COVID Cofusion: Spreading the Virus While Asymptomatic

the coronavirus shutdowns. Can people who are asymptomatic spread COVID nineteen? The w h O last week said it was very rare and then how to walk it back, saying that the error was confusion due to a muddling of scientific jargon and that there was a difference between asymptomatic and pre symptomatic people. Either way, the virus can be spread whether a person exhibits symptoms or not. Greg Barber, staff writer at Wired, joins us for more on the COVID confusion.

Thanks for joining us, Greg, Thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about coronavirus. Obviously, it's a novel coronavirus. We're learning so much about this as we go along and they're so much that we don't know about it. And one of the things also that has been troubling is kind of the wording and the terminology used when describing this and describing transmission rates and all that stuff. And last week we got some confusing things out of

the w h O, the World Health Organization. It sounded as if people that were asymptomatic or presenting no symptoms weren't spreading the virus. That was kind of that mixed messaging that we were getting. Then they had to go back and retract it and say, well, it's rare, but it does happen. And it got very confusing very quickly.

You know, people that were saying that we shouldn't be shutting down the economy over this used this as a kind of a rallying cry, saying, hey, look see even the who is saying that these people are not spreading it, but that's not necessarily true. Greg helped walk us through this and talk about people that are asymptomatic, pre symptomatic, and then all the terminology used to describe it. So on Monday, an epidemiologist named Mariyavan Kharkov, who is a

technical lead for the World Health Organization's covered response. She was asked a question about asymptomatic transmission. This is really the key word here, and she said that these cases are very rare, especially these cases when they actually cause other infections of COVID nineteen. So this got picked up

really quickly. Asymptomatic infections are very rare, and this was really a sort of became a rallying cry, particularly among pundits and news organizations that think that the lockdowns are overblown. And there's kind of a neat logic to that, the logic behind shelter in places that you and I should stay home even if we feel fine, because we might be at risk to others. But you know, if asymptomatic infections are rare, then I'm only at risk to others

if I'm showing symptoms. So those symptoms are basically signal to me to stay home. But this got a lot of pushback. Epidemiologists are basically watching with horror. What it came down to is that there are two different ways of talking about asymptomatic. One, of course, is this general definition where it refers to people without symptoms. But Van

Kirkov was actually using in a much narrower sense. She meant people who never show symptoms throughout the entire course of their illness, and that's actually somewhat rare, but it's to distinguish from people who might not be showing symptoms right now, but then go on to show symptoms. There's

another term for that, that's pretty symptomatic. So in a sense, everyone is pretty symptomatic at some point, usually when you get a new virus and it takes a couple of days for symptoms to develop, and there's actually a lot of evidence in that stage of the disease those people

are actually quite infectious. There have been studies on this thing called viral load, which is basically like the number of copies of virus that they find inside people, and these pre symptomatic people are actually have really high viral loads. And so that's not to say that they're necessarily infecting other people. One distinguishing factor might just be that they're not out there coughing and sneezing, which can spread the virus.

But they do have a lot of infectious virus to share with others, even just by speaking and breathing, and then obviously increases the calls for people to wear face masks. You don't know whether you could be shedding that or is at any moment whether you're asymptomatic or pre symptomatic, and that's why you don't want to be spreading that out.

But one of the things that puts a hinder on what is when it comes to contact tracing, because it's really hard to nail somebody down if they weren't experiencing any symptoms, so they could have got somebody sick. Then later on, you know, it's the job of the contact tracer to kind of find out who it was, who was the source, and it just really complicates everything because

they were never experiencing those symptoms. I should step back and say that, as von Karkiv clarified, it's actually not really certain whether these true asymptomatic people and these people who never show symptoms are rare or not, but there's

increasing evidence that they are. This is from studies that have tracked coronavirus patients to see if they developed symptoms down the road, and there's often finding the people who maybe they didn't think that they had symptoms, maybe they had like a gas or intestinal issues or something, so they just kind of maybe we're classified as a symptomatic and further investigation and it turns out the they have had mild symptoms are just weird symptoms that they didn't

think went with COVID nineteen. So finding out that more over time that these true asymptomatic infections is actually somewhat rare is actually a good thing, because, as you say, those people are really hard to track in contact tracing because they're probably not very likely to go get a

test these kind of invisible transmitters that contact tracers can't find. Generally, you have to kind of work back to those people because you might find somebody that they infected who is symptomatic and went in and got a test, and then you find just by interviewing all their different contacts that oh, yeah, that person is sort of at the core of multiple infections, or maybe they remember symptoms that they didn't report didn't

think merited a test. So in that respect, I think that they're epidemiologists are a little bit heartened by the kind of growing concessus around the rarity of these truly asymptomatic cases. Yeah, and there's a bunch of reports that have estimated the numbers very Obviously there's one report that says about cases are asymptomatic. There's others that lower that down to maybe about that are asymptomatic. But you know,

it's just again like a cautionary thing. You know, these people that might be asymptomatic, but they work in these up close and personal fields healthcare workers, hairdressers, cashiers, people that are handing things back and forth with people. They could be spreading it and not knowing it. That's why it's important that they get tested regularly. Everyone else needs to just kind of hold the line and kind of as we've been saying, where the mask, wash your hands,

and kind of just generally be careful about things. Yeah, this was actually incorporated into the strategy of one of the epidemiologists I spoke to last week for testing folks. Name is marm Kilpatrick, and he works in Santa Cruz County in California, and he's been incorporating these sort of proportion of asymptomatic cases into the strategy for testing because testing is still at this point somewhat expensive. It's difficult to coordinate, it's difficult to get people to show up

at some dry through a spot for a swab. So he's been trying to target basically advertise these tests to people who are getting up closing personal like those hairdressers and healthcare workers. Of course, in order to make sure that if those people are going to be the asymptomatic cases, that they get tested early on so that we know if they're infecting others, we can contact trace, we can

isolate those cases and hold the virus at bay. Just very important to keep track and keep following, you know, how things are being described, and kind of be smart about it. You know, if somebody is asymptomatic just doesn't mean that they can't spread it at all. It's very well possible that they could. But yeah, obviously it's a little more obvious. Somebody that's coughing and sneezing is probably should stay home because they might be launching out those

particles out further than somebody else might be. So just very interesting in the way things get described and the way things get misconstrued after people start blowing things up. Gregory Barber, staff writer and Wired, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Emiraz

and this is reopening America. Don't forget after today's big news stories You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast