<story><title>Is It a Pandemic Yet?</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/opinion/coronavirus-pandemic.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>burtonator</author><text>If this is asymptomatic do they eventually get sick or do they just harbor the virus?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand how the virus can be asymptomatic?  How does it reproduce and what triggers it to become symptomatic?</text></item><item><author>est31</author><text>&amp;gt; Some 152 cases (and at least three deaths) were confirmed in Italy on Sunday, up from three cases on Thursday. The number of infected people in South Korea jumped to 763 (and six deaths) in just days.&lt;p&gt;To add an important point: In both countries, they have detected covid-19 only well after it has spread inside the country. E.g. in Italy it started with one severely ill patient who went to the hospital and got tested positive for covid-19. Then they recursively traced people that person has been in contact with and found over a hundred cases. They still haven&amp;#x27;t found &amp;quot;patient zero&amp;quot; yet, the first person in that chain who entered Italy with the disease. Before, it has been all in the dark. There are likely many such pools of carriers all over the world. This aspect of covid-19 is its real danger: in many cases the disease is asymptomatic so you don&amp;#x27;t get a test and keep interacting with people normally, but it&amp;#x27;s still able to infect others.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>usrusr</author><text>I think of asymptomatic infectivity as a sitting war between the virus and the host immune system. The virus has taken hold in a region where it a) does not grow at a rate harmful to the host and b) already has access to a spreading mechanism, while the immune system succeeds in keeping the infection away from organs where (either) c) the virus would grow at an unsustainable rate, eventually taking down it&amp;#x27;s host and&amp;#x2F;or d) the immune system&amp;#x27;s counter reaction would be so severe that it would endanger the host. Avoiding c) and d) are in the best interest of both virus and immune system (even though both are obviously not aware of any of that), so both are effectively happy. Sooner or later the immune system will develop a countermeasure nonetheless, but until then the virus will have spread to other hosts generously. Reliably reaching a state like that would be the second best evolutionary outcome of a virus, only topped by permanently resisting the immune system&amp;#x27;s removal attempts.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is It a Pandemic Yet?</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/opinion/coronavirus-pandemic.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>burtonator</author><text>If this is asymptomatic do they eventually get sick or do they just harbor the virus?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand how the virus can be asymptomatic?  How does it reproduce and what triggers it to become symptomatic?</text></item><item><author>est31</author><text>&amp;gt; Some 152 cases (and at least three deaths) were confirmed in Italy on Sunday, up from three cases on Thursday. The number of infected people in South Korea jumped to 763 (and six deaths) in just days.&lt;p&gt;To add an important point: In both countries, they have detected covid-19 only well after it has spread inside the country. E.g. in Italy it started with one severely ill patient who went to the hospital and got tested positive for covid-19. Then they recursively traced people that person has been in contact with and found over a hundred cases. They still haven&amp;#x27;t found &amp;quot;patient zero&amp;quot; yet, the first person in that chain who entered Italy with the disease. Before, it has been all in the dark. There are likely many such pools of carriers all over the world. This aspect of covid-19 is its real danger: in many cases the disease is asymptomatic so you don&amp;#x27;t get a test and keep interacting with people normally, but it&amp;#x27;s still able to infect others.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>theseadroid</author><text>As other people said, most viral diseases have a asymptomatic period. What&amp;#x27;s unique about Coronavirus is that the patient can be infectious during the asymptomatic period. This makes coronavirus so hard to be controlled.</text></comment>