Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, June six. I'm Oscar Emiraz from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: We're in a new phase in the fight against the
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic. We're social distancing, we're wearing face masks, and
Speaker 1: we're reopening the country. I'll still give you updates on
Speaker 1: the latest news about the virus and vaccine development, but
Speaker 1: also be sharing stories about how we're reopening America after
Speaker 1: the coronavirus shutdowns. Can people who are asymptomatic spread COVID nineteen?
Speaker 1: The w h O last week said it was very
Speaker 1: rare and then how to walk it back, saying that
Speaker 1: the error was confusion due to a muddling of scientific
Speaker 1: jargon and that there was a difference between asymptomatic and
Speaker 1: pre symptomatic people. Either way, the virus can be spread
Speaker 1: whether a person exhibits symptoms or not. Greg Barber, staff
Speaker 1: writer at Wired, joins us for more on the COVID confusion.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Greg, Thanks for having me. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about coronavirus. Obviously, it's a novel coronavirus.
Speaker 1: We're learning so much about this as we go along
Speaker 1: and they're so much that we don't know about it.
Speaker 1: And one of the things also that has been troubling
Speaker 1: is kind of the wording and the terminology used when
Speaker 1: describing this and describing transmission rates and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And last week we got some confusing things out of
Speaker 1: the w h O, the World Health Organization. It sounded
Speaker 1: as if people that were asymptomatic or presenting no symptoms
Speaker 1: weren't spreading the virus. That was kind of that mixed
Speaker 1: messaging that we were getting. Then they had to go
Speaker 1: back and retract it and say, well, it's rare, but
Speaker 1: it does happen. And it got very confusing very quickly.
Speaker 1: You know, people that were saying that we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: shutting down the economy over this used this as a
Speaker 1: kind of a rallying cry, saying, hey, look see even
Speaker 1: the who is saying that these people are not spreading it,
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily true. Greg helped walk us through
Speaker 1: this and talk about people that are asymptomatic, pre symptomatic,
Speaker 1: and then all the terminology used to describe it. So
Speaker 1: on Monday, an epidemiologist named Mariyavan Kharkov, who is a
Speaker 1: technical lead for the World Health Organization's covered response. She
Speaker 1: was asked a question about asymptomatic transmission. This is really
Speaker 1: the key word here, and she said that these cases
Speaker 1: are very rare, especially these cases when they actually cause
Speaker 1: other infections of COVID nineteen. So this got picked up
Speaker 1: really quickly. Asymptomatic infections are very rare, and this was
Speaker 1: really a sort of became a rallying cry, particularly among
Speaker 1: pundits and news organizations that think that the lockdowns are overblown.
Speaker 1: And there's kind of a neat logic to that, the
Speaker 1: logic behind shelter in places that you and I should
Speaker 1: stay home even if we feel fine, because we might
Speaker 1: be at risk to others. But you know, if asymptomatic
Speaker 1: infections are rare, then I'm only at risk to others
Speaker 1: if I'm showing symptoms. So those symptoms are basically signal
Speaker 1: to me to stay home. But this got a lot
Speaker 1: of pushback. Epidemiologists are basically watching with horror. What it
Speaker 1: came down to is that there are two different ways
Speaker 1: of talking about asymptomatic. One, of course, is this general
Speaker 1: definition where it refers to people without symptoms. But Van
Speaker 1: Kirkov was actually using in a much narrower sense. She
Speaker 1: meant people who never show symptoms throughout the entire course
Speaker 1: of their illness, and that's actually somewhat rare, but it's
Speaker 1: to distinguish from people who might not be showing symptoms
Speaker 1: right now, but then go on to show symptoms. There's
Speaker 1: another term for that, that's pretty symptomatic. So in a sense,
Speaker 1: everyone is pretty symptomatic at some point, usually when you
Speaker 1: get a new virus and it takes a couple of
Speaker 1: days for symptoms to develop, and there's actually a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence in that stage of the disease those people
Speaker 1: are actually quite infectious. There have been studies on this
Speaker 1: thing called viral load, which is basically like the number
Speaker 1: of copies of virus that they find inside people, and
Speaker 1: these pre symptomatic people are actually have really high viral loads.
Speaker 1: And so that's not to say that they're necessarily infecting
Speaker 1: other people. One distinguishing factor might just be that they're
Speaker 1: not out there coughing and sneezing, which can spread the virus.
Speaker 1: But they do have a lot of infectious virus to
Speaker 1: share with others, even just by speaking and breathing, and
Speaker 1: then obviously increases the calls for people to wear face masks.
