Ogbunugafor C Brandon
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 165 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Public Health Modeling Unit, Yale School of Public Health, 60 College Street, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
Virus Evol. 2024 Dec 12;10(1):veae109. doi: 10.1093/ve/veae109. eCollection 2024.
The importance of asymptomatic transmission was a key discovery in our efforts to study and intervene in the COVID-19 pandemic. In (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Joshua Weitz uses this aspect of SARS-CoV-2 natural history to discuss many counterintuitive characteristics of the pandemic. In this essay, I engage the arguments in the book, and discuss why asymptomatic transmission is such a critical dimension of the study of infectious diseases. I explore ideas contained within and connect them to related issues in evolutionary virology and disease ecology, including epistemic uncertainty and the evolution of virulence. Furthermore, I comment on the broader messages in the text, including the gap between scientific knowledge and social understanding.
无症状传播的重要性是我们研究和干预新冠疫情过程中的一项关键发现。约书亚·韦茨在《新冠疫情：科学、社会与政策》（约翰·霍普金斯大学出版社，2024年）一书中利用新冠病毒自然史的这一方面来探讨疫情的许多违反直觉的特征。在本文中，我探讨了该书中的论点，并讨论了为何无症状传播是传染病研究的一个关键维度。我探究了书中包含的观点，并将它们与进化病毒学和疾病生态学中的相关问题联系起来，包括认知不确定性和毒力的进化。此外，我对文中更广泛的信息发表评论，包括科学知识与社会理解之间的差距。
