[dom0]

async and threads are fundamentally different mechanisms. green threads (async) are scheduled by the runtime, threads are scheduled by the OS.

In CPython threads can be (theoretically) switched at every bytecode instruction. Since calls into extensions / the interpreter are a single instructions, many data structure updates (like dict[a] = b, list.append) will appear atomic from Python.

That being said it is rather rare to have multiple threads run an event loop and process requests in Python. If threads and async are combined in the same process in Python, then it's usually only one event loop thread, and a thread pool for background activity. Usually these will be synchronized through async (eg. tornado.concurrent.run_on_executor) -- but that has nothing to do with context switches.

Edit: Reread your post. I may have slightly missed the point :)

Yes. Often one will find/design that there is no shared state, or that shared state is modified completely between yield points, so no locks between coroutines needed.