Posted on 03/30/2022 9:06:12 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Epidemiologists examining the biggest Chinese outbreak of COVID-19 in two years are trying to ascertain why the proportion of asymptomatic cases is so high, and what it could mean for China's future containment strategy.
The number of new confirmed community transmitted cases in the major financial hub of Shanghai reached 4,477 on Tuesday, a record high, but only 2.1% showed symptoms. The share of symptomatic cases over the previous seven days was around 1.6%.
Although outbreaks overseas have demonstrated that Omicron was less deadly than its predecessors, with lower levels of hospitalisation, the rate of symptomatic infection was relatively high compared to China's numbers.
In Britain, estimates for the share of asymptomatic Omicron infections have ranged between 25% and 54%, government data shows, although testing has not been systematic.
Britain has also been ahead in lifting all restrictions as it and other countries adapt a policy of living with COVID while the Chinese government has remained cautious and international travel is still curtailed.
The lack of symptomatic infections in the country and the very low number of deaths - only two related to COVID this year - has raised hopes that China can achieve a "soft landing" when it eases "dynamic clearance" restrictions as it refers to a policy of lockdowns and mandatory testing.
Following are some explanations for why the rate of asymptomatic cases is so high.
SURVEILLANCE TESTING
China is also the only major country to do mass, untargeted surveillance testing, which is bound to uncover more asymptomatic cases, although it could also be expected to reveal more symptomatic cases.
"Surely, high levels of testing will pick up more rather than less asymptomatic cases," said Adrian Esterman, an expert in biostatistics at the University of South Australia.
In other countries, many people who test positive with home kits do not report it and official data also shows falls in infections outside China have coincided with a decline in the number of tests carried out.
On Monday alone, Shanghai conducted more than 8 million tests at over 60,000 stations throughout its locked down districts. Other countries, even if they still impose mandatory testing programmes, now take a more targeted approach.
LOWER VIRULENCE, HIGHER VACCINATION
China's uncompromising response to the new variant was partly a result of uncertainty about levels of immunity and resistance among the population after nearly two years of heavy containment.
But writing on the Twitter-like Weibo platform last week, Shanghai COVID expert Zhang Wenhong said that while the new Omicron variant was harder to eliminate, it was clearly less "scary" than its predecessors.
Chinese experts, including Zhang Boli, who advises the government on COVID-19 treatment, have said the inherently lower pathogenicity of Omicron, combining with the country's relatively high vaccination rates, could be lowering the number of symptomatic infections.
However, vaccination levels in South Korea and Singapore are higher than in China, and they have more symptomatic cases.
CATCHING IT EARLY
Zhang also said in an interview with China's Science and Technology Daily on Tuesday that the large proportion of asymptomatic infections was not necessarily a characteristic of the virus itself.
The high rate could be a result of early detection in China, allowing authorities to catch and isolate cases before they became symptomatic, and it was still possible that large numbers of people could get ill.
Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the China Center for Disease Control, told a press conference on Saturday that "asymptomatic" was not a fixed state. People could start to get ill within days and attention still needed to be paid to the infection rate, he said.
CO-INFECTIONS
It is also possible that many of the symptoms that are being picked up in overseas cases are caused by "co-infections", with particularly virulent strains of the common cold often presenting in similar ways to COVID-19.
Researchers said that lockdowns overseas led to a noticeable decline in other infectious diseases, including influenza. With much of world now learning to "coexist" with COVID, there has also been an opportunity for old viruses to make a comeback.
Meanwhile in Eastern Canada......”ITS THE SITH WAVE....RUN FER YOUR LIVES!!!”
What a most awesome reason to shut down a city of almost 25 million.
/s
Sorry but an asymptomatic COVID-19 infection is not a “case” any more than an asymptomatic cold infection is a case.
DON’T TEST THE ASYMPTOMATIC. We don’t (as far as I know) test healthy non-symptomatic individuals to see if they “have” the flu. End this insanity!
RE: Sorry but an asymptomatic COVID-19 infection is not a “case” any more than an asymptomatic cold infection is a case.
