Asymptomatic coronavirus carriers have high viral loads: study

@virusrex - Which is why Luis David Yanez used the word "imply". 

The article does not imply anything not written in the title, and the articles he used to "clarify" the issue actually imply a much more important role than just high viral loads like written here. The article is extremely clear about what can be concluded from this data and what requires more evidence.

And no, the WHO does not have the belief that asymptomatic transmission is rare (else there would be no recommendation for social distancing or mask use even in absence of symptoms). What the WHO has declared is that we have not yet data to quantify how important this is for the spreading of the disease, which obviously will change as more data is being generated.

Your quote is not against what the article says

@virusrex - Which is why Luis David Yanez used the word "imply". We are not on a medical forum right now so we all know well what was implied. And what was implied goes against the current belief by WHO that asymptomatic transmission is quite rare.

@Luis David Yanez

For those few of us who actually case about the actual science

Asymptomatic carriers are the reason why Korea has almost eradicated this coronavirus pandemic in their territory, while it's out of control in Japan.

Korea, through its world famous contact tracing and mass testing program, has picked up all infections, asymptomatic or not, backed up by antibody study whose estimated infection number matches government official count.

Japan, through its refusal to test except for the most severe cases, allowed asymptomatic patients to spread the coronavirus across general population, and this is why this pandemic is growing, not slowing, in Japan.

I'm just going to quote something that is written in the study, that basically goes against what this "news" article is trying to imply.

Your quote is not against what the article says, the research is aimed to find out something that is necessary to know if asymptomatic people actually can transmit the disease in important numbers or not. The data is not intended to confirm if this is the case but if it is actually plausible or not, exactly as the article says.

Your own references support this.

"The overall estimate of the proportion of people who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and remain asymptomatic throughout infection was 20% "

"The secondary attack rate was slightly lower in contacts of people with asymptomatic infection than those with symptomatic infection "

"transmission by presymptomatic accounts for around 40-60% of transmission and asymptomatic cases accounts for around 15% of transmission."

15% is a huge number of transmissions, more than enough to justify taking measures. Your own articles do more to support the conclusion that asymptomatic transmission is very important and have to be tackled. And that is without taking account of the huge percentage of transmission by presymptomatic cases, which for all practical considerations are the same as asymptomatic cases for the prevention of the spreading since nobody has a magical crystal ball that will tell from days in advance when someone is going to begin having symptoms.

I would also recommend people to read the following study, which was reviewed by the CEBM as being a high quality evidence study:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.25.20079103v3

Here is the link to the CEBM review of the study:

https://www.cebm.net/study/the-role-of-asymptomatic-sars-cov-2-infections-systematic-review/

For those few of us who actually case about the actual science, and not just the headline of a single study to push some social agenda, here is the actual link to the study:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2769235

I'm just going to quote something that is written in the study, that basically goes against what this "news" article is trying to imply.

Although the high viral load we observed in asymptomatic patients raises a distinct possibility of a risk for transmission, our study was not designed to determine this.

@ArtistAtLarge

https://tenor.com/8pOE.gif

Please wear your masks!