Asymptomatic carriers of the coronavirus
I remember thinking last month that it was bogus. The claims that people who were asymptomatic couldn’t transmit the virus.
You can see articles talking about it. First mentioning that many people who tested positive had no symptoms. And then succeeding articles talking about how that wasn’t worrisome, as there was “no evidence” these asymptomatic carriers could transmit the disease.
Really? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Because if you have it you can shed it. If you shed it you can transmit it.
For people who have studied anything at all about infectious disease they should know the term “super spreader.” For me in medical school this role was played by Mary Mallon. Better known as “Typhoid Mary”. She was the classic example of someone who was asymptomatic and yet spread the disease to thousands. Literally. She didn’t think she had the disease, and indeed, if you define “disease” as having been affected by a pathogen (in this case Salmonella typhi) then she was right. She didn’t have any symptoms. She had no fever, no headache, no diarrhea. But she definitely was spreading it. She was a cook, and after being captured she was told if she were to change professions they would let her out. Supposedly she did change, but it was never for long. I guess she loved cooking? She went back to cooking and soon enough many people in facility got ill and some died.
So these is historical precedent for someone who can harbor a pathogen and yet not be affected by it.
And yet somehow everybody was saying if one was asymptomatic they cannot spread the coronavirus? It just simply doesn’t make any sense.
And now they are finally reporting what I thought all along. It doesn’t make any sense.
Because we know people who have viral infections can shed, even if they are asymptomatic. And if someone can shed they can transmit the virus. And what we see now is that there are people transmitting the virus who are asymptomatic themselves.
And we also know that they underestimated how many people were asymptomatic. Logically this would make sense, because asymptomatic people don’t get tested. The only places they got tested were when everybody got tested (for example a cruise ship) or where they got tested incidentally (in South Korea anybody can get a test. If you have a reason, like an exposure, then it is free, otherwise you have to pay for it, something in the range of $150 USD. In other places people who got exposed would get tested, even if asymptomatic).
But as you have more and more testing readily available and more and more people get tested randomly, that is without symptoms, they are finding more and more people are asymptomatic and have the coronavirus.
Well, it doesn’t really change a lot of what Asian countries have already been doing. Having people wear masks. My friend explained to me the difference between why Asians wear masks and why Westerners wear masks. Westerners wear masks to prevent themselves from getting ill. Asians wear masks to prevent others from getting sick.
Apparently that strategy works, even if you didn’t know you were sick to begin with (that is, you are an asymptomatic carrier).