But isn’t a cold infection SYMPTOMATIC?
People sneeze and cough when they have colds and some might not feel sick at all but still have sniffles and cough. They can still transmit their viruses can’t they?
The UN/WHO & the CDC’s of all participating countries, including America, since the beginning of the SARS/COVID19 Plandemic, have defined a New Case as anyone with a positive PCR test. No illness symptoms are ever required for these Cases to be be counted as “infected.” “Infected” means that the test showed the presence of a non-specific flu virus not viral load. The PCR test was never intended to be diagnostic of Covid19 (no C19 Isolate on the swabs but a flu knockoff) and has always been run at false positive cycles, per FDA instruction. China’s Govt.is playing the same evil trick on its people as our Govt. has played since Day 1. Btw- this method of Case counting is right from the Criminal Fauci CDC Playbook for HIV/AIDS... coming in real handy these past 2.25 years.
So what? The world is full of cooties, and no one cared before if you came to work sick with a cold. We were told at first this was a new bat virus from nature that caused lethal pneumonia and no one would survive if they didn’t stay in their house until further notice. A provable lie then and now. Pneumonia was at the bottom of the list of mild survivable symptoms included in the Covid Case definition from the get-go. The Lockdown wasn’t justified in 2020, but just watch Fauci order it again in 2022 because of a bogus variant that might make you get a cold... vote absentee, my pretties. Your future is continuous jabbing and swabbing until...further notice.
Yeah, shut it down for people not getting sick.
Sure. Makes sense to me……🙄
most of the RAT test kits in Australia are made in China - don’t know about these, but worth reading all:
30 March: Gateway Pundit: Warning About Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Tests – Kit Includes Poisonous “Liquid Substance” Used Commonly in “Pest Control” – (VIDEO)
By Julian Conradson
Well, just like with most everything else these days, the difference between wild right wing conspiracy and fact simply comes down to a matter of time...
Last month, the Gateway Pundit reported that Ohio and Texas issued a warning after seeing an increase in reports related to sodium azide poisoning, a chemical found in test kits after Biden promised to give 500 million Covid test kits to Americans...
The main side effects of exposure to Sodium Azide include lowered blood pressure, headache, hypothermia, and in the case of serious overexposure, convulsions, and death. Ingestion of 100 to 200 mg in humans may result in headache, respiratory distress, and diarrhea, according to Stanford Medical...
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/ready-surprised-concerned-poison-control-issues-nationwide-toxic-warning-covid-19-rapid-antigen-tests-kit-includes-poisonous-liquid-substance-used-commonly-pest-control/
Asymptomatic = NOT EFFING SICK
Stop putting people through what may be arbitrary “test results” - what an evil way to control people.
So the shot got him.??????
“According to Mayo Clinic, aphasia "is a condition that robs you of the ability to communicate. It can affect your ability to speak, write and understand language […], typically occurs suddenly after a stroke or a head injury."”
If you think counting asymptomatics is bad, NYS and other states have been counting probables and repeat positives of the same patient as new cases.
The stats have been and continue to be crap.
But then CoupFlu policy has never been about public health anywhere on the planet.
Stats from China are worthless, so cherry pick the ones that fit your narrative.
The Chinese either have shell shock and are panicking or there is some king term concern.
I’m thinking panic.
This is a lesson from our masters…are you paying attention USA?
Asymptomatic = False Positive
It’s almost as if it IS the common cold.
There were 38,000,000 flu cases the winter of 2019-2020.
There were only 1,800 flu cases the winter of 2020-2021.
It couldn’t be because hospitals got paid $13,000 for every Fauci/China biological warfare virus diagnosis, and $39,000 for every biological warfare virus patient they slapped on a ventilator to kill them.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/
Hospitals are rolling in dough from all the money they made on the contract killings. The university hospital in my college town is building multiple new wings.
Could there be some emerging threat, as in a new strain of disease (not necessarily covid) appearing among the population? China is the world’s incubator for diseases which cross over to humans from animals, so it’s just a matter of time before a new one comes along.
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