Update: After facing backlash, the WHO has sought to "clarify" their previous statements on asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19, now claiming that "some people who are asymptomatic or some people who don't have symptoms can transmit the virus on." Read more here.
The World Health Organization, which has proven about as useful as a screen door on a submarine, now says – wait for it…
…it’s “very rare” that an asymptomatic person could spread COVID-19 to another person.
Which negates the very reason we were given on why we’ve shut down businesses, bankrupted families, banned large gatherings, closed church doors, canceled weddings, forgone funerals and slapped suffocating masks on everyone’s face.
“Coronavirus patients without symptoms aren’t driving the spread of the virus, World Health Organization officials said Monday, casting doubt on concerns by some researchers that the disease could be difficult to contain due to asymptomatic infections,” CNBC now reports.
“From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said at a news briefing from the U.N. agency’s Geneva headquarters. “It’s very rare.”
“We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing,” she said. “They’re following asymptomatic cases. They’re following contacts. And they’re not finding secondary transmission onward. It’s very rare.”
So naturally, this makes me – and, I’m assuming, many other people – exceedingly angry.
Now excuse me while I go loot the local Target, since it's the only thing I'm apparently permitted to do.