing more strategically to address the pandemic. The US shouldn’t have the same rates of new cases and COVID deaths now as we did this week last year, and testing is a powerful tool to identify outbreaks.
But the real question is this: Will there be a full turkey dinner for someone with an asymptomatic positive test? You bet. But it will be packaged to go.
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Heather Pierce, JD, MPH
Senior Director, Science Policy and Regulatory Counsel
Association of American Medical Colleges
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