Erick, I know you are traveling but would you comment? Thx
Ok I'll bite. I am teaching a class on this subject this very summer.
Nothing that was written in the linked short article was outright incorrect.
The trick is in the nuances.
I've written about this back over 5 years ago that certain newer strains (best example the one that come out in late 2013 and broke into public's consciousness around April 2014) can be asymptomatic yet infectious..
This window is small but it does exist with some strains such as that one.
So that much is true.
Up until that point one could generally rely on asymptomatic would equal no infectiousness..
But lets explain the difference between "infectiousness" and "transmissible"
Infectiousness refers to the ease (or lack thereof) with which a given pathogen (in this example a EBOV virion) can make a given person sick ("infect them")
"transmissibility" refers to the ability of a pathogen to travel between likely hosts.
So for a successful spread of a disease the pathogen has to be first transmitted and before it can infect.
Ebola is very
infectious but not very
transmissible at all.
This is because it is so fragile.
As a result it forms the necessary "fomites" (infectious matter in the environment, like on a table etc) only very poorly.
Despite the occasional published number of "weeks" in the environment.. (thats a worst case number if it is protected from drying out from air, protected from sunlight, protected from large changes in ph..this is really only possible if a drolet of blood goes deep into a pore of untreated wooden building material, its not common at all).... the real number are in open air in daytime it will "die" (lose infectiousness) in as little as a couple of minutes.
Nighttime maybe a half hour (could be less)
That is why looking at Ebola or other VHF as a major public health threat for the developed world is a barking up the wrong tree..
For example even if a person is infected yet asymptomatic (a small window) it does not mean this person can transmit his pathogen in any meaningful way short of very close personal contact (sex).
The main transmission mechanism for VHF is Blood, vomit, feces (diarrhea) and cough droplets and all of those are tied to symptoms of the full blown disease.
So is it possible to infect asymptomatic?
Yes.
Will it be commonplace enough to enable an outbreak to go pandemic?
No.
Flu strains are much more likely to be a global pandemic threat because they are so transmissible and that is even more important than infectiousness.
Flu is both highly transmissible (it "survives" drying out which can make it airborne) robust, and infectious.. Its just not very lethal (compared to the VHFs) right now.
If you ever want to learn a realistic pandemic response and about a likely (natural) creation of said pathogen watch the movie "Contagion"