Speaker 1: You don't know whether you could be shedding that or
Speaker 1: is at any moment whether you're asymptomatic or pre symptomatic,
Speaker 1: and that's why you don't want to be spreading that out.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that puts a hinder on
Speaker 1: what is when it comes to contact tracing, because it's
Speaker 1: really hard to nail somebody down if they weren't experiencing
Speaker 1: any symptoms, so they could have got somebody sick. Then
Speaker 1: later on, you know, it's the job of the contact
Speaker 1: tracer to kind of find out who it was, who
Speaker 1: was the source, and it just really complicates everything because
Speaker 1: they were never experiencing those symptoms. I should step back
Speaker 1: and say that, as von Karkiv clarified, it's actually not
Speaker 1: really certain whether these true asymptomatic people and these people
Speaker 1: who never show symptoms are rare or not, but there's
Speaker 1: increasing evidence that they are. This is from studies that
Speaker 1: have tracked coronavirus patients to see if they developed symptoms
Speaker 1: down the road, and there's often finding the people who
Speaker 1: maybe they didn't think that they had symptoms, maybe they
Speaker 1: had like a gas or intestinal issues or something, so
Speaker 1: they just kind of maybe we're classified as a symptomatic
Speaker 1: and further investigation and it turns out the they have
Speaker 1: had mild symptoms are just weird symptoms that they didn't
Speaker 1: think went with COVID nineteen. So finding out that more
Speaker 1: over time that these true asymptomatic infections is actually somewhat
Speaker 1: rare is actually a good thing, because, as you say,
Speaker 1: those people are really hard to track in contact tracing
Speaker 1: because they're probably not very likely to go get a
Speaker 1: test these kind of invisible transmitters that contact tracers can't find. Generally,
Speaker 1: you have to kind of work back to those people
Speaker 1: because you might find somebody that they infected who is
Speaker 1: symptomatic and went in and got a test, and then
Speaker 1: you find just by interviewing all their different contacts that oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that person is sort of at the core of multiple infections,
Speaker 1: or maybe they remember symptoms that they didn't report didn't
Speaker 1: think merited a test. So in that respect, I think
Speaker 1: that they're epidemiologists are a little bit heartened by the
Speaker 1: kind of growing concessus around the rarity of these truly
Speaker 1: asymptomatic cases. Yeah, and there's a bunch of reports that
Speaker 1: have estimated the numbers very Obviously there's one report that
Speaker 1: says about cases are asymptomatic. There's others that lower that
Speaker 1: down to maybe about that are asymptomatic. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's just again like a cautionary thing. You know, these
Speaker 1: people that might be asymptomatic, but they work in these
Speaker 1: up close and personal fields healthcare workers, hairdressers, cashiers, people
Speaker 1: that are handing things back and forth with people. They
Speaker 1: could be spreading it and not knowing it. That's why
Speaker 1: it's important that they get tested regularly. Everyone else needs
Speaker 1: to just kind of hold the line and kind of
Speaker 1: as we've been saying, where the mask, wash your hands,
Speaker 1: and kind of just generally be careful about things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was actually incorporated into the strategy of one of
Speaker 1: the epidemiologists I spoke to last week for testing folks.
Speaker 1: Name is marm Kilpatrick, and he works in Santa Cruz
Speaker 1: County in California, and he's been incorporating these sort of
Speaker 1: proportion of asymptomatic cases into the strategy for testing because
Speaker 1: testing is still at this point somewhat expensive. It's difficult
Speaker 1: to coordinate, it's difficult to get people to show up
Speaker 1: at some dry through a spot for a swab. So
Speaker 1: he's been trying to target basically advertise these tests to
Speaker 1: people who are getting up closing personal like those hairdressers
Speaker 1: and healthcare workers. Of course, in order to make sure
Speaker 1: that if those people are going to be the asymptomatic cases,
Speaker 1: that they get tested early on so that we know
Speaker 1: if they're infecting others, we can contact trace, we can
Speaker 1: isolate those cases and hold the virus at bay. Just
Speaker 1: very important to keep track and keep following, you know,
Speaker 1: how things are being described, and kind of be smart
Speaker 1: about it. You know, if somebody is asymptomatic just doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they can't spread it at all. It's very
Speaker 1: well possible that they could. But yeah, obviously it's a
Speaker 1: little more obvious. Somebody that's coughing and sneezing is probably
Speaker 1: should stay home because they might be launching out those
Speaker 1: particles out further than somebody else might be. So just
Speaker 1: very interesting in the way things get described and the
Speaker 1: way things get misconstrued after people start blowing things up.
Speaker 1: Gregory Barber, staff writer and Wired, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Emiraz
Speaker 1: and this is reopening America. Don't forget after today's big
Speaker 1: news stories You can check me out on the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast