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A decent percentage of people are also asymptomatic with most influenza strains. You probably know friends/acquaintance who says they never get the flu in winter, even though it's highly likely they have gotten the virus before, it's just their inflammation response for whatever reason (likely genetic variation) doesn't produce symptoms.

Source: https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-p...

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Yes this is true, but it has nothing to do with finding an attenuated strain. I addressed this in my post and yes many people who have a mild symptoms are infected with a dangerous strain, but an attenuated strain will only cause mild symptoms. If you want to find an attenuated strain you have to look in people with mild symptoms.

> If you want to find an attenuated strain you have to look in people with mild symptoms

Shouldn't we be looking at people with no symptoms? I know this is not ideal as we're likely only testing symptomatic people.

Yes we want to test asymptomatic people too. Some countries like Germany and South Korea are doing are better job of testing widely and so they have many more mild/asymptomatic samples that can be screened.

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