Here is the opening of the abstract in the new JAMA paper “Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis” by Madewell et al.
“Importance Crowded indoor environments, such as households, are high-risk settings for the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).”
I ask you to now recall the preferred government “solution” to preventing transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
With that belly laugh out of the way, and recalling that this new evidence, like that showing masks don’t work, will change no minds whatsoever, let’s examine the results.
Results A total of 54 relevant studies with 77?758 participants reporting household secondary transmission were identified. Estimated household secondary attack rate was 16.6% (95% CI, 14.0%-19.3%), higher than secondary attack rates for [the previous] SARS-CoV (7.5%; 95% CI, 4.8%-10.7%) and MERS-CoV (4.7%; 95% CI, 0.9%-10.7%). Household secondary attack rates were increased from symptomatic index cases (18.0%; 95% CI, 14.2%-22.1%) than from asymptomatic index cases (0.7%; 95% CI, 0%-4.9%), to adult contacts (28.3%; 95% CI, 20.2%-37.1%) than to child contacts (16.8%; 95% CI, 12.3%-21.7%), to spouses (37.8%; 95% CI, 25.8%-50.5%) than to other family contacts (17.8%; 95% CI, 11.7%-24.8%), and in households with 1 contact (41.5%; 95% CI, 31.7%-51.7%) than in households with 3 or more contacts (22.8%; 95% CI, 13.6%-33.5%).
In case you missed it in the blizzard of numbers, symptomatic transmission is estimated at 18%, and asymptomatic at 0.7%. Plus or minus.
Asymptomatic transmission, as has long been argued (in vain) is not important. This 0.7% is also the estimate for people mingling together for long periods on top of each other, sometimes literally. It will necessarily be less in places like restaurants, barbershops, and other areas of causal contact. Which is to say, those “non-essential” businesses not run by oligarchs.
Again, asymptomatic transmission is not a “thing”.
What we have learned is what all experts knew before 2020, but pretended to forget after: that the best way to handle disease outbreaks is quarantine the sick and let the healthy be at liberty.
Details
You can read the paper, or glance through the supplementary information (click on the link in the paper), which is pages and pages long. The gist is that this is a standard meta-analysis, with all the standard plus and minuses of the genre. The confidence intervals are parametric and not predictive, meaning they are too small. This is the usual criticism of all classical statistical analyses.
They separate out China from non-China, they index studies by trustworthiness, giving some studies more weight than others, and so on. This is well because Northeast Asians have responded to the infection differently (and better) than other races. I don’t mean politically, but biologically. Medicine, when they’re quiet about it, still tracks results by race, knowing its importance.
I’ll let them tell you of the importance of lockdowns (they don’t call them that):
Households are favorable environments for transmission. They are what are known as 3Cs environments, as they are closed spaces, where family members may crowd and be in close contact with conversation.94 There may be reduced use of personal protective equipment relative to other settings.
Golly.
Here’s their conclusion, in its entirety.
The findings of this study suggest that households are and will continue to be important venues for transmission, even where community transmission is reduced. Prevention strategies, such as increased mask-wearing at home, improved ventilation, voluntary isolation at external facilities, and targeted antiviral prophylaxis, should be further explored.
Mask wearing at home is silly, since it will be like mask wearing in public. People imagine masks to be protective because they’re unable to conceive the forty-two times they adjusted their ill-fitting, highly permeable placebo couldn’t protect them. Masks in the house would be even more lax than in public, where patrols of shrieking harpies enforce the rules.
Voluntary isolation—the old word is quarantine—of those who are symptomatic is not insane, and to be encouraged.
Quarantines are eminently more sensible than lockdowns, which only cause pain, and cause death.
Government won’t stop using them, though, for two excellent reasons: (1) they will never admit to error, especially one so monumental and deadly, and (2) they are enjoying their newfound powers, granted to them by your fear.
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Your government is out to kill you. Yet at least half of you think they are you loving parent. Sure…..
Want to take bets on how long before this study is “recinded”????
The only justification they have for masks right now is asymptomatic transmission. That’s the nut of the risable “my mask protects you” propaganda and it’s the only way they get most well-meaning persuadable people to comply.
If you are not symptomatic and you haven’t recently been ill, the virus isn’t reproducing and it can’t be spreading. This is basic virology 101.
So how has it happened? Misused PCR tests exaggerating the prevalence of “infections”, which then get breathlessly reported in the news as widespread “cases”, combined with deliberate misinformation that anyone who tests positive is contagious and therefore at risk of spreading the virus further. VOILA! Widespread panic over an exaggerated “pandemic”.
