Aletho News

Asymptomatic COVID spread used to shut down the economy and close schools was false

By Paul Elias Alexander, PhD | Trial Site News | June 14, 2021

There was no credibility to asymptomatic spread in COVID-19 as a key driver of the pandemic nor even as a driver of minimal infection. We knew early on that this was rare, if at all an issue, in the transmission of COVID virus. Yet this falsehood was propagated by the medical media cartel and Task Forces globally despite having no evidence that it was credible. The US Pandemic Task Force propagated this falsehood to the extent that it was a major driver of the pandemic and used it to shutter the economy and lives. We have looked at the evidence gathered across the last 15 to 16 months and can safely say this was a false narrative that hurt the US immensely. This was such a significant aspect of the pandemic policy decisions, that it could not be based on supposition, speculation, or assumptions. It could not be based on whimsy. I am afraid however, that it was, and this had catastrophic consequences. There was no strong data or any evidence to underpin this and even if this was assumed for several weeks, and even if we took a more cautious approach, we used this false narrative in place to keep draconian and punitive lockdown restrictions in place for too long that had no basis. Lives were lost as a result! For me to buy this, I need to see the evidence and data and there is none! The reality is that there is no verifiable evidence that persons have developed COVID-19 based on asymptomatic spread, evidence that is credible. You must torture the data or infections to find one and still, it is plagued with the very questionable RT-PCR results.

You just cannot discuss this asymptomatic issue without factoring in the very flawed RT-PCR test with its 97% false positives at cycle counts of 35 and above. This RT-PCR disastrous test cannot be omitted for it was part of the ‘asymptomatic’ deception. I cannot be generous in my language anymore. This was not a falsehood; it was meant to deceive!

As such, we are about to debunk ‘asymptomatic spread’ fully on the heels of the catastrophic masking, lockdowns, and school closure polices that visited crushing harms on society. That the US Pandemic Task Force and these absurd, illogical, irrational, unscientific medical experts could use this falsehood and shut the society down and cost so much destruction is a scandal, shameful, and unforgiveable. There was no basis to the ‘asymptomatic spread’ and the falsehood should have been stopped soon after it became clear that this was misleading and had no basis. It cost thousands of lives! More lives lost and instead of protecting the vulnerable, they allowed them to die! Our precious elderly.

They did not try to and failed to protect public health, all these crazy lockdown insane lunatics! That’s what they are, lunatics! These bureaucrats and technocrats, this ruling elite. Flat wrong on everything COVID, yet run around extolling each other, patting each other on the back. For what? The destruction they caused? We begged them to secure the elderly and high-risk strongly but they did not and did not stop the lockdowns. They pretended there were no harms to their lockdowns. It was deliberate, a perverse cruelty on populations. Just look at the declining health due to the isolation from the lockdowns (the mental health costs, the dementia), the inactivity, the loss of education due to school closures, lost medical care, loss of jobs/employment, and income. “Some of these costs, sadly, remain ahead of us, including deaths from delays in cancer screening and treatment, rising opioid overdose, and harms to the life expectancy of today’s children due to lost schooling” (Collateral Global). Alarmingly, we see how COVID wreaks havoc differentially due to baseline risks that are often exaggerated in the underprivileged, but also in the underprivileged in terms of the harms and effects of the lockdowns. For example, “while breast cancer screening in Washington state fell by 50% for women overall, the drop was even more precipitous among minorities”.

Before we lay bare this ‘asymptomatic’ fraud, let us show just how duplicitous these public health agencies can be and how many lies they (and their leaders) spew in an attempt to deceive and confuse the public. In this case to drive fear in parents so as to push them to vaccinate their children. On Friday, the CDC put out a statement (based on their June 11^th 2021 MMWR report) that there is a troubling rise in teens being hospitalized for COVID-19. The first fact that jumps out at us is that there were 0 (zero) deaths. CDC stated that adolescent hospitalization rates increased during March and April 2021 after decreases in January and February 2021. This message went viral in the media 24/7. This misinformation and clear effort to lie to the public was couched as ‘troubling rise’. But the lie was that there was a rise in March and April but then a decrease in May back to the level it was at the close of February 2021.

The CDC and its Director Walensky had clear knowledge that the hospitalization rate had decreased but they cherry picked a portion of the graph and data (the upside of the graph) and presented that without the downside portion that shows the decline. What hubris and deceit by Walensky! For she knew she was cherry-picking the data because across all age-groups, hospitalizations had declined during the prior 6 to 8 weeks. She knew this. “Allen says the latest data from May showed that hospitalization rates declined to 0.6 on May 29”. The real atrocity in this reporting by the CDC is that they did not include the data from May 2021. This was a pure effort to mislead the public because the same data used in the report showed a significant decline in the month following the slight increase”. So, the CDC took data that showed an increase in April 2021 and now reports it in June as if the May data of the clear decline does not exist. Just the April data and also, why is it now being reported? How incredibly duplicitous and such arrogance to think the American people are that stupid that they cannot see the decline in May?

Dr. Walensky was actually mis-reporting (deliberately) CDC’s own data. Why? Is this the first time a CDC MMWR report was basically junk pseudo-science? Based on falsehoods? This MMWR report was based on a population-based surveillance system of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19–associated hospitalizations in 99 counties across 14 states, covering approximately 10% of the U.S. population. Horowitz of Blazemedia was beside himself as he discussed this duplicity by the CDC and rightly so. Dr. Walensky stated she was para ‘deeply concerned by the rise’. Yet she knew she was being deceitful, in plain view, understanding that the media cartel would gobble the erroneous tripe up and the public would be too lazy to do the reading just a bit further down in the MMWR to understand the mis-information. “It turns out they picked arbitrary start and end points-an old trick they’ve used with mask studies”. Or is it that Dr. Walensky cannot read the science or understand the data or graphs? Or those reporting to her? They (Dr. Walensky) made this type of deceitful error and omission when they reported and misled on the risk of outdoors transmission (< 1% but claiming it is more like 10%), among many others. Same issues with the summer camp rules and spread after vaccination, with flips and flops between Walensky and Fauci. Someone was or is lying, who?

Makary of Johns Hopkins stated para “that the CDC did not report the key issues in that report. No child died, and the CDC should have said this. This is the great news! The hospitalization rate was lower for COVID than it was for influenza. The CDC should have said this also as the headline. What about the heart swelling complications on teens due to the vaccine… one of the failures of the CDC is their ignoring of natural immunity and this insane rush to mass vaccinate people already immune… we are seeing another set of talking points on the Delta variant scare”.

CDC knew the number was coming down for months but misled in their report when they knew it was 20 hospitalizations per day of about 25 million teens, so a rate of approximately 0.00008%. This was to drive panic about a troubling rise in teen hospitalizations and the very small number was going down, and not up. They pick only one piece of data and this was terrible so as to exploit the fears of parents. This was to drive vaccinations. How low has the CDC fallen and how come they have absolutely no common sense! We set the table for this op-ed with that falsehood by the CDC on rising teen hospitalizations. This is how the last 16 months has been with CDC’s reporting. Late and false! Always one year behind the science. Always misleading. Politicized.

Back to the ‘asymptomatic spread’. This duplicitous ‘asymptomatic’ assertion hobbled and basically doomed the pandemic response from the start, for all of the societal shutdowns and school closures revolved around this falsehood. Dr. Anthony Fauci can be credited with perhaps the greatest falsehood to the American population and the then President Trump. He even has still carried this misleading and duplicitous narrative on asymptomatic spread into current [proclaimed] President Biden’s administration.

Fauci stated the following as he advocated and moved to shut society down: “historically people need to realize that even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all history of respiratory viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person. Even if there is a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers”. This clear statement by Fauci is really the [last] nail devastating his handling of this pandemic. What a disaster he has been and how many thousands of lives he has cost with his statements that have all turned out to be wrong. Recently uncovered e-mails  show that Fauci stated that “most transmissions” of virus “occur from someone who is symptomatic” and “not asymptomatic”. But Fauci publicly stated at the Task Force podium that asymptomatic spread is “not rare” but is in fact common and why the nation had to be shut down.

I am so ashamed to be a scientist today and really do not wish to belong in this perverse group of ‘fallen’ nonsensical, illogical, irrational, and specious academics. They are (have been) absurd and actually very harmful by the policy positions they advocated. I have bolded and underlined the critical words by Fauci for the reader as these stand out. Fauci was not supposing here as to asymptomatic spread, he was not speculating, he was declarative and definitive. He was firm! Does this make any sense though given what Fauci then did to society, after making this type of declaration? They did the opposite. They repeatedly came to the podium and misled the nation for they repeatedly told us that due to asymptomatic spread, we would have to wear masks, and socially distance, and close schools, and shut everything down.

These US Task Force experts and the so called ‘medical experts’ in the media knew it. They knew this was false, as there was no science to back this up. None. They knew they were misleading the public and were openly lying, while holding opposing positions behind the scenes. Dr. Fauci’s recent e-mail on asymptomatic spread being no issue and his public Task Force discussions on this early in the pandemic underscore how much deceit and duplicity were in his language to the American people. These people conspired and sold the nation(s) a lie, and in fact, many lies around COVID-19. Lies that cost lives of business owners who lost businesses, workers who lost jobs, and adults and children who lost hope and killed themselves. Not from COVID, but from the lockdowns and the crushing harms from them.

What also hobbled and irreparably damaged the US’s response out of the gate was the devastating lie that we were all at equal risk of severe illness and death if infected. This was a flat lie that has Johnny still today at 20 years old, and in perfect health cowering under his bed thinking he is at the same risk as granny at 85 who has 3 serious grave underlying medical conditions. These medical experts would come to the podium daily and make statements and demands and had no data or evidence to back it up. No credible data, and no media, no one asked them for any. We grew to know that they were empty suits, especially Fauci, just baseless statements but they cost many, many lives, tragically. They caused much suffering and the blame rests with them, the Task Force, for the President implemented their policies, not his policies. He got guidance and recommendations from them. It was their lockdowns, it was their school closures, it was their social distancing, it was their mask mandates.

We knew very early on that COVID was amenable to risk stratification and that your baseline risk was most prognostic for mortality, age and obesity being the principle ones along with renal disease and diabetes as well as heart disease. We knew this. We knew early on that a more focused ‘targeted’ approach was needed and not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that was devastating. Like how we knew that recurrent infection (re-infection) was not real and also a lie. Are we sure that recurrent or re-infection is not credible? Well, you judge for yourself. We have looked at the published evidence and can conclude based on the existing body of evidence, that reinfections are very rare, if at all, and based on typically one or two instances with questionable confirmation of an actual case of re-infection e.g. often easily explained by flawed PCR testing etc. (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23). Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins wrote “reinfection is extremely rare and even when it does happen, the symptoms are very rare or [those individuals] are asymptomatic”. Importantly, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently (May 10^th 2021 Scientific brief, WHO/2019-nCoV/Sci_Brief/Natural_immunity/2021.1) alluded to what has been clear for many months (one year now), which is that people are very rarely re-infected. The WHO was very late but better late than never.

Like how we knew that the RT-PCR test was near 100% false positive and a flawed test as a diagnostic test and was damaging lives with the erroneous quarantines and closures when a positive test emerged. We knew that what mattered most was the number of hospitalizations, ICU bed use, and deaths, not the infections. An infection did not mean one was a ‘case’ of disease. And likely a false positive. We knew that a cycle count threshold (Ct) of 24 was the limit and everything above this was a PCR test that was likely false positive, picking up viral dust, fragments, old coronavirus, old recovered infection etc. We knew the CDC had set the Ct at 40 which contributed to the hundreds of thousands and millions of positive cases that were not positive and schools were closed and people quarantined for no reason. We knew that children were at near zero risk of acquiring the infection, spreading it, or getting ill from it, yet continued on frightening parents. The CDC, the teachers’ unions, and the television medical experts have spent the last 15 to 16 months lying and scaring parents needlessly and have been lying openly on risk to children. How else do I state it? They were delivering falsehoods and misleading facts to the public and these are flat lies.

Like how we knew that you do not vaccinate someone who has recovered from COVID-19 as they now have robust, durable, life-long immunity that is far more long-lasting, durable, robust, and complete (sterilizing) than any conferred by a vaccine immunity that confers only narrow ‘spike-specific’ immunity with only the spike epitopes for the immune system to look at, and not the surface of the virus and all the viral epitopes that our natural immunity will consider.

Like how we knew you never ever vaccinate during a pandemic for this drives the emergence of variants yet they did it anyway.

Like we knew that the variants will blow past the narrow vaccine induced immunity and principally the spike that you are injecting with today is long gone. What exists out there now is way different than the initial strain due to mutations on the spike.

