(Misinformation in June 10, 2020 “Truth in Media” w/ Ben Swann on YouTube)
The video on YouTube was terminated.
NOTE: An explanation of the article, including quoted material is shown in black text. My comments are shown in red.
This entire episode of “Truth in Media” is unfortunately based on a simple misunderstanding of the word “asymptomatic“.
A video of Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization (WHO) begins at 1:40 where she states that according to studies that have been performed, “asymptomatic transmission” of Covid-19 “still appears to be rare”.
The word “asymptomatic” derives from Greek, literally meaning “no symptoms”. However, depending on how the word is used, the word can mean either (1) that an individual does not have symptoms at a particular time or (2) that an individual will not develop any symptoms during the course of the infection.
Ben Swann is taking the word to mean (1) above, to describe a moment when a person shows no symptoms. However, Dr. Van Kerkhove at WHO is using the word with (2), the second meaning. And this makes a huge difference.
There is a tremendous amount of scientific evidence that individuals are expected to be highly contagious within the two days before they show symptoms. In fact, contact tracers in the US are trained to ask about all contacts that a “case” (a person testing positive for Covid-19) had starting with the two days before symptoms began, so that the contact tracer could then make contact with these individuals and ask them to quarantine.
Although during the two days before symptoms begin, the word may refer to the moment that an individual has no symptoms, for example in “on that day she was asymptomatic” (just search online for “day she was asymptomatic”), outside of such contexts the word is taken by scientists to mean someone who never develops symptoms, as in “asymptomatic individual”, especially when describing past events where the word “pre-symptomatic” should have been used if symptoms eventually appeared.
There are some individuals who are truly asymptomatic, but scientific evidence shows that contagion from such individuals is very rare, which is what Dr. Van Kerkhove was explaining.
The text appearing at 3:22 was from CNBC.com:
“Asymptomatic spread of coronavirus is ‘very rare,’ WHO says”
(June 8, 2020)
The following text from this same page (but not shown in this video) makes it clear that Dr. Van Kerkhove was speaking about asymptomatic cases, where “the carrier never develops symptoms”. (Italics are mine, as is the bold formatting of the word in question.):
“Preliminary evidence from the earliest outbreaks indicated that the virus could spread from person-to-person contact, even if the carrier never develops symptoms. But WHO officials now say that while asymptomatic spread can occur, it is not the main way it’s being transmitted.”
Although WHO officials have “walked back” Dr. Van Kerkhove’s comments and are now stating that “asymptomatic spread can occur”, this does not necessarily contradict the evidence from some studies that it may be rare or that there is simply not enough evidence to convince the scientific community of how much spreading occurs from such individuals. To me as a scientist it seems a better way to explain what science knows (and what it doesn’t know) in a way that is less confusing to the general public.
The article shown at 5:00 can be accessed at:
“A study on infectivity of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers”
(May 13, 2020)
The article studied the contacts of one 22-year-old female patient at a hospital in China who was admitted for a worsened condition of congenital heart disease (CHD), who tested positive for Covid-19, who besides having a shortness of breath attributable to CHD showed no symptoms of Covid-19 during the 21 days from when she was tested positive until she was discharged from the hospital.
None of her 455 contacts caught Covid-19, but she was a truly asymptomatic case, not a pre-symptomatic case, so nothing learned from her case would apply to how infectious an individual can be BEFORE they begin having symptoms.
As the entire message of this episode hinges on the definition of “asymptomatic”, practically everything Mr. Swann is saying in this episode is untrue.
A June 9, 2020 article in STAT NEWS explains more about this misunderstanding.