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Comment by colmvp | Hacker News Reader

As a Canadian, I'm shaking my head at our officials who said "we do know that asymptomatic people are not the key driver of epidemics" as a response to concerns back in January of the potential for the virus to grow in our country via incoming travelers who came from hot spots and were not screened or forced to isolate if they expressed no symptoms.

Now our long term care facilities are being overrun with cases potentially because we waited until deaths piled up before testing asymptomatic caretakers for the virus.

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Agreed 100%. Here in BC, public health wasn't even saying, "It's not known whether asymptomatic carriers can spread the virus," but actually, "Evidence suggests asymptomatic carriers can not spread the virus." Something that as far as I can tell was never actually true. This was reported in public briefings, was repeated by public health nurses on the call-in lines, and was distributed as the government's official position to daycare workers, presumably among others. Really mind-boggling to me. I can only assume somewhere along the line lack of evidence got confused for evidence of lack, and just kept getting parroted from there.

> "Evidence suggests asymptomatic carriers can not spread the virus."

I don't understand this. How would that even work? If you're infected, what would stop you from shedding virus like anyone else? Is there a precedent for this, for respiratory viruses?

Both SARS and MERS were not particularly contagious during the incubation phase.

Typhoid Mary was a real thing. No matter the precedent for a particular class of virus, this is still a different virus that has clearly evolved higher virulence, and better safe than sorry. In this case, we're sorry

I think the rationale behind this argument was a thought/hope that the disease was primarily being spread by sneezing or coughing, and if you weren't doing that then you weren't going to spread it.

Influenza starts being contagious a few days before symptoms start and stops being contagious a few days before symptoms end, so yes. But the profile for SARS-CoV-2 is particularly front-loaded compared to other viruses where peak infectivity is basically right as symptoms appear. With many other diseases if you catch all symptomatic cases that's enough to drive R well below 1 and from a public health perspective that's all you need.

Exactly like in Sweden. Our ministry of health has _almost_ given up the claim that asymptomatic carriers don't spread the virus by now, so... Progress!

There's asymptomatic and presymptomatic (a very rapid spread could give lots of positive results before symptoms appear).

So, in two weeks, if these prisons are still 96% asymptomatic - then what?

I hope that’s the case, everyone should. I have yet to see a single indication this is worse than than anyone’s projections. I think that’s a dangerous scenario for the next time a virus comes along.

If there is any perceptionat all of overreacting, it’ll be a cry-wolf scenario with a lot of people.

Then that would be really weird given other closed groups we've observed and tested closely like the Diamond Princess and would probably be evidence for a significant mutation.

A test is a snapshot of time. A person could pass a test and be shedding viruses two days later. A person could shed viruses, get over it, and pass a test.

Its the same story in Wuhan, probably quite a few asymptomatic carriers until the death toll start rising because of the exponential growth and came on the radar.

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