It was thoughtful of them to wait until seven days before Thanksgiving, after plane tickets have been purchased and cars rented, to offer this advice.

Then again, anyone who was willing to risk COVID by traveling this year isn’t listening to the CDC anyway.

The timing of this announcement is even more interesting than the substance. The CDC has been a very minor player in the Trump administration’s public messaging on coronavirus. Now here it is, two weeks after an election that he lost, suddenly asserting itself. I wonder if our lame-duck president got a heads-up that it was planning to announce this or if it just did it knowing that there isn’t much he can do to stop it anymore. What’s he going to do, fire the whole agency? It’ll be rehired on January 20.