How junk science is keeping the myth of ‘asymptomatic transmission’ of SARS-CoV-2 alive

25 January 2021

Back in July 2020, I published a post on so-called ‘silent spreaders’ of SARS-CoV-2, the virus associated with COVID-19, titled Asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2: What is the evidence?

Unfortunately, the myth of asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 – that is, the notion that people who have no symptoms of infection, and never develop them, despite ‘testing positive’ to the virus (with a test that is not suitable for diagnosing infection) can pass it on to other people and make them sick – appears to be just as prevalent 5 months after I wrote that article.

Like a vampire, this pernicious myth just keeps resurrecting itself no matter how many well-credentialled scientists attempt to kill it.

For example, an article published in JAMA Network Open on January 7, 2021, titled SARS-CoV-2 Transmission From People Without COVID-19 Symptoms, concluded that individuals who never develop symptoms of COVID-19 infection are responsible for 24% of the spread of the virus.

It’s worth examining this paper in detail, because it provides a stellar example of how junk science is conducted, gets published without its manifold factual errors having been corrected through the peer review process, and then enters the body of literature and is subsequently cited by other researchers, creating a self-perpetuating spiral of junk science.

The fact that the paper’s authors are senior employees of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just adds insult to the injury inflicted by this type of junk science – injury that the authors obliquely acknowledge in the process of justifying their work:

“Measures to reduce transmission from individuals who do not have COVID-19 symptoms have become controversial and politicized and have likely had negative effects on the economy and many societal activities. Optimal control of COVID-19 depends on directing resources and health messaging to mitigation efforts that are most likely to prevent transmission. The relative importance of mitigation measures that prevent transmission from persons without symptoms has been disputed. Determining the proportion of SARS-CoV-2 transmission that occurs from persons without symptoms is foundational to prioritizing control practices and policies.”

SARS-CoV-2 Transmission From People Without COVID-19 Symptoms

The authors used a decision analytic model to derive their conclusion that ‘silent spreaders’ account for nearly a quarter of SARS-CoV-2 transmission – in other words, mathematical modelling based on data derived from other studies published in the scientific literature.

As is always the case with modelling, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. The authors of the paper “made a baseline assumption that individuals with asymptomatic infections are on average 75% as infectious as those with symptomatic infections”. The three citations they give in support of this assumption are as follows:

1. A study of 303 people who tested positive on RT-PCR to SARS-CoV-2 and were held in an isolation facility in Korea. 36% of these individuals had no symptoms at the time of their first positive test result, and 80% of these initially asymptomatic people remained asymptomatic throughout their confinement period.
   Importantly, this study did not even attempt to assess whether asymptomatic or presymptomatic people actually transmitted the virus to others, nor whether their contacts would become ill; in fact, 92% of the 303 people were held in solitary confinement throughout their isolation period.
   Instead, the researchers assumed that because the cycle threshold of RT-PCR tests administered to asymptomatic test-positive individuals throughout their quarantine was similar to that of those with symptoms, the former would be as likely to transmit the virus as the latter. However, researchers defined a positive test result as a cycle threshold of up to 40, and examination of the scatterplots in the paper (below) clearly shows that most test results had a cycle threshold above 30.

Importantly, in a study published in April 2020 in which samples from people who tested positive on RT-PCR were cultured to determine whether they contained any intact virus that was capable of infecting other people, only samples with a cycle threshold of 13-17 had replication-competent virus.

At a cycle threshold of 33, just 12% of samples were culture positive. In other words, 88% of people with a positive RT-PCR test result at 33 cycles were not capable of infecting anyone else.

Dr Anthony Fauci, who led the White House Coronavirus Task Force addressing the COVID-19 pandemic in the Trump administration and will continue in this role in the Biden administration, admitted in July 2020 that:

“If you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more, the chances of it being replication-competent are miniscule… you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle. So I think if somebody does come in 37, 38, even 36, you’ve gotta say, you know, it’s just dead nucleotides, period… When someone comes in and it’s positive, they don’t give them the threshold until you go back and ask for it.”

