If somebody near you does that, should you be concerned?  Sure, sick people expel the virus that’s making them sick through body fluids forcibly propelled outward.  You can see a graphic demonstration of that phenomenon here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnC43QRsuM

I think most of us saw the brief video of one extreme response to something like this back at the beginning of the pandemic.  But it’s worth seeing again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LawuQG8Z81w

But isn’t it the stealth asymptomatic carrier the one about which we’re all worried?  Isn’t that what the masks are protecting us from, both ways (let’s not get into the chain link fence/mosquito deal; just remember the pores in that blue mask of yours are way bigger than the 100 nanometer virus).  Might there be lessons to be learned from somewhere else?  For example, do we still respect what comes out of China?  They gave us this virus.  They were also the first to handle the outbreak, and figured out quite a few things which we then followed https://wordpress.com/post/theviewfromharbal.com/337.  So might they still be able to teach us something about it?   A week before Thanksgiving, out of Wuhan, this time from Department of Social Medicine and Health Management, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China (not the virology lab), came a study published in Nature Communication, one of premier journal  Nature’s many versions, this dedicated to rapid communication of scientific findings.   In the study – “Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China” – they went out to survey everyone in Wuhan, with a population of more than 11 million people, more than our whole state of Michigan.  They started about 6 weeks after the lockdown had been lifted which officials had placed on the city during the peak of the crisis.  By then, the infections had largely burned out, only 6 new cases in the 4 weeks after.  They got 92.9% (9,899,828) of the city to “participate”, with medical review and DNA test for the virus (test tube brush up the nose).  They found not a single symptomatic new case.  They did find 300 people who carried the virus but were not sick (no symptoms whatsoever).  Then came the kicker.  They assessed 1,174 close contacts of these “asymptomatic carriers”.  And how many of them had the virus?  ZERO.  That’s right, as in zip, zilch, nada.  You can read it for yourself here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w. * There’s more in the paper, of course, but mostly it details characteristics of the “asymptomatic carriers”.

Of course, you have not heard this anywhere.   I only saw it as, as I’ve put down my manuscript writing for Christmas break, I’ve snuck some peeks back at politics.  Lucianne.com is my go-to source, and on there was a post from Sundance of The Conservative Treehouse that mentioned this study https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/12/20/covid-19-study-of-almost-ten-million-finds-no-evidence-of-asymptomatic-spread-media-quiet/#more-206303.

If asymptomatic transmission of coronavirus is not happening, and it appears with scientific certainty it is not, then all of the current lock-down regulations, mask wearing requirements and social distancing rules/decrees are based on a complete fallacy of false assumptions.  Our betters tell us to “respect the science”.  Well?

Sundance cites a longer article from an economics journal that goes into depth about the fallacy of asymptomatic spread and the damage being done by measures dictated to protect us from something that is not happening https://www.aier.org/article/asymptomatic-spread-revisited/.  I’m saving it for later, as I wanted to get out the Wuhan finding.

Let me close today with one more citation.  I’m sure I’m not the only boomer getting ever more fed up with those taking away my liberties in the name of protecting me and others.  A man once so popular and respected, his name followed by “…is God” was scrawled on the walls of the London venues where he played, has picked up his axe and lent his voice to an anthem for our times, penned by another revered boomer rocker.  So here is Eric Clapton singing Van Morrison’s “Stand and Deliver” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMkV4vYr_ik.  The words are simple and true, and I’m sure you’ll be able to sing along the second time through.  It’s already been banned by Amazon and Spotify.

*Cao, S., Gan, Y., Wang, C. et al. Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China. Nat Commun 11, 5917 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19802-w