It seems huge to me too, and yet I don’t want to get carried away. People are gonna go away thinking that this research has debunked earlier findings rather than just refining them. “Asymptomatic” folks are different from “presymptomatic” folks. The former never show symptoms. The latter do. This research found that the former aren’t important sources of infection. But presymptomatic folks still can be.
Which makes sense to me. You wake up with symptoms one day and you go to the hospital for a COVID-19 test. The doctor asks when your symptoms started, and you say something like “Well, I felt feverish and light-headed a couple of days ago. But before that I swear I felt fine.” But you’re forgetting the coughing fit you had the day before your fever or the slightly queasy stomach you had a couple of days before that. You might have had one or two signs of sickness for several days, but they didn’t register as OMG SYMPTOMS! until you had a critical number of them.
So I disagree that you have to be an idiot to be a super spreader. You may just be someone who isn’t paying close enough attention to what’s happening to your body to know with any accuracy when your symptoms actually began.
Or a super spreader could be someone like me–suffering from seasonal allergies in addition to having a nascent COVID infection. I’ve been sneezing and coughing for the past three months. I’ll be a super spreader for sure if I wind up getting infected.
I think this is terrible news. WHO was grossly irresponsible in the way they described it. People will get the idea that they can’t spread it unless they’re really sick - the difference between asymptomatic and presymptomatic is too nuanced for most people. So why keep a distance, why wear a mask? I feel fine! All the work to encourage physical distancing and mask wearing is out the window.
Yeah, this is a good point about all the information presented about the virus. The experts should realize that what they say is going to be interpreted by people will all different levels of comprehension and understanding about the context of the message. I would bet that the vast majority of Americans won’t understand the difference between the terms asymptomatic and presymptomatic in order to make smart decisions. I agree that many people will take this news as implying that someone is contagious only if they have symptoms, and therefore precautions are not necessary unless you feel bad.
Yeah, and how many people will assure that person they’re just being a silly hypochondriac?
It is possible to not know you have a fever. Hence, why they sell thermometers at the store. If it was always obvious when a person has a fever, thermometers would be rather pointless.
Finally, go back and read my post. You missed the nuance there. A person will likely recognize that they might have COVID-19 once they exhibit a fever. But they may not recognize the queasy stomach that preceded it by a few days as a COVID-19 symptom. They may think the coughing fit they had before they started feeling poorly was just them “swallowing wrong”. So if the doctor asks them when they started having symptoms, they will likely give the doctor the date when they first became feverish and not mention all the other stuff. You don’t have to be an idiot to not be able to remember every single weird thing that has happened to you over the past two weeks.
[ul]
[li] The border with Italy will, at long last, be fully open in both directions on 16 June. Travel to and from Croatia and Greece will also be permitted from that date without the need for self-isolation on arrival.[/li][li] Since the end of May, 200,000 furloughed employees have returned to work. 1,181,000 employees remain on furlough.[/li][li] Current statistics: 16,979 confirmed infections, 672 deaths, 15,875 recovered.[/li][/ul]
On the issue of pre/A/symptomatic. What I have read suggests that lots of asymptomatic people aren’t really actually asymptomatic. Rather the symptoms are so slight, they don’t really register as anything beyond daily aches and pains and coughs.
I wonder how many people with chronic pain or respiratory problems can’t tell they are infected because their symptoms are occurring against the background of pre-existing problems.
Right now we’re experiencing the worst seasonal allergy season in decades. Some claims are that the pollen count hasn’t been this bad since sometime in the 50s. And some of the symptoms of a mild covid-19 infection can be: a runny nose, nasal congestion, shortness of breath* and mild cough. Millions of us could potentially have it and mistake it for allergies right now.
those of us with both allergies and allergy-induced/aggravated asthma experience occasional shortness of breath as part of hay fever woes
I can believe it! I haven’t been so full of mucus for such a sustained period of time in my whole life. My right ear has been crackling for the past week and it’s driving me bananas. I can’t wait for this “season” to be over.