2. A study of a cluster of cases that occurred in Brunei (southeast Asia), in which 2 people who tested positive on RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 but remained asymptomatic, were alleged to have spread the virus to a total of 3 other people.
However, the same authors published another paper giving further details of these secondary cases, as follows:

• A 30 year old man tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 but had no symptoms, normal blood test results and a clear chest x-ray. All 7 of his household contacts were tested; only his 32 year old wife and 10 month old daughter tested positive and were classified as ‘COVID-19 cases’. The man’s wife had a runny nose for 4 days, and the baby had a mild cough (without fever) which lasted for 2 days.
• A 13 year old girl tested positive, but again had normal blood test and chest-x-ray findings. 29 school contacts of the girl were identified and tested; only 1 – her teacher – tested positive, and was identified as a ‘case’ of COVID-19 because she had a mild cough which lasted one day.

3. A pre-print (i.e. a study which has not yet been peer reviewed) which was posted on MedRxiv on 1 August 2020; it seems odd that CDC scientists would even cite a study that had not been accepted by a medical journal 5 months after its initial posting.
Whereas the CDC authors cite this article in support of their “baseline assumption that individuals with asymptomatic infections are on average 75% as infectious as those with symptomatic infections”, this paper actually states that “we cautiously suggest that asymptomatics could be considered to have a degree of infectiousness which is about 0.4 – 0.7 that of symptomatics. However, it must be stressed that this suggestion comes from a very low evidence base and that estimates exist that are close to zero… and close to 1.”

I’ve almost lost hope that even the most well-researched, well-reasoned, factually watertight scientific paper would be capable of driving the fatal stake through the heart of this vampire, but if these is one such paper, it would be this one by Dr Clare Craig (a diagnostic pathologist) and Dr Jonathan Engler, who has both medical and legal qualifications.

Craig and Engler point out that the myth of the asymptomatic carrier, and all of the measures that flow from it – mass testing of asymptomatic people, mask mandates, physical distancing regulations, closures of businesses, schools and houses of worship, removal of the right to peaceful assembly and protest, quarantining of healthy populations – rests on case reports of 6 people who are alleged to have transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to a total of 7 other people. Of these 7 ‘secondary cases’, 2 were also asymptomatic, 3 had mild symptoms as described above in the discussion of the Brunei cluster, and the clinical course of the remaining 2 was not discussed.

That’s right – your life has been turned upside down, and the world has been brought to a screeching halt, because 7 people (at least 5 of whom no no or mild symptoms) allegedly became ‘infected’ by an ‘asymptomatic carrier’ of SARS-CoV-2 – and some or all of even these 7 could well have been false positives, given that every test has an error rate.

As Craig and Engler eloquently state,

Finally, on January 20, 2021, The World Health Organization acknowledged the massive problem that it helped to create by vigorously advocating the use of RT-PCR to ‘diagnose’ COVID-19, by updating its advice to laboratory workers who are involved in processing test results:

Or, in plain English,

1. The RT-PCR test is resulting in many false positives because the cycle threshold used to ‘diagnose’ infection has been set too high;
2. PCR tests are not meant to diagnose illness in the first place, but merely to help a clinician determine which infectious agent is making a person ill (people with no symptoms of infection are, by definition, not ‘cases’ of anything at all);
3. In areas where COVID-19 is uncommon – including the entire nation of Australia – the RT-PCT test will generate far more false positives than in areas where it is prevalent; and
4. If a person tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 but has no symptoms and no history of being around anyone with symptoms, he or she should be retested, and should not be told that he or she is a ‘case’ of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the basis of a positive RT-PCR test result alone.

Public policies that are causing enormous harm to citizens all over the world, are being informed by junk science like the study I have analysed in this article. Contact your Federal MP and Senator here if you wish to protest the non-evidence based control measures that are illegally and unethically depriving you of your fundamental human rights, your children and grandchildren of crucial socialisation and education, and your elderly parents and grandparents of the human contact that is so important to their physical and mental well-being in their autumn years.

And most importantly, do not present for RT-PCR testing if you have no symptoms of illness and have not been in close and prolonged contact, in a poorly-ventilated area, with someone who has.

If you are overweight or have a chronic disease that puts you at increased risk of serious illness from viral infection, NOW is the time to take action on it! Obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and coronary artery disease are preventable and largely reversible with a wholefood plant-based diet and Lifestyle Medicine. Apply for a Roadmap to Optimal Health Consultation today; online, phone and in-person appointments are available.