It’s simply not true. None of it.
“Northeast Asians have responded to the infection differently (and better) than other races…biologically. Medicine…still tracks results by race….”
Thanks for bringing this up.
The 800 pound elephant in the room: What’s the status of the “pandemic” in Africa?
Why do we have breathless accounts of “cases” in Tokyo, Seoul, Madrid, Brussels, Oklahoma City, Rio de Janiero, Manila, Mumbai, New York City, Tehran, Milan, Wuhan, etc., etc., but little to nothing from Accra, Lagos, Kinshasa, etc., etc.?
The conditions in those places would appear to be nearly perfect to spread a respiratory virus–crowded, close, conversation-filled.
The world NGOs and do-gooders nearly always bring everything back to Africa (Feed the World! Do they know it’s Christmas…?!).
What is the state of the “pandemic” in Africa?
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@Kent Clizbe as you probably know: the “state of the pandemic” in Africa is such, there are a lot additional deaths from tuberculosis, malaria and HIV , more than worldwide deaths from Covid19 – due to the lockdown regime. As the honorable NYT reported back in late summer when there was no talk of winter lockdowns yet.
That’s genocide in my book, but who cares.
Belief in the asymptomatic myth is a product of worthless US science education.
People who honestly believe that the government or Big Pharma actually care for their health have an IQ of zero.
Africa is not having an issue because they eat HCQ like candy as a malaria prophylactic.
HCQ is widely available OTC or distributed at no cost in Africa.
I repeat, what I’ve been saying since April. The worldwide governmental response to Covid will, in the fullness of time, be seen as the greatest collective crime against humanity ever perpetrated. Everyone responsible deserves to suffer the absolute harshest penalties, pain, and suffering in this world and the next.
So asymptomatic transmission in the home is less than 1%, according to a huge study published by JAMA. That removes the possible need for NPI outside the home. (It might be of interest to note here that the CDC posted several Asian studies that ostensibly proved the existence asymptomatic transmission as a way to undergird their “masks help us all” message. Originally, they linked to the papers, but after a while, they removed the links. I guess people following the links led to embarrassment!) As Sheri noted, there is probably a clock ticking on this study being retracted. Then again, since data and analysis has been ineffective in changing people’s minds since, well, the time of fire being discovered, there is no need to retract it. Apparently that old (supposedly) Chinese curse is coming true!
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What is NPI? The only google result for that acronym is “National Provider Identification,” which wouldn’t seem to make sense in context here.
NPI in this context is non-pharmaceutical intervention.
Ah. So, stuff like masks basically?
Look at this 100% science-free trash propaganda peddled by Time magazine:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/what-makes-covid-19-different-from-the-flu/
wild goose: MSN link says it’s been removed. Maybe they took your criticism to heart! 😉
Time has been trash for quite a long time now, anyway. Do they still even produce a paper mag?
@Dennis,
Yes, that and ‘social distancing’ and ‘non-essential’ business closures, plus OSHA on steroids to come.
Muzzles and anti-social distancing, etc. are all nonsense anyway, but among the chief dogmas of the Branch Covidian Cult, so no matter what any studies or data say, it won’t help. They are already talking about them never ending, even with the supposedly miraculous vaccine. They want muzzles and permanent “Covid rules” on forevermore, to grind the world into servile submission to a grim, medicalized, techno-totalitarian future – all in the name of alleged “health and safety” of course. According to the brain-dead governor of my state we are actually in a “third wave” now…and I’m sure he and his minions have already scheduled the fourth to begin just as his current tyrannical decrees expire next month.
Kenan Meyer – off topic-ish, but there is one truth that is guaranteed to get you dismissed from any conversation, it trumps Godwin’s Law even. HIV is not a problem. It is at best a co-factor, but almost certainly it is a passenger and harmless, simply a marker. The madness that is happening now with PCR tests, this happened in the 1980s and go a life of it’s own. It’s all nonsense. People died sure, but there were lots of other things mixed in – not least, as per this article, the treatment (which was quite literally chemotherapy).
Were you ever suspicious how AIDS has largely just gone away here, and basically only exists in Africa but with an entirely different presentation as in the Western world? Sure they have reasons, but they’re just rationalisations. They played this game once before. And. coincidetally, the solution to that one had people having less sex and, therefore, less kids also.
And Fauci is in it up to his neck.
The local MSM is trumpeting the “skyrocketing” “case count” in California as more reason for us to mask-up and lock-down. What if everyone gets infected?! We’re all gonna die! Freezer trucks in Cali to haul away the dead! Why aren’t you panicking?! Yeah, right.
