Meme in an email blast sent out by the far right group Mesa County Concerned Citizen on 11/15/21, showing that likely many local people lack any understanding of how respiratory disease transmission works — vital information that’s central to getting a pandemic under control
The above meme was sent out in an email blast last November 15, 2021 by the far right extremist group Mesa County Concerned Citizen.
The meme makes it clear that many Mesa County residents likely lack an understanding about how the transmission of respiratory diseases works — information that is massively important to our ability to bring the virus under control. This could be one reason why the coronavirus has been able to spread so efficiently in Mesa County, and why it is likely to persist here.
People with Covid-19 CAN spread it without seeming ill
People can be infected with Covid-19 and not have any symptoms. This state is called being “asymptomatic.” Some asymptomatic people can be infected with Covid-19 and never develop symptoms. With Covid, this is commonly seen in children. Others can be infected without having any symptoms initially, but then go on to develop symptoms in a few days. This period during which people have Covid but don’t show any symptoms is called the “pre-symptomatic” phase. Both terms — “asymptomatic” and “pre-symptomatic” — refer to people who are infected with the virus but show no symptoms.
The time between when you first are exposed to Covid — or any communicable respiratory disease — and the time you start to show symptoms is called the “incubation period.” The incubation period for Covid can be as long as 14 days, but the average is about 5-6 days. Different variants can also have different incubation periods.
Because people can be either pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic, they can appear to be perfectly healthy while spreading the disease to others.
Covid-19 is not the most communicable disease. There’s a worse one.
Measles is the most communicable disease known to man. It transmits so efficiently that a person can catch measles just by walking into a room 2 hours after someone with measles has been in there and then left. It is so contagious that if a person has it, 9 out of 10 people that person will also become infected if they are not protected. Before the measles vaccine was introduced in the United States in 1963, almost all kids got the disease by the time they reached 15, which resulted in 400-500 deaths annually in children.
Vaccine mandates have worked to keep society largely healthy and free of many diseases
The state of Colorado now mandates vaccines for kids for Measles and a host of other diseases before they can enter day cares and schools, including for Chicken Pox, Mumps, rubella (German Measles), Polio, Tetanus, Diptheria, Whooping Cough, and Hepatitis B. These mandates have done wonders to reduce the occurrence of these diseases in the U.S.
Lab data has shown that people infected with Covid-19 are probably most infectious right before they develop symptoms — about 2 days before they develop them — so yes, Mesa County Concerned Citizen, it’s not a scam. People who appear to be perfectly healthy can indeed spread Covid-19 to others just by breathing on them. This is especially true with the Omicron variant, which is four times more transmissible than the original strain of SARS-Cov2. That’s why the Omicron variant was able to sweep the U.S. to become the dominant strain in just four weeks.