Like how we knew that T-cell immunity was out there and represented a large portion of persons who were not candidates for vaccine and were already strongly immune to COVID e.g. had prior infection with other coronaviruses and common cold coronaviruses that confer ‘cross-protection’ cellular immunity via T-cell immunity etc. (Weiskopf , Grifoni, Le Bert, Mateus, Tavukcuoglu, Cassaniti, Dykema, Echeverría, Bonifacius, Nelde, Ansari, Ma, Lineburg, Borena) (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14). You judge for yourself if this makes sense.

Like how we knew that early outpatient treatment (references 1, 2, 3, 4) was very successful in reducing the risk of hospitalization and death (McCullough, Risch, Zelenko, Tenenbaum, Kory, Smith, Bernstein, Fareed, Ladapo etc.) and that you do not give successful anti-virals late in the disease course for they will not work.

Like how we knew the research community was conducting studies ‘designed to fail’ to show that the anti-virals did not work. They were deceiving the public.

Like how we know that using a vaccine that has not undergone the right and proper safety testing and duration of testing, will result in adverse effects and deaths, as we are now seeing (CDC’s very own VAERS database). Anyone who says, no matter their position in government or any medical expert, that it is safe, is lying to you for they did not do the requisite long-term safety assessment in their studies. They are flat lying and this is dangerous and reckless for it is costing lives. And now they are coming for our children! We pray that the FDA staves them off, as the principle regulator. Our hope rests there.

Like how we knew that the ‘ZERO COVID’ view was ridiculous and impossible and not attainable, and was devastating to our societies. There is no way we could eliminate every infection/case as COVID is now endemic and all around us. ZERO was never possible and we knew it and an absurd intention and all it does is destroy the society by locking down to attain ZERO, you force the pathogen to mutate more infectiously and you will forever be going in circles. And you will have a destroyed society to emerge to. We knew this and particularly that we would likely have to learn to live with it as we do with seasonable influenza and common cold coronaviruses. We have never been able to get rid of every infection/case and the same here. But somehow the Task Force experts did not know this.

Like how we knew all that was needed in this pandemic was calm, some sensible leadership, no politicization, and simple enhanced hand-washing and isolation of only the symptomatic ill/sick persons. No isolation of asymptomatic persons, none. None in their homes or at the borders. We knew this. We knew all we needed to do was give early drug treatment and protect the elderly strongly and allow society to move on unfettered. We knew that population immunity would emerge, as we had no reason to think COVID operated any differently than other viruses etc. as to population immunity.

We also knew early on that the blue and cloth face masks were ineffective and utterly dangerous as used, with no clear benefit, and that mask mandates were a failure, all of them! We knew this. We also knew masks were actually dangerous and,  for children, so much so as to impact their social and emotional health and well-being. But we pretended and now masks are part of the daily wardrobe while we knew the medical harms that were accruing and being reported from mask use. We knew the social distance rule of 6 feet was made up, not based on credible science. Same as the 3 feet in school, courtesy of CDC. We know that mass testing of asymptomatic persons was nonsensical and dangerous, adding no benefit. Same as contact tracing etc. once the pathogen breached your shores. We knew this. We knew all of the lockdown measures would hollow out our societies and all of the steps taken, and that handwashing and isolation of ill persons were all that was needed. We knew that we had early outpatient therapeutics that were very effective in reducing hospitalization and death, but failed to use them.

What did we know about lockdowns and school closures and masks? What evidence accumulated and very early? Well, you judge for yourself. We found out clearly about the catastrophic harms (consequences) and failures of lockdowns (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58) and school closures (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56).

We even knew of the catastrophic harms due to mask use (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24).

We also knew of the ineffectiveness of masks (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35) and knew of the failure of mask mandates (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7, 8). All of this we knew early on and evidence kept accumulating. But the inept medical experts kept hardening the lockdowns and punishing the population needlessly. And lives were lost!

We quickly grew to know that every single mitigation step like lockdowns and school closures was a catastrophic failure and was harming the people, especially crushing harms on women and children, and particularly the poorer women and children (children of color). We knew! We knew that none, not one of the bureaucrats and technocrats and ‘caffe latte’ drinking ‘lap-top’ class elitist academics and scientists and Task Force advisors who called for and pushed the lockdowns and school closures would not suffer the burden like the poorer in society. Not one day did they miss a salary or mortgage or rent payment. They were ‘safe’ and it is quite easy for you to extoll and exact a burden on others once you are not subject to it. It became like a game, these lockdowns, indeed, it becomes a game. We knew we shifted the burden onto the poorer in society. But we did not care, we had uber, lap-tops, gardens to tend to, walks to take, naps to catch up on, Amazon to order from, and secured jobs that allowed us to ‘remote’ exist. The poorer had no such facility. But we did not care. We had pods, tutors, internet, lap-tops and the like for our kids. We did not care!

