Dwightarm wrote:
Lead Foil Hat wrote:
....or you could be misleading people with assumption based science? The jury is out on the level that asymptomatic/presymptomatic is a problem.
It seems pretty certain at this point that asymptomatic carriers can still spread the virus. But even if we go with your understanding that ‘the jury is out’ then a simple question is...Why not continue wearing the masks, just in case? If the science is indeed not certain but there remains the possibility, why not continue? Is it really so difficult to wear a simple mask?
Lead Foil Hat wrote:
First off, if you have the sniffles, that is symptomatic as most people only have a mild cold when they get a corona virus.
The symptoms with COVID vary widely. In retrospect, my first symptoms were mild fatigue for a few days; I initially thought I had simply overdone it at the gym.
Other people had very different first symptoms ranging from migraine to diarrhea to muscle soreness to dizziness/confusion to loss of smell to sniffles.
People respond differently to the virus.
Ok, I don't want to debate everyone's hand waving, including my own. Statements like "it seem pretty certain" when there is no actual data on the topic that shows this is just assumptions. Yes, it seems like this is a common assumption. It would be really great to see a study on the infectious period where researcher are actually assessing patients throughout the entire course of infection including pre-infection. This is obviously impossible without knowingly infected people....so, all we have are guesses and assumption. The was one letter from China a while back discussing a prolonged infection period, which to me makes more sense that people would be contagious for much longer than what is being assumed. This would easily explain the nursing home tragedy that occurred in NY where "recovered" patients were sent back to nursing homes rather than being kept isolated from healthy people; many 1000s died because of this terrible policy. Is it possible that much of the explosion in spread is by "recovered" individuals rather than people not yet sick or those not showing symptoms. Most tests these days are nasal swabs as well, which I think paints an inaccurate picture as presence of virus on the nose (which is purposed for trapping pathogens to mitigate infection) is not a true indication of infection; particularly when 30-40 PCR cycles are used during the testing. Even so, if people actually were infected but did not get sick and were just carriers I don't see how they are spreading enough virus to be a significant issue. Millions of people are positive for TB as carriers but are not a concern...it is only when infection breaks out that the real problem of contagiousness occurs. That said, I would think treatment of TB latent or active would be wise and don't recommend people carry on hoping for the best. This is my assumption and hand-waving to be fair, but that is all anyone seems to be doing these days.