Is there anyone here with boots on the ground in California who can tell us what’s really happening there? Is this more out of control testing combined with seasonal respiratory issues and some CV-19? Or is the situation grim?
Frank: Yes, Fauci played a key role in the AIDS-HIV scare, and played a huge role in catastrophic “treatments” like AZT. I think you’re spot on in your take on HIV. It is curious how it seems to have “disappeared” in the West (Did/Does it really exist, or was it also a product of PCR-induced hysteria, and the corruption of researchers and officials like Fauci and Big Pharma? Is it true that HIV has acually never been isolated in a lab (as some say is also the case with SARS-COV2)? Of course, the big third rail in discussion of AIDS/HIV, has always also been the relationship between immune system health and lifestyle – something that played a huge part in the initial AIDS outbreak in the ’80s (especially in gay bathhouses, as detailed studies of early patients – especially the so-called “patient zero” – have shown. But most don’t want to touch the “lifestyle” issues, since it’s a big PC no-no).
Paul: It’s all PCR test-induced hysteria everywhere at this point. Saw a report today that in Britain hospital occupancy is at 89%. OMG! – they’re gonna be overwhelmed with dying COVID patients and bodies stacked in the hallways! What was UK hospital occupancy at this same time last year during peak flu season? 96%. Even Denmark, which previously had a relatively sane response to the virus, instituted indoor mask mandates about a month or so ago, but “cases” have gone way up (as they have elsewhere in most of the world long after mask mandates were introduced, because PCR testing has skyrocketed as well). In a sane world things like this would be proof masks don’t work, that hospitals are not and never have been at risk of being overwhelmed (the initial “flatten the curve” justification to kickstart lockdowns), and that mass PCR testing is a problem and the main driver of “cases.” But the politicians and media will just keep pushing Covid hysteria whatever the data on anything says. It’s all about political and economic and social control and power.
Dennis: yes exactly, there were political pressures to avoid lifestyle reasons for the outbreak of novel-ish diseases – the first patients were in bathhouses sleeping with hundreds of partners per year and taking drugs, yet this was pushed aside. Eventually they came up with a superstition instead. Just like “you hug grandma and you kill her”, it was “you have sex and you kill her”. Then the 3-4 defining diseases starting magically changing? No bother, let’s just keep lengthening the list of defining diseases until we have so many we’re bound to find enough deaths to keep us going.
One telling fact is, if you ask for proof, the proof is always quite recent, certainly not from before the “discovery” – Gallo stood in a press conference in 1981 (I think) and announced HIV is the probable cause of AIDS. Yet he had nothing, no proof at all, pretty much between a hunch and wishful thinking. Was it more likely there was one public guess made – before a single scientific publication on it, literally – and it turned out right? That all the later evidence proved the hunch, that Gallo is a genius detective? Or is it that the guess had to be right politically and they have spent untold billions milking the delusion since. Ringing any bells?
The definition of it is circular, so there isn’t even any raw data ie. recurrent pneumonia with HIV is defined as AIDS, recurrent pneumonia without HIV is just….recurrent pneumonia. So it’s impossible to even query the theory, it is correct by definition. It’s preposterous.
Peter Duesberg was California scientist of the year, won every grant he ever applied for, world respected virologist, has integrity to go with it. Then he pointed out the obvious vacuity of the HIV->AIDS dogma in print – never got another grant, was entirely ostracised, media blackout for him amidst major fearmongering, dismissed as a “denier”, people claiming he was killing millions with his denialism etc. Ringing ay bells?
One person has cropped up in the news lately, Kary Mullis, won nobel prize for inventing PCR – and so had FU money, no position to protect. He was talking about how the theory was nonsense for 20 years.
Interesting stuff, Frank. Perusing the Wiki info on Duesberg and Mullins, it’s striking the vehemence with which these highly respected and accomplished scientists are just angrily dismissed as if they suddenly became ignorant quacks because they dared question certain entrenched narratives.
Some interesting quotes from Mullis that seem pretty spot-on about compromised science for our current situation: “…the never-ending quest for more grants and staying with established dogmas….science is being practiced by people who are dependent on being paid for what they are going to find out, not for what they actually produce…” And according to wiki, “Mullis claimed climate change and HIV/AIDS theories were promulgated by a conspiracy of environmentalists, government agencies, and scientists attempting to preserve their careers and earn money, rather than scientific evidence.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong. Being compromised and corrupted by profit motive and money from Big Pharma and others (like grants from “philanthropic” foundations or governments – both usually driven by agendas other than disinterested desires for scientific truth or the genuine health and well-being of mankind) has been a serious problem for scientific research and the medical profession for a long time.
