[conspire] CABAL in the time of Cholera^W SARS-CoV-2: March event cancelled

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2020, at 12:58 AM, Nick Moffitt wrote:
> On 15Mar2020 01:14pm (-0700), Deirdre Saoirse Moen wrote:
> > 3. Asymptomatic transmission IS important.
> > 
> > https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-spread/index.html
> > 
> > Money shot quote: "Ciesek was surprised to find that the viral load of the specimens from the asymptomatic patients was higher than the viral load of the specimens from the three patients who did have symptoms.”
> 
> I'm curious if this surprise was part of the story, or if it was added 
> by the journalist.  Perhaps the tale was more of a "you may find this 
> surprising, but..."?

Oh. The surprise was that the relative viral load while asymptomatic was higher than expected, i.e., the symptoms start later than would normally be expected.

Essentially, this is *different* than the flu, and probably the best lay explainer graphic I've seen is this one: 

"Presymptomatic transmission of influenza has been inferred based on the presence of the virus in the upper respiratory tract rather than from appropriate transmission experiments. This is troubling because our review of the literature does not support significant influenza transmission based on positive nasopharyngeal cultures in the absence of symptoms." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2646474/

However, it's fairly clear, based on all the data being tracked, that asymptomatic transmission is significant in SARS-CoV-2, and the current hypothesis is that the incubation period is 4-14 days, perhaps longer.

> The symptoms of diseases like this are actually side-effects of the way 
> our immune system battles the virus. The fever is partly our body 
> trying to raise the temperature past the operating temperature of many 
> pathogens, mucous an attempt to raise salinity on affected sites, and 
> so on.  I would have absolutely expected someone whose immune system 
> has gone full-tilt to have a lower viral load than someone who is 
> simply playing a happy host.

Right, and I've been having to brush up on my v. rusty immunology to even understand some of the conversations I've been reading. As I've whimpered before, the problem with immunology papers is that they're not written in English even when they are.

Deirdre