palerider wrote: ↑Wed Mar 04, 2020 8:46 am
Early reports are that, *most* of the people who contract SARS-COV-2 don't progress to having COVID-19.
Exactly. But in this case, casual contact can kill--contact from someone with the virus whose reaction to that virus may not have the symptoms that categorize them arbitrarily as having the disease. And the public is interested in slowing the spread, or at least it should be. And the reason the public should be interested in slowing the spread of the virus (not just the active reaction to the virus) is that casual contact can kill.
So, yes, there is a name for the pathogen. Yes, there is an arbitrary definition for how a significant reaction to the pathogen is termed. But that is irrelevant to how the public should respond, in this instance, in my opinion. Trying to differentiate between "catching a cold" and what the particular name of the virus is that caused the cold doesn't affect how the public should respond to viruses. Forcing everyone to refer to a particular season's flu by using the proper name for which strain it is that year is pretty silly to me. You have a cold. You catch a cold. You have a virus. You catch a virus. You pass on a virus. He is home from work with a virus. The reaction isn't the point.
As far as I'm concerned, someone "has COVID-19" if they have the ability to pass on the virus SARS-CoV-2, in the same way that someone "has the flu" or "has a cold" if they are able to pass a virus on to others. It is the spread of the pathogen that is the point, not the name of the occasional/possible reaction to it, when it comes to public behavior. "Don't worry about him; he technically doesn't have the disease called blah-blah-blah" doesn't impart accurate information in practice.
Pathogens are often referred to in public discourse by the diseases they cause, and the diseases caused are often referred to by the name of the pathogen, out where the rubber meets the road in the public. And in this case, it is actually helpful. Otherwise, the public says, "Oh, it's OK to have unprotected sex with him, he's only HIV-positive, not actual AIDS." That is a behavior discussion, not a medical terminology discussion.
Be a stickler if you want. I respect it. It can be educational. But I let the public discuss it with whatever terminology becomes common, technical or not, when it helps to keep the behavior-conversation clear.
Hey, just me.
But my earlier point, in the words of an expert:
We still need to learn exactly how the virus spreads from person to person and how likely people are to get sick when they’re exposed, Maragakis says. We also need more data to understand the mortality rate, File says. “How many people are exposed who don’t show symptoms or who have mild symptoms? That’s hard to figure out during cold and flu season,” says Amanda McClelland, R.N., M.P.H., senior vice president of Prevent Epidemics at Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies. “That’s the key piece that’s missing.”--
https://www.consumerreports.org/coronav ... -covid-19/
You can apparently be exposed to the virus but not become infected by it.
Or you can apparently be exposed to the virus and become infected by it without showing significant symptoms in reaction to the infection.
You can apparently pass the virus on to others when not showing significant symptoms in reaction to the infection.
What names you give to any of that may matter a lot to you, or may not matter at all to you, but the facts appear to be the same, either way, at this point, and are worthy of consideration when making personal decisions.
Then again, maybe my brain just processes such things a little differently from the accepted way of most. I never claimed to be normal.
