According to a report released on Sunday, over 43,000 people who had tested positive for the Chinese coronavirus at the end of February were placed in quarantine but not included in the official tally of confirmed coronavirus cases in China.
The South China Morning Post revealed that Communist China purposely left these people out of the tally because they were “silent carriers” and had little to no symptoms. They changed the rules on February 7th, allowing themselves to exclude tens of thousands of people.
The number of “silent carriers” could be as high as one-third of those who test positive, according to classified Chinese government data seen by the South China Morning Post.
EVERYONE IS MISREADING THE JOHNS HOPKINS DASHBOARD
Countries tally the cases differently.
The World Health Organisation classifies all people who test positive as confirmed cases regardless of whether they experience any symptoms. South Korea does as well. But the Chinese government changed its classification guidelines on February 7, counting only those patients with symptoms as confirmed cases.
The United States, Britain, and Italy simply do not test people without symptoms, apart from medical workers who have prolonged exposure to the virus.
The numbers we are getting are being compared as if they were apples to apples but they’re actually apples to oranges since every country counts differently.
Also not considered is the population of countries, a rather important figure. The U.S. is now number three on the Johns Hopkins dashboard in the number of cases, behind China and Italy. Italy’s population is 60 million and ours is 327 million. Number three is irrelevant proportionately.
SPREADING THE DISEASE WHEN ASYMPTOMATIC
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has reported instances of asymptomatic individuals spreading the virus.
“Some spread might be possible before people show symptoms,” the CDC said. “[B]ut this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”
However, in a study that included experts from China, the United States, Britain, and Hong Kong, it was found that up to 79% of coronavirus cases in Wuhan were spread by people who showed little to no symptoms.
“These undocumented infections often experience mild, limited, or no symptoms and hence go unrecognized, and, depending on their contagiousness and numbers, can expose a far greater portion of the population to the virus.
That’s a problem.
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