Were you to stumble across Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano's Facebook page within the past day or so, you'd find this:
The text:
During our expert panel earlier this month, Dr. McCullough confirmed what many have us had said two years ago when we tried to reopen the state. “As each person becomes ill with the syndrome, they can indeed pass it to a susceptible person, but transmission is only from acutely ill to susceptible person only. Someone who has no symptoms poses no threat to someone else, whether they be susceptible or not susceptible. That means there should never have been any lockdowns, there should never have been any social distancing or any other measures for people who are well."
Let me say right off that I am not an expert in epidemiology.
But
then again, neither is Dr Peter McCullough - he's a cardiologist.
But there is that adage, that old saying, that goes, "Even a stopped clock is
correct twice a day" so perhaps Cardiologist (and not-Epidemiologist)
McCullough is correct.
And that would be incorrect.
In
fact he's been fact checked before on this very issue (asymptomatic
transmission of the coronavirus):
AFP:
McCullough also repeats another previously debunked claim about virus transmission that he made in this testimony to the senate of the US state of Texas.
He claims the virus does not spread from infected people who are asymptomatic and says in this recent misleading video: "Once an individual recovers from Covid-19, they have robust, complete and durable immunity with a negligible risk of ever getting Covid-19 again."
He also states: "We don’t need to treat everybody but high risk people over age 50 with medical problems should receive early treatment to reduce hospitalisation and death."
These claims are also false.
The World Health Organization (WHO) states that infected people without symptoms can still transmit the virus.
"Whether or not they have symptoms, infected people can be contagious and the virus can spread from them to other people," according to the WHO's website here.
Do I need to tell you that the WHO is filled with actual experts?
AFP (again):
McCullough testified: “One of the mistakes I heard today as a rationale for vaccinations is asymptomatic spread and I want you to be very clear about this -- my opinion is there is a low degree, if any, of asymptomatic spread.
“Sick person gives it to sick person. The Chinese have published a study in the British Medical Journal, 11 million people, they’re trying to find asymptomatic spread. You can’t find it,” he said.
Fujian Song, one of the report’s authors, said in an email on January 6, 2021 that, “It is misleading/incorrect/wrong to conclude that ‘all asymptomatic’ individuals infected with Covid-19 are not infectious, based on the results of the paper.”And:
[Bruno Lina professor of virology at the University of Lyon] confirmed that it is incorrect to claim that asymptomatic people can’t spread the virus.
He explained that asymptomatic people often have lower amounts of the virus so they may be less contagious, but “as this virus is very transmissible, in particular the British variant, there can be transmission from asymptomatic carriers.”
Being a professor of virology makes him an expert, by the way.
But what if the vérificateurs de faits at the Agence France-Presse got it wrong.
Is there any science to show that there, in fact, is asymptomatic virus transmisstion?
In fact, there is.
Under a range of assumptions of presymptomatic transmission and transmission from individuals with infection who never develop symptoms, the model presented here estimated that more than half of transmission comes from asymptomatic individuals.
The contributions of asymptomatic infections to herd immunity and community transmission are key to the resurgence and control of COVID-19, but are difficult to estimate using current models that ignore changes in testing capacity. Using a model that incorporates daily testing information fit to the case and serology data from New York City, we show that the proportion of symptomatic cases is low, ranging from 13 to 18%, and that the reproductive number may be larger than often assumed. Asymptomatic infections contribute substantially to herd immunity, and to community transmission together with presymptomatic ones.And that's just the tip, as they say, of the science iceberg (though in this town, it's spelt ICEBURGH).
By pushing people away from the medical science, Doug Mastriano is putting people's health at risk.