A shame Mullis died in August 2019. Wonder what he’d make of our current Covid situation and the performance of the scientific establishment – officials like Fauci, agencies like CDC, Big Pharma, et al., – and especially the mass use of PCR testing as a general diagnostic tool, particularly in asymptomatic people. Methinks he’d be appalled (and in light of his views on the HIV-AIDS, I wonder if he’d also reject the notion that there is even reliable proof a virus called SARS-COV-2 is the cause of a supposedly new flu-like illness called Covid? Personally I’m increasingly skeptical Covid is a genuine new disease and not just a new name for a slightly worse than normal flu which has been purposely blown all out of proportion by media, political, and medical establishment propaganda and the use of mass PCR testing to create “cases” where none really exist – and why else have ordinary flu numbers declined so dramatically, with CDC just creating new catch-all categories like ILI and CLI?).
“these highly respected and accomplished scientists are just angrily dismissed as if they suddenly became ignorant quacks because they dared question certain entrenched narratives”
Yes it’s disgusting. There is a video called (something like) “peter duesberg: a cautionary tale” where he tells a story about this that says it all.
Good quotes – Mullis is excellent on the corruption of science, he totally nails it. Mullis would unquestionably be in the news now if he were still alive, and imagine if the inventor of the PCR test was on TV saying what a crock the whole thing was! Yeah on covid me too, I’m increasingly sure that if the media would never have mentioned this “new” covid virus, there would have been a few headlines of full ICUs etc. due to flu at the peak and then it would have disappeared in a few weeks.
How awful are Pennsylvania’s Public Health officials?
Their own data:
Deaths with COVID as of 9/4 7,742; 12/18 13,608
% Deaths 80 was 57.22% now 57.79%
% Deaths 70 was 78.80% now 80.34%
% Deaths <45 was 1.06% now 1.09%
PA COVID deaths last 16 weeks: 5,866 total deaths; and people under 45, 67 deaths.
Compare with Haiti (PA 12.7M Haiti 11.4M) 7 total deaths.
Between when the first wave subsided (late May) and the second wave started (late October) they learned nothing, ignored evidence from practicing doctors, ignored studies from outside USA/EU, and continued to impose bad policies and outlaw good medicine.
Found a link to that Duesberg video. Will have to watch it later this afternoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-t_Fa6rrPs
Spud: I wonder why deaths in Haiti are so low. Are they just not testing at such mass levels, thus not creating phony PCR-induced “cases”? All we keep hearing here is that blacks are supposedly “disproportionately” affected (which may be true in some sense due to prevalence among American blacks of certain underlying conditions that do exacerbate Covid; but that’s no different than saying Covid “disproportionately” affects those over 80 with multiple co-morbidities. Duh). So much so that health officials have been making fools of themselves with blatantly anti-white racist comments about prioritizing vaccines for demographics that include more blacks and other minorities (even as places like Cornell carve out racial exemptions to attempts to make vaccines mandatory, on grounds that blacks have reason to fear vaccines imposed by whitey).
I’m not picking on JR Ewing, I’m just framing my question precisely. Anyone can answer, I’m very interested in this.
JR Ewing — you wrote: “If you are not symptomatic and you haven’t recently been ill, the virus isn’t reproducing and it can’t be spreading. This is basic virology 101.”
I’m on Dr. Briggs’ side, and presumably your side 🙂 But I need to ask the question: why are so many sources of information currently declaring that asymptomatic transmission is real, and they are citing studies, etc.?
See: https://reason.com/2020/11/16/masks-are-a-tool-not-a-panacea/?itm_source=parsely-api
(by Ronald Bailey, stating: “Researchers now think that viral spread from asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people may account for more than 50 percent of transmissions in COVID-19 outbreaks. Yet some recent research indicates that masks can also protect their wearers from infection by filtering out virus particles that they might otherwise breathe in.”)
See: https://reason.com/2020/11/18/masks-not-very-effective-at-protecting-wearers-says-new-danish-study/
(subtitle: “But masks are still likely to prevent infected people from transmitting the virus.”)
I’m not a biology or virology pro, so I have to depend upon other learned sources.
Either asymptomatic people can shed virus, or they can’t. If they can, then there is number or range of numbers describing the rate of shedding, and there are ideas about how “contagious” that makes the asymptomatic people.
Truth is our ally, no matter what the truth is. I’m very interested in how we address this issue.
-Rick