The Big Lie about Asymptomatic Transmission of SARS-CoV-2

Introduction

“As Virus Spreads, C.D.C. Draws Up an Urgent Battle Plan”, reads the headline of a December 4 article in the New York Times by Rony Caryn Rabin and Apoorva Mandavilli.

“With coronavirus infections soaring across the nation,” the lead paragraph says, “federal health officials on Friday urged Americans in the most forceful language yet to take steps to protect themselves—starting with consistent, proper use of masks—and pressed local governments to adopt 10 public health measures deemed necessary to contain the pandemic.”

The reference is to a policy guidance document published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The document is titled “Summary of Guidance for Public Health Strategies to Address High Levels of Community Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and Related Deaths, December 2020”.

The Times quotes the former CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who served under President Barack Obama (while Joe Biden was Vice President), saying that the document shows that the CDC is awakening from its “politics-induced coma”. What it means, according to Frieden, is that public health officials at the CDC are “aligning themselves more with science, which also aligns them more with the Biden administration”.

Further into the article, after again emphasizing the CDC’s policy recommendation on mask use, the Times claims that “asymptomatic individuals . . . are responsible for about 50 percent of transmissions.”

The Times was parroting that claim from the CDC paper, which states that there is “approximately 50% of transmission from asymptomatic persons”.

We may stipulate that this statement does align the CDC more with the politics of President-elect Joe Biden. However, the public must be made to understand that the statement is false and aligns the CDC against the science.

Moreover, the CDC knows that the statement is false.

Additionally, the CDC must surely understand that false claims such as this will be uncritically parroted by mainstream media outlets like the New York Times in ways that serve to manufacture consent for the authoritarian lockdown measures that Biden favors, including business closures or restrictions and executive mask-wearing orders.

The false claim causes people to be irrationally fearful of other people since anyone could be among the “silent spreaders” who never develop symptoms of COVID-19 but who nevertheless efficiently transmit the novel coronavirus that causes it, SARS-CoV-2.

In truth, the scientific evidence indicates that asymptomatic transmission is rare. People who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 but never develop COVID-19 appear not to be a major contributing factor in the community spread of the coronavirus.

There are studies that estimate that individuals who are presymptomatic, meaning that they do go on to develop disease symptoms, are responsible for a large proportion of community spread. Contact tracing studies have documented cases of evident presymptomatic transmission, but we do not know the extent to which this explains community spread. The estimates reported matter-of-factly by the media come from modeling studies that have serious methodological flaws and limitations biasing results artifactually toward a higher proportion of presymptomatic spread.

The CDC also knows that when it produces false claims like this one about asymptomatic transmission, it is not going to be “fact checked” by the media’s self-proclaimed “fact checkers”.

Articles like this one from the New York Times that repeat such false claims are not going to get flagged on Facebook or other social media for spreading misinformation, and users who share the misinformation will not be penalized in social media algorithms or have their account suspended.

While there is certainly misinformation being spread on social media and by alternative online media, it is the government and mainstream media, including self-proclaimed “fact checker” sources, who are the greatest purveyors of lies and deceptions.

I challenge the “fact checkers” to prove me wrong by doing objective journalism for a change and either applying their own standards universally, rather than selectively “fact checking” only information that doesn’t align with certain political agendas, or by abandoning this whole “fact check” charade altogether.

Let’s now take a look at the claim, show why it’s a bald-faced lie, show why the CDC knows it’s false, and expose the incontrovertible hypocrisy of the faux “fact check” sources that engage in censorship of factual information while greatly contributing to the problem of a misinformed public.