No symptoms, isn't this a good thing?
Plus one of the most common ways for a zoonotic strain of a disease to become human-transmissible is to end up mixing around in the same body as an existing human-transmissible strain of that disease.
One of the better strategies in that game was to spend all you points on mutations that improve contagiousness and minimizing "scary symptoms" (like haemorrhaging from the eyes) early on, and then ramping those up later on so you kill everyone before scientists can complete their research into a cure. Research only started when your plague became disruptive.
Many viruses are linked to cancers, MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, T1D and so on. Research is finding that some of these viruses may actually be low grade infections or left over viral proteins causing constant immune dysfunction.
People who claimed they never got SARS-CoV-2 for example were tested with a novel ultra sensitive single molecule assay and found that 99.9% of individuals samples were indeed asymptomatically infected.
Here’s an earlier version of this claim showing 95%.
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/230/3/e601/7639429
Some of these individuals later went on to develop Long COVID. They are using this assay in an antiviral trial to see if it reduces the amount of SCV2 proteins this assay can detect.
We know diseases spread through the population constantly.
How does this compare?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic
Being surprised by asymptomatic cases suggests their IFR numbers are high on the page you linked, due to low occurrence and conflation with other colds (or asymptomatic cases).
Is there anything to suggest that the asymptomatic strain detected here is worse?
Unless they are performing large scale sampling of the general population, the denominator (cases of confirmed influenza) is potentially much larger in practice.
Moreso because it seems likely that the confirmed cases are sampled from the sickest population seeking treatment.
And this article is further evidence of exactly this, since the "silent infections" here were previously uncounted.
We both understand that pandemics don't happen under controlled, fully observable situations, yes?
And therefore must be studied and predicted based on incomplete information?
And this has been the case since the dawn of epidemiology?
1) because it can mutate and develop new and different symptoms (c.f., yearly flu)
2) because the lack of testing/symptoms means its more difficult to identify and track (c.f., early covid)
3) because people can be infectious without knowing and pass it along...see 1
4) because no symptoms now doesn't mean it does not cause harm (c.f., HPV and cervical cancer)
Furthermore the more viruses you're exposed to, the more likely you'll get one mutated to really hurt you. The best way to deal with viruses is to avoid them to the extent possible.
There’s also contrary examples to your general rule, eg, catching cowpox protected you from smallpox — so you were better off being exposed to the relatively weaker cowpox, even if it wasn’t risk free.
There are a lot of more dangerous threats than another flu virus.
Btw, that erosion of trust in societies, combined with cluelessness and learned helplessness facing known, serious yet solvable issues (like pandemics) esp. in democracies worries me the most.
This particular virus is asymptomatic without known fatalities.
The only time it can make sense evolutionary to kill your host is when you have multiple host options. This could devastate the poultry industry for far longer than we expected
No way to know how much it's been inflated until we find more of these, though.