[twic]

We often conflate asymptomatic and presymptomatic people: my understanding is that asymptomatic people aren't very infectious, but presymptomatic people are. I can't find a solid citation for this, though.

The mechanistic basis for that is simply viral load: asymptomatic people have some virus, but not enough to ever make them really ill, whereas presymptomatic people have loads of virus, but it hasn't made them really ill yet.

[garmaine]

With this disease it appears asymptomatic people are equally infectious.

[twic]

That was very much not my understanding. Do you have a proper technical source for that? I don't, and i wish i did!

[garmaine]

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762028

TL;DR contact tracing shows numerous cases of asymptomatic people that have introduced the disease to people near them.

[btilly]

There is a world of difference between "asymptomatic people are infectious" and "asymptomatic people are AS infectious".

I saw early estimates based on detailed modeling from Chinese data that asymptomatic people were about half as infectious as symptomatic ones. I have not seen any such estimates for some time though, nor ones based on more recent data samples.

Given the widespread distrust of the Chinese reporting on what happened in January, and the fact that estimates of how infectious this is have approximately doubled from early estimates, I don't trust that early reporting. I would also love to see an estimate of how much more or less people are infectious when they are asymptomatic.

Given that I don't doubt that they can be infectious, research showing that they can be is not answering the question that I have.