Yes, we knew all of this but were bamboozled and confused by the idiotic and absurd, specious statements by medical experts who for the life of me have been flat wrong on most everything COVID. Case in point, Dr. Fauci. Flat wrong. Makes no sense. But put a pin in that for a moment. Let me focus on asymptomatic spread of COVID virus, this being the core thesis of this op-ed.

What do we know as of today and knew in the spring of 2020 and certainly in the fall of 2020? What does the science say, the same science that these television medical experts and nonsensical, illogical, irrational, and uninformed Task Force and medical advisors failed to take into account due to their academic sloppiness and sheer politicization. They exhibited a depth of cognitive dissonance to anything that disagreed with their absurdities that they spewed at us daily, to a public who yearned for just honesty and the facts for their informed decision-making. They seem unable to read the science, or to understand the science, or ‘get’ the science, and are clearly blinded to the science.

The fact is that if you are having no symptoms, or if they are very mild, then this significantly reduces spread and actually, with no symptoms, there is no spread. This is where the media and the inept medical experts have confused the public. No one is arguing that you cannot be asymptomatic. Of course you can. We are arguing if you are asymptomatic, the mere fact you have no symptoms means you are not spreading the virus. This works for all pathogens so why is it different for SARS-CoV-2? “Searching for people who are asymptomatic yet infectious is like searching for needles that appear and reappear transiently in haystacks, particularly when rates are falling”. We knew very early on that asymptomatic transmission was not a driver of COVID. This is not only my contention.

We are being emphatic in saying there is no evidence of asymptomatic spread. If there is, please provide us the evidence. Yet we had these incompetent medical experts on television talking and speculating about asymptomatic spread, supposing about it, yet giving us no evidence about it. 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. 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’.

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 actually say that these Task Force members lied to the nation! We argue it was made to drive fear and compliance but was never credible. And just consider the harms from nearly one and a half years of testing and closures for a phenomenon that is not credible. Look at the financial costs and lives lost.

We want to focus on evidence to make our case, that we think validates our hypothesis that asymptomatic spread was a falsehood. We want to debunk it here and we argue that the study findings we share here can be extrapolated fully to examples of no asymptomatic (or very limited/rare) transmission. You judge for yourself.

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. “The real impact of asymptomatic transmission is likely to be even smaller than this figure because the study combines asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals”.

A study published in Nature 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. AIER’s Zucker 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”.

One study in May 2020 examined the 455 contacts of one asymptomatic person. Researchers found that “all CT images showed no sign of COVID-19 infection. No severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections was detected in 455 contacts by nucleic acid test”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also made this claim that asymptomatic spread/transmission is rare. This issue of asymptomatic spread is the key issue being used to force vaccination in children. The science, however, remains contrary to this proposed policy mandate.

Additionally, a high-quality robust study in the French Alps examined the spread of Covid-19 virus via a cluster of Covid-19. They followed one infected child who visited three different schools and interacted with other children, teachers, and various adults. They reported no instance of secondary transmission despite close interactions. These data have been available to the CDC and other health experts for over a year, and while one has to tease out the concept of no asymptomatic spread though I argue it is an easy argument to make, it clearly shows that children do not spread the virus.

Ludvigsson published a seminal paper in the New England Journal of Medicine on Covid-19 among children 1 to 16 years of age and their teachers in Sweden. 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. We include this study for it is seminal in showing that masks were never needed and children do not spread the virus or get sick or die from it. But importantly, if asymptomatic spread was so vast, and there were 2 million children, would there not be much more elevated numbers of infection reported?

A recent June 10^th 2021 op-ed sheds more confirmatory light that asymptomatic spread was more a myth that a reality. Ballan and Tindall wrote “People presenting with symptoms of Covid-19 are almost exclusively responsible for transmitting SARS-CoV-2… serious infection usually results from frequent exposure to high doses of SARS-CoV-2, such as health care workers caring for sick Covid-19 patients in hospitals or nursing homes and people living in the same household.

