[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Texas Aggie

... studies have shown that asymptomatic spread is largely a myth.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the British Medical Journal Thorax (British Thoracic Society), and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), all say otherwise.

Check this out from the CNN website:

Earlier in this pandemic, scientists didn’t know how easily this new virus spreads between people without symptoms, nor did they know how long infectious particles could linger in the air. There was also a shortage of N95 respirators and face masks among health care workers who were quickly overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients.

But since then, the CDC, the US Surgeon General and other doctors have changed their recommendations and are now urging the widespread use of face masks.

The CDC now says the public needs to “cover your mouth and nose with a cloth face cover when around others.”

“Everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public, for example to the grocery store or to pick up other necessities,” the CDC said.

Scientists have made many recent discoveries about this new coronavirus, including:

It’s easy to spread this virus by just talking or breathing.

This coronavirus is highly contagious. Without mitigation efforts like stay-at-home orders, each person with coronavirus infects, on average, another two to three other people. That makes it twice as contagious as the flu.

This virus has a long incubation period – up to 14 days – giving a wide window of opportunity for people to infect others before they even know they’re infected.

Carriers may be most contagious in the 48 hours before they get symptoms, making transmission even more blind.

In other words, it’s not just people who are sneezing and coughing who can spread coronavirus. It’s often people who look completely normal and don’t have a fever.

If 95% of Americans wore face masks in public, it would save more than 33,000 lives by October 1, according to projections from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

And check this out:

Journal of the American Medical Association
May 27, 2020
Comparison Of Clinical Characteristics Of Patients With Asymptomatic Vs Symptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019 In Wuhan, China

... For the study, the researchers from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in China, where the virus was first identified, analyzed data from 78 cases of confirmed COVID-19. The cases were linked with 26 people exposed to the Hunan seafood market -- where the outbreak is believed to have originated -- or close contact with others who had been infected ...

... Although patients who were asymptomatic experienced less harm to themselves, they may have been unaware of their disease and therefore not isolated themselves or sought treatment, or they may have been overlooked by health care workers and thus unknowingly transmitted the virus to others ...

... Asymptomatic patients also shed virus, were contagious, for eight days, compared to 19 days in patients with outward symptoms, they said ...

... Although patients with milder, asymptomatic COVID-19 … may suffer less damage to their immune systems, they may still be contagious, but for less time than those with more serious illness, the authors concluded ...

... Therefore, identifying and isolating patients with asymptomatic COVID-19 as early as possible is critical to control the transmission of COVID-19 ...