The Most Important Test You’ve Never Heard Of
davidzweig.substack.com
davidzweig.substack.com
> From a special test they developed, the researchers found a remarkable 96 percent of people who were PCR-positive but without symptoms were not infectious.
> Most people who don’t have symptoms, of course, are not infected. So the likelihood of someone who is not noticeably sick actually being infected and infectious was exceedingly rare. This means that much of the actions we were told—or compelled—to take, including an acceptance of all those closed or half-empty schools, had little to no benefit.
1. Can we really sweep away all the evidence of asymptomatic spread because of a "special PCR test" years after the fact? We had a lot of good reasons to believe this at the time, and none of them are engaged with here.
2. If asymptomatic people rarely spread COVID and it spread anyway, that means that symptomatic people were going out in public and spreading it. Even though they were getting plenty of messaging not to do this. That means that symptomatic people don't cooperate with public health measures enough to slow the spread, either because they did not understand their symptoms or didn't care. So what do you do, other than require masks by default? What does this change?
Think about it: you have a room of 100 people, 4 of them might be asymptomatic spreaders. From what we observed during the pandemic, there were super spreader events, where one person infected hundreds of others. 4% doesn’t seem irrelevant.
If these findings had revolutionary implications, they could have been surfaced at the time. Other people at Stanford had no issue broadcasting their opinions and getting heard.
If big ones are required, you need close contact and/or sneezing/coughing. If smaller droplets are sufficient, other vigorous oral activities like singing or excited close-quarters talking could spread the virus more effectively (choirs and professional conferences were important superspreader events in the early pandemic). Or maybe even just being together for long periods of time in unfavorable ventilation conditions.
In my recollection, epidemiological case studies have suggested that being together in unfavorable ventilation was the biggest risk factor overall. There were papers that looked at people's status, contacts over time, the rooms they were together in, and the ventilation conditions, all in a very detailed way and basically inferred the exact course of transmission between specific individuals.
That’s ok as any given research can’t address all other research.
But it’s frustrating to read when presented as we should just disregard some other research…as I don’t know why we would disregard either.
What evidence are you referring to? The article seemingly contradicts this in the following:
> In June 2020, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said that transmission from asymptomatic people was “very rare.” This conclusion was based on a number of countries doing very detailed contact tracing, she said
Point #2:
> that means that symptomatic people were going out in public and spreading it.
That is precisely what happened. There were many reports of "outbreaks" that were traced back to very symptomatic people that attended parties or duties and infected large groups.
> either because they did not understand their symptoms or didn't care. So what do you do, other than require masks by default? What does this change?
There were many reasons people did not comply with the directives. Some right, some wrong. Requiring masks, social distancing, etc. for everyone would make sense even if asymptomatic people cannot spread the virus, given that some people are going to ignore their symptoms and expose others. This assuming masks and distancing work, the directives were legal and/or moral, and the virus was not going to get around to everyone eventually anyway and harm the same amount to the same extent.
People lied, ignored, and obfuscated the truth about their symptoms and contributed to the spread of the virus. People also lied, ignored, and obfuscated the truth about the nature of the virus and contributed to bad policy.
If someone is infected with SARS-CoV-2 and feeling nonspecific aches and pains and doesn't realize they're sick yet, and they only start feeling very ill a day or two later was that person "asymptomatic"?
I can fairly well believe that people who are truly asymptomatic under the strictest definition and never fall ill are very unlikely to transmit the virus.
At the same time people who are going to get sick and are ignoring or in denial about the first symptoms they might be feeling are probably very likely to be walking around transmitting virus.
If there is a marked difference in spread of covid it should be clearly visible in the data. Also we never had a wide mask mandate. It was reguired in super markets and public transport for a while.
Also, this:
“The probability of a kid in class who is not sick actually being infectious is very low,” Dr Ralph Tayyar said. Think about it this way: even if every single student in a school without symptoms was infected, 96 percent of them still weren’t capable of transmitting to others. Yet, of course, most people without symptoms are not infected. Moreover, just because 4 percent were technically capable of infecting others does not mean that in actuality they had sufficient amount of replicating virus to do so. We are talking about a subgroup of a subgroup of a subgroup.
It is all very well to centralise the response, but if the centralised team fails then now everything is bad. Story of centralised power. It was illegal for people to help themselves.
[0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/05/905484/why-the-c...
Besides, it was well known that PCR tests were not correlated with infectiousness. Michael Mina, an infectious disease expert, has been advocating that rapid antigen tests should rather be used to identify infectiousness.
https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/16575848737149870...
In the end, I don't think it changed anything, tranmissions till happened and would have happened.
Looking at the data for the available time period, I am not able to confirm your statement.
The fact that hospitals did run out of capacity in many places in the world is indication enough to me that control measures were important, and hospitals having some capacity is hardly a measure of safety.