A person showing no symptoms of Covid-19 may test positive for SARS-CoV-2 on a PCR test, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they are infectious. They explain further that the myth was driven by a single case report of an asymptomatic woman from China who had spread the virus to approximately 16 contacts in Germany. “Later reports showed that, at the time of contact, this woman was taking medication for flu-like symptoms, invalidating the evidence provided for the theory of asymptomatic transmission”.

Ballan and Tindall further explain that “a person showing no symptoms of Covid-19 may test positive for SARS-CoV-2 on a PCR test, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they are infectious. There are four ways in which this can happen: i) the test may give a false positive result due to several faults in the testing process or in the test itself (the person is not infected), ii) the person may have recovered from Covid-19 in the last three months (the person is not currently infected but dead debris of the virus are being picked up by the test), the person may be pre-symptomatic, i.e, the person is infected but still in the early stages of the disease and has not yet developed symptoms, and iv) the person may be asymptomatic, i.e. the person is infected but has pre-existing immunity and will never develop symptoms”.

In asymptomatic individuals, the viral load is typically very low and the infectious period is also short in duration. They may still exhale virus particles, which another person may encounter. However, the overall likelihood of transmitting the disease to others is negligible. Thus, asymptomatic cases are not the major drivers of epidemics.

Perhaps the clearest statement and we argue the most definitive one came from Dr Anthony Fauci of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who stated in March 2020 (we outlined in more detail above): ‘In all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person”. Fauci says clearly the driver of transmission is ‘always’ a symptomatic person. Fauci went on to dispute his own declaration by his admonitions on subsequent Task Force podium speech that asymptomatic spread was very serious and a key driver, and thus why we must close schools, wear masks, and lock down the society. We found out how devastatingly wrong that was as we lost businesses and lives, including of our children due to the lockdowns/closures.

Dr Clare Craig, a pathologist, and her colleague Dr Jonathan Engler have examined the research evidence behind the claim that Covid-19 can be transmitted by asymptomatic individuals. They wrote “harmful lockdown policies and mass testing have been justified on the assumption that asymptomatic transmission is a genuine risk. Given the harmful collateral effects of such policies, the precautionary principle should result in a very high evidential bar for asymptomatic transmission being set. However, the only word which can be used to describe the quality of evidence for this is woeful. A handful of questionable instances of spread have been massively amplified in the medical literature by repeatedly including them in meta-analyses that continue to be published, recycling the same evidence base.”

It is important to carefully distinguish purely asymptomatic (individuals who never develop any symptoms) from pre-symptomatic transmission (where individuals do eventually develop symptoms). To the extent that the latter phenomenon, which has in fact happened only very rarely, is deemed worthy of public health action, appropriate strategies to manage it (in the absence of significant asymptomatic transmission) would be entirely different and much less disruptive than those actually adopted.

We state emphatically that the concept of ‘asymptomatic spread’ of COVID virus was devised to frighten the population into compliance and that it was not central to this pandemic as we were told. Evidence to support its existence remains lacking and absent. We close by offering our continued beliefs and thus opinion on how this pandemic should have been handled from the start. We would have as a basic, the strong double and triple down protection of the elderly high-risk populations. If this is not done properly and first, then there will be no success. We should have fostered improved hand-washing hygiene and isolation of only the ill/sick/symptomatic persons. No asymptomatic person is/was to be quarantined and there is only to be testing of symptomatic persons or when there is strong clinical suspicion. We would promote improved support for the immune system such as public service messages about vitamin D supplements (especially in societies with limited sunlight), and allow the rest of the low-risk society to live largely unfettered daily lives, taking sensible reasonable safety precautions. This would allow them to mingle and be exposed to each other harmlessly and naturally, so that this would drive population level immunity. At the same time, we would offer early outpatient treatment to high-risk positive persons (in nursing homes or their private homes). This includes the elderly, younger persons with underlying medical conditions, and obese persons.

We feel that had this approach been enacted from the very beginning, the devastating losses incurred by businesses and the economy, as well as the deaths of despair to the business owners, employees, and our school children would have been avoided. There were crushing harms to our societies and especially our children and this is unforgivable for the data was always available and we have been screaming loudly from March 2020 on the pending tragedy if our governments continued in that manner. The narrative and falsehood of ‘asymptomatic spread’ helped severely hobble and damage the pandemic response as it caused devastating personal and economic loses to accrue needlessly, and especially for our children. Especially for the poorer among us who could least afford!

June 14, 2021 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights