By no means all cases involve fever, there is a substantial minority that don't. What is certain is that the presentation and course of this disease is highly variable. In other words is is all over the map. The advice that is crucial, if you are ill with any respiratory or even GI symptoms you need to self isolate at once.
I'm sure you have heard the advice, if you are sick stay home. That is the most important advice. Actually if you look at what is happening in Europe, now is the time for everyone who does not have an essential occupation to be self isolating now, like my wife and I are.
From the article:
"While on sabbatical at the University of Padua, Crisanti has been participating in a mass testing experiment for COVID-19 infections in Vò, a town of roughly 3,400 people located west of Venice. Though the country's overall death toll is in the thousands and climbing, Crisanti said Vò has effectively stopped its local outbreak by testing — and retesting — every single resident, regardless of whether they showed any symptoms.
The town had its first confirmed COVID-19 case on Feb. 21, he said.
The initial round of testing that month showed three per cent of the population had been infected with the illness. Every single one of those residents was then put under isolation at home and not allowed to have any contact with others. Ten days later, the entire town was retested — at which point the rate of infection had dropped to 0.3 per cent, marking a 90 per cent decrease. "What we learned is that 25 per cent had influenza-like symptoms, and 75 per cent were completely asymptomatic," Crisanti said. "They were completely unaware."
He said given the high number of people who didn't show symptoms, the takeaway for other countries is to test widely, catch all possible cases early, and isolate them to prevent the virus from spreading like wildfire through a community."
Although we are testing at a higher rate in Canada than the US, it's pretty clear that it still isn't enough. And, if asymptomatic individuals outnumber the ill by 3 to 1 - even if they are less likely to pass it on - sheer weight of numbers combined with ignorance of their infection
must be contributing to the exponential increase in infections, wouldn't you agree?
