Don't believe the bullshit that people who are vaccinated aren't getting really sick

[Ms. Toad]

104. The person managing contact tracing where I work -

says they use a lookback period of 48 hours from when symptoms began, then encourage testing at days 5 and 10 from exposure. Once you have a positive test, even if symptoms disappear, you are not allowed to return to work for 10 days from the start of symptoms. (But if you are vaccinated, you are not required to isolate - even with a confirmed exposure - unless you test positive)

The problem with testing at day 5 (and assuming you are OK until then) and allowing vaccinated individuals to continue to engage with others is that you can contract it earlier - at 3-4 days - test negative then, but still be contagious (and potentially asymptomatic - one of the 3 exposures in our office was with a person who believed they just had a cold).

Once I was informed I had been exposed, I stayed home until about day 4.5 - after my first negative test. I wasn't required to stay home, since I'm vaccinated, but I am not about to impose the COVID lottery on anyone else. I had a full teaching load starting at 2:00 PM on day 4, so I delayed testing until as late in the day as I could and still arrange to teach remotely if it was positive. That meant I needed to use a rapid test (less accurate), and follow it up for my own comfort with a PCR test later.

Masks continue to be very effective protection. I was relatively confident I would be fine, since I am scrupulous about masking. But I'm still going to walk the walk to protect others and stay home until the time most infections show up and I get a negative test. I would have been more comfortable with one more day - and, had it not been the first day of classes, I might have shifted to remote teaching rather than impose the risk on my students that I would convert later.