# Protocols for Coliving House (7 Roommates!)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protocols-for-coliving-house-7-roommates/926063>\
**Category:** The Quarantine Zone\
**Tags:** covid-quarantine\
**Created:** [November 20, 2020, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protocols-for-coliving-house-7-roommates/926063 "2020-11-20T18:41:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protocols-for-coliving-house-7-roommates/926063/42 "2020-12-09T13:17:50Z")

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> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> > [@FigNorton](#):
> >
> > asymptomatic people do seem less contagious
> 
> Are you sure?
> 
> This may be one of the things they’re still trying to sort out (it’s not always easy to tell how people got it), but at least some don’t agree with you:
> 
> > [asymptomatic infections could be as infectious as serious cases of disease](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/20-percent-of-people-with-covid-19-are-asymptomatic-but-can-spread-the-disease).
> > 
> > “The reason being is that the concentration of virus in oral nasal secretions peaks early in the infection process and can reach as many as a billion virus particles per milliliter,” he said.
> > 
> > Counterintuitively, the longer people are seriously ill, the concentration of virus drops by “many orders of magnitude.” In fact, oftentimes infectious viruses aren’t detectable.
> > 
> > “Therefore, asymptomatic people or people in early stages of disease that may be unaware that they are infected are the most contagious,” Haseltine explained.

I just listened to the last lecture in MIT’s covid course, by the director of the [Broad Institute](https://www.broadinstitute.org/coronavirus/covid-19) and two of his colleagues. They have built capacity to test up to 100K swabs a day, and they do the routine “higher education” testing, in which anyone allowed on MIT and Harvard campus (and several other NE university campuses) must get tested once or twice a week. They said that one thing they had learned from doing this is that some of the highest viral loads they see are in people with no symptoms.

lecture 14 of

> **[New Subject Offering: "COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 and the Pandemic"](https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/current-students/subject-offerings/covid-19-sars-cov-2-and-the-pandemic/)**
>
> In Fall 2020, all MIT students and the general public are welcome to join Professors Richard Young and Facundo Batista as they discuss the science of the pandemic during this new class.

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**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/protocols-for-coliving-house-7-roommates/926063/43 "2020-12-11T00:07:23Z")

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> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> They said that one thing they had learned from doing this is that some of the highest viral loads they see are in people with no symptoms.

Pre-symptomatic cases are known to be highly infectious.

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