I have written and published that ASYMPTOMATIC spread is rare; not a driver of this and likely not at all; I cant find any definitive evidence; seems the NFL agrees with me; the body of evidence below
see the NFL below and I include the piece I have published on asymptomatic spread, indicating with the evidence that it is non-existent here and used to force masking and lockdowns...to scare people
https://www.theblaze.com/news/nfl-adopts-new-covid-protocols-after-data-suggest-that-asymptomatic-players-aren-t-transmitting-the-virus-even-if-they-test-positive?utm_source=theblaze-7DayTrendingTest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Blaze%20PM%20Trending%202021-12-23&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%207%20Day%20Engagement
NFL adopts new COVID protocols after data suggest that asymptomatic players aren't transmitting the virus even if they test positive
‘After a rash of COVID-related absences have plagued the league this year, and following numerous complaints from teams about the league's current testing policy, the NFL adopted new testing protocols last week, and did so for an eye-opening reason: asymptomatic players were not found to be transmitting the virus.
According to an ESPN report, which notes that the NFL's stance is a "departure from the stance of public health authorities for much of the pandemic," the NFL's chief medical officer Dr. Allan Sills said, "We've really not seen this phenomenon that people have discussed, which is asymptomatic people in the facility spreading virus to others. s we've gone back and looked throughout the entire season, what we've seen consistently is that when people have symptoms, that's when they seem to be contagious to others.’
Here is the op-ed on asymptomatic spread. A key issue is that the evidence does not support asymptomatic spread with natural infection but it appears that vaccinated persons run the risk of transmitting. This is why we have been hammering the vaccine companies for they have failed us and the FDA has failed us too, for had they run the trials for the right duration and studied this question among many, we would not be in the dark and can be definitive. For example, they have not properly studied safety in children and thus we do not know how these vaccines will behave long-term in children.
Asymptomatic transmission:
We have no documented proof, no documented evidence of this occurring in any appreciable manner. Fauci himself told us this, that asymptomatic spread is rare if at all. I refer to the overall ‘body of evidence’, the highest-quality evidence that is based on rigor and which is trustworthy. Spread of pathogen will occur more surely when the persons are ill/sick with symptoms, especially if the symptoms function to expel the pathogen into the surrounding air. Having no symptoms or very mild symptoms reduces risk of spread and with no symptoms, spread is basically removed. This is the same for SARS-CoV-2 virus and a recent BMJ publication pretty much sums it up that asymptomatic persons and transmission are rarely the drivers as it was thought to be. This is basic immunology and should have come as no surprise to anyone and should not have been changed for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Yet it was used as a key impetus for lockdowns.
We had illogical, irrational, hysterical, and absurd COVID lockdown lunatic policy makers driving the populations into fear and sheer panic, and daily. Yet there was no evidence. They gave us no data. Fauci gave us no evidence. We are being emphatic in saying there is no evidence of asymptomatic spread. We also recognize that one must be careful not to claim ‘zero’ as the evidence changes daily and rapidly and absence of documented evidence is also not a reason. We say statistical zero risk or chance. It may just have not been studied yet or documented optimally. But we are confident enough based on the existing literature to also agree that ‘it is a dangerous assumption to believe that there is persuasive, scientific evidence of asymptomatic transmission’. To date there is none!
The tragedy is that the basis for the societal lockdowns was that 40% to 50% of persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 could potentially spread it due to being asymptomatic. “But fears that the virus may be spread to a significant degree by asymptomatic carriers soon led government leaders to issue broad and lengthy stay-at-home orders and mask mandates out of concerns that anyone could be a silent spreader”. However, the evidence in support of common asymptomatic spread remains largely non-existent and we argue, was overstated and potentially was made with no basis. We were in effect, deceived, and the deception had devastating societal consequences. Many people committed suicide and including children, due to the lockdowns and school closures.
