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?
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.
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.
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
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!
