In a bit of news that is a departure from what we have been hearing for months, a high-level official at the WHO has said that asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus are not the primary spreaders of it, according to their research.
“From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said at a news briefing at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, per CNBC. “It’s very rare.”
The CNBC story did say that Van Kerkhove acknowledged there has been some evidence that asymptomatic carriers have spread the virus within nursing homes and households. Nonetheless, she called that “rare” and advocated for contact tracing of symptomatic carriers: “What we really want to be focused on is following the symptomatic cases,” Van Kerkhove said. “If we actually followed all of the symptomatic cases, isolated those cases, followed the contacts and quarantined those contacts, we would drastically reduce [the outbreak]”.
Van Kerkhove called for more research and data to “truly” confirm the rarity of asymptomatic spread.
Well, I guess we all know how much you can depend on the WHO for accurate information, but who knows? This might be accurate.
I find it hard to believe much of what they say, seems it’s very fluid. What about hydroxy chloroquinine? Does it help? What is China saying today?
June 9, 2020 – ‘We don’t actually have that answer yet’: WHO clarifies comments on asymptomatic spread of Covid-19
What’s rare about symptomatic transmission is any data about it. People who aren’t symptomatic generally haven’t been tracked. Most people don’t seek medical attention for infections that they’re never aware they have.
July 7, 2020 – Trump has officially begun to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization as pandemic spikes
The World Health Organization is one of the best advance warning systems for emerging contagious disease threats around the world—like the one that the United States has failed to control, owing in large part to his own appalling incompetence. The United States leads the world in COVID-19 deaths. How do we account for that?
It’s all about pre-election blame-shifting. He has blamed China; he has blamed WHO; he has blamed Obama: he has also disparaged our own CDC and his administration’s own experts—all while being utterly clueless himself:
March 25, 2020 – U.S. slashed CDC staff inside China prior to coronavirus outbreak
Trump has got to go. He can’t be allowed to have a second term. It’s going to take years to undo the damage he has done already.
@Greg: Until and unless the WHO reorganizes itself to remove political influence, we have no business paying any attention to them. Like the UN, they have become useless to free people.
@Greg:
Damage to commies? Yes he set the timeline to deconstruct the constitution and turn the USA into a slave nation of China by years.
July 8, 2020 – Trump’s Tulsa rally, protests ‘likely’ contributed to a surge in coronavirus cases, local health official says
Actually, I don’t recall anyone in the media claiming that protest crowds were not a COVID-19 risk. All crowded settings are recognized as environments that can potentially result in COVID-19 surges; it doesn’t matter if its a beach, a bar, a sport stadium, or a city street. There’s more criticism of the rallies, however, because they’re controlled events, and because a president is generally expected to set an example of appropriate behavior. We expect more a president to be more thoughtful about the message he’s sending than we do from a crowd of angry young protesters.
@Greg: Likely but not 1 case actually contact traced to the event, how strange as cases were spiking prior to the rally.
Tulsa Factory Closes Due to Coronavirus Spike—a Week Before Trumps Rally the spike began about 20 days before the rally.
There is no solid scientific proof Asymptomatic can spread the virus, prove me wrong please. Show your work, link to a real study not consensus or opinion science.
@Greg: Some leftists pledged to go to the rally to spread the virus. Think they were successful? Or, was this spread from the left wing rioters outside?