What does the evidence say? Is there any evidence to back up my/our contention? Well, a high-quality review study by Madewell published in JAMA sought to estimate the secondary attack rate of SARS-CoV-2 in households and determine factors that modify this parameter. In addition, researchers sought to estimate the proportion of households with index cases that had any secondary transmission, and also compared the SARS-CoV-2 household secondary attack rate with that of other severe viruses and with that to close contacts for studies that reported the secondary attack rate for both close and household contacts. The study was a meta-analysis of 54 studies with 77 758 participants. Secondary attack rates represented the spread to additional persons and researchers found a 25-fold increased risk within households between symptomatic positive infected index persons versus asymptomatic infected index persons. “Household secondary attack rates were increased from symptomatic index cases (18.0%; 95% CI, 14.2%-22.1%) than from asymptomatic index cases (0.7%; 95% CI, 0%-4.9%)”. This study showed just how rare asymptomatic spread was within a confined household environment.
From the nearly 2 million children that were followed in school in Sweden, it was reported that with no mask mandates, there were zero deaths from Covid and a few instances of transmission and minimal hospitalization.
In the UK, the ‘Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies’ recommended that “Prioritizing rapid testing of symptomatic people is likely to have a greater impact on identifying positive cases and reducing transmission than frequent testing of asymptomatic people in an outbreak area”.
A seminal study published in the journal Nature (which we thought would have properly informed the debate and put to rest the concept of asymptomatic spread) found no instances of asymptomatic spread from positive ‘asymptomatic cases’ among all 1,174 close contacts of the cases, based on a base sample of 10 million persons. Among all! “There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases”. AIER’s Jeff Tucker responded this way “The conclusion is not that asymptomatic spread is rare or that the science is uncertain. The study revealed something that hardly ever happens in these kinds of studies. There was not one documented case. Forget rare. Forget even Fauci’s previous suggestion that asymptomatic transmission exists but not does drive the spread. Replace all that with: never. At least not in this study for 10,000,000”. Haynes of Life site news reported similarly.
A study on infectivity of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers was carried out by Goa at al. Researchers looked at the 455 contacts who were exposed to the asymptomatic COVID-19 virus carrier. They were divided into three groups: 35 patients, 196 family members and 224 hospital staffs. “No severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections was detected in 455 contacts by nucleic acid test”.
In this regard, the World Health Organization (WHO) also made this claim that asymptomatic spread/transmission is rare. Again, while a rare optimal accurate statement by WHO, it still did not put to bed this erroneous concept, in this pandemic. This issue of asymptomatic spread remains one of the key issues being used to force vaccination in children. The science, however, remains contrary to this proposed policy mandate. As an update that we say clearly is 18 months or so too late, the WHO on June 29th 2021 has now recommended no testing of asymptomatic persons. This is after trillions of $ have been sucked out of economies and many lives lost due to lost jobs and closures of societies and schools. Many people killed themselves due to the unscientific and illogical testing policy of asymptomatic persons.
My conclusion: We were greatly misled to drive fear and panic so that populations would easily comply with lockdowns. The misleading concepts of asymptomatic spread, recurrent infection, and equality of risk regardless of age-risk stratified baseline risk were used to drive compliant masking and lockdowns. All with no evidence and all working together to devastate societies. The statements on asymptomatic spread propagated by US COVID Task Forces and their lockdown lunatic advisors were duplicitous and were not based on any evidence or science. All they accomplished was devastating damage to societies, economies, and the lives of citizens. Many could not hold on and killed themselves. I close by stating that Fauci has greatly mislead the nation and world with often unscientific and absurd, specious statements by saying one thing one day and another on another day, with complete contradictions that left the nation and world terribly confused.
Thanks very much for the article (and your work in general!) - the overall point is well-taken, but I was also going to ask the question about differentiating between "pre-symptomatic" and "asymptomatic" transmission. Interestingly, Geert vanden Bossche still appears convinced that the latter is a reality, judging by the "supportive references" section of his blog: https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/blog/supportive-references-from-literature
Is there some way to reconcile such studies with the present data that you cite?
Hello, Dr. Alexander, and thank you for the paper. Could you please comment on pre-symptomatic infections? Is it safe to say that the lack of symptoms is a signal of such low viral load that infection is rare, regardless of the individual being asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic?
Thank you very much in advance.