https://www.wired.com/story/whats-confusing-about-calling-covid-19-cases-asymptomatic/

Earlier this week, a comment from Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 response, offered yet another cautionary tale of what happens when scientific ambiguity meets political certitude. It went like this: At a press conference Monday, Van Kerkhove said that cases in which asymptomatic people spread the virus to others are “very rare.” News outlets, in a way that was etymologically understandable but a bit stenographic, reported that people “without symptoms” are unlikely to spread the virus. And from there, the message metastasized. Pundits and politicians who argue that lockdowns were—and will continue to be—unnecessary pounced. After all, if symptom-free people don’t spread the virus, what’s the point of staying home or wearing a mask at the grocery store? People who feel sick will simply recognize that they’re ill and stay home until they have recovered. Pandemic solved.

Epidemiologists, meanwhile, watched that interpretation spread with horror. “People are out there wondering, ‘If I feel fine, should I be hanging out with my friends, getting on the train, going to protests?’” says Marm Kilpatrick, an epidemiologist at UC Santa Cruz. To him, people should be able to clearly weigh the risks—and this time, the WHO communicated them poorly. “That’s what is driving me and a lot of other people insane. There is extremely abundant evidence that if you have no symptoms you can still spread it.”