On 23/10/2024 19:25, RJH wrote:
> On 23 Oct 2024 at 13:41:55 BST, Jeff Layman wrote:
>
>> I had the vaccinations on Saturday, and will
>> continue to have them. So far I've been free of Covid (tempting fate,
>> perhaps...),
>
> I'd suggest that unless you've been in some form of deep isolation you have
> had Covid, just not noticed it:
>
> https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2787098
>
> Quote:
>
> Question What is the percentage of asymptomatic individuals with positive test
> results for SARS-CoV-2 among tested individuals and those with confirmed
> COVID-19 diagnosis?
>
> Findings In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 95 unique studies with
> 29 776 306 individuals undergoing testing, the pooled percentage of
> asymptomatic infections was 0.25% among the tested population and 40.50% among
> the population with confirmed COVID-19.
>
> Meaning The high percentage of asymptomatic infections from this study
> highlights the potential transmission risk of asymptomatic infections in
> communities.
Ah - semantics! Only an infectious diseases expert would consider
immunological evidence of infection /only/ as having the disease itself.
Just about everybody else would consider that only having /symptoms/ of
the disease would be required to confirm presence of that disease. It's
true that the article was really considering the possibility of
infectivity in symptomless patients, and that's fair enough (I do draw a
distinction though between what they call patients with presymptomatic
infection who later go on to develop the disease, and those who never
show symptoms).
However, I consider the absence of symptoms to be absence of disease
(and I did run those unpleasant tests which showed no virus present. Or
was it a test for antibodies? It seems so long ago now...). If you had
smallpox, leprosy, measles, etc, without any physical evidence of
infection even though immunological tests show the presence of organisms
which caused those infections would you believe that you had those
diseases? Isn't there a sort of corollary here with the problem of TB in
cattle, where you can't test for differences in those really infected
with TB and those which have been vaccinated to prevent TB because the
blood test can't distinguish between them?
--
Jeff
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