Day Twentytwo


Thomas cannot pay his credit card dues. The cheque drop facility that he has been using all his life is now closed. He doesn’t have a computer or netbanking facility. The nearest branch is not within walking distance of his home. He is too proud to ask his daughters. I offered to pay. There will be many such unusual problems faced by senior citizens.

Read about asymptotic cases today. The first confirmation that coronavirus could be transmitted by asymptomatic people came in February, when a case study described a 20-year-old woman from Wuhan, China, who passed the coronavirus to five family members but never got physically sick herself. One potential group of asymptomatic carriers could be children. A study in Iceland, which tested a large segment of its population, showed that 50% of the people who tested positive had no symptoms. An analysis of the confirmed coronavirus cases aboard the Diamond Princess cruise found that 18 % of the infected passengers were asymptomatic. Dr. Anthony Fauci estimates that 25 to 50 percent of cases may be asymptomatic. Many cases have been misclassified as asymptomatic, when in fact they were “presymptomatic.” People who are presymptomatic have no symptoms when they test positive, but go on to develop symptoms. The bottom line is that there are people out there shedding the virus who don’t know that they’re infected.

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