Thoughts on asymptomatic trans & false negative tests

Two different subjects but they would both pose potentially greater risks of transmission but how much greater logically?

If someone is asymptomatic how much coughing and sneezing will they be doing? How much viral shedding happens? I can see fomite transmission, say from a child to other children with a lot of hand-mouth action going on, but fomite transmission is not believed to be an operative risk outside of a daycare setting.. for the most part.

I can see close (intimate/familiar) contact spread but for the public in general, I just don't see how they are high risk to their communities, where one person unknowingly infects lots of different people. Perhaps 1 or 2, sure, maybe.

Then there are the false negative people that are told they do not have Covid-19... My question is - is the testing faulty? Or is the viral load so low that they are not picking it up with a swab? If the viral load is that low.. how much viral shedding will they be doing "out in the wild"?

So, while asymptomatic people and false negatives would seem concerning... how concerned do we need to be.. really?

I think it's more that with asymptomatic transmission then idea that monitoring the temperature of passengers will stop the infections from spreading is right out the window.

And while it's just an anecdote the article at CNN shows that its definitely possible to have a transmission train without symptoms (parents to child, child to co-workers, and co-workers on to others.)

I didn't dive deeply into the history of the transmission to see if there was touching, close conversation, or merely passing through the same room, but I see this as making things much more difficult to stop. Maybe it'll burn out before it spreads too widely (outside of China), but as an older person I am definitely keeping an eye on the case counts around the US, especially since I work at a school and kids are well known for being great at spreading germs....

All that said, I haven't changed my personal routine at all other than to watch the medical news more closely. Having a year's worth of food and OTC meds for the family lets me be much more relaxed about this than I'd be otherwise.

Perhaps, but "child" is a close/family contact... of very up close and personal variety where "personal space" is likely breached numerous times during a 24 hour period. And as to the woman flying into Seattle, I question exactly how "asymptomatic" she really was. Could she have been experiencing symptoms but writing them off to jet lag? For me, I'm tagging this more as explainable "one-offs" as opposed to some sort of typical asymptomatic transmission.

It's really difficult to assign common behavior on only a very small data set... or one-offs... so I'm just not terribly concerned about either of them... asymptomatic or false negatives... until more data comes in.

I was right about the woman from China who brought Covid-19 to Seattle. She was symptomatic.. the original reporting of the case was bad journalism.

(starting at minute 3:24)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE4pBkslqS4