The World Health Organization came out with a finding today that set some people’s heads spinning.

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said that “from the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual. It’s very rare.”

Straight from the mouth of the WHO official.

“They’re not finding secondary transmission onward. It’s very rare.”

“It appears to be rare that an asymptomatic indivudal actually transmits onward” pic.twitter.com/BgWgQku9UT

— cam says BLM 🌐 (@camhasthoughts) June 8, 2020

From MarketWatch:

“We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing,” Van Kerkhove said at a briefing Monday from the U.N.’s headquarters. “They’re following asymptomatic cases. They’re following contacts. And they’re not finding secondary transmission onward.”

She said while there was some sign of transmission in nursing homes and households it was rare and “What we really want to be focused on is following the symptomatic cases,” Van Kerkhove said.

In other words, while it’s possible to get it from asymptomatic people, those aren’t the folks driving the virus spread. This is contrary to what officials have said early on, that the virus was more challenging because of asymptomatic spread and that’s why we had to stay inside and be masked because we didn’t know if we had it and we could be killing Grandma.

In April, the CDC had said that the possibility of transmission from asymptomatic people was why we needed to limit contact not just of the obviously sick or symptomatic people but of the healthy/apparently healthy as well.

“To control the pandemic, it might not be enough for only persons with symptoms to limit their contact with others because persons without symptoms might transmit infection,” the CDC said.

The WHO’s statement has naturally set heads spinning and wondering again about the need or efficacy of the severe lockdowns. If we should have focused on the symptomatic why were the asymptomatic and the healthy locked down?

The WHO now says asymptomatic coronavirus carriers spreading the virus is “very rare.” So why did we lock down again? https://t.co/tl79geproa

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 8, 2020

This is far bigger news than the BLM culture wars. If asymptomatic transmission is, as the WHO says, very rare, then many of the restrictions currently being imposed can be lifted. https://t.co/otUjZoHHYf

— Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan) June 8, 2020

I just looked up the WHO's definition of "very rare". It means less than one in 10,000 cases. That means the WHO is saying that of the 7 million cases of COVID-19 recorded to date world wide, less than 700 were caused by asymptomatic transmission. https://t.co/Ic88DcEk7E

— Lorrie Goldstein (@sunlorrie) June 8, 2020

Ashish Jha incoming dean at the Brown School of Public Health, raised the question of what was WHO talking about when they said “asymptomatic” – do they mean truly asymptomatic cases (those who have the disease but never develop symptoms) or pre-symptomatic (those who have the virus before they start showing symptoms).

So – it might be @WHO is drawing a distinction between asymptomatic spread and pre-symptomatic spread.

And it may be there isn't a lot of asymptomatic spread but plenty of pre-symptomatic spread.

Would be helpful to get the full report that they are referencing.

5/6

— Ashish K. Jha (@ashishkjha) June 8, 2020

So it depends exactly what they are talking about. And of course, they are not at all trustworthy giving their shifting statements and toadying for China. But if they are really talking anyone without symptoms showing than yes, that’s one more nail in the coffin of the lockdowns at this point.