Thread by @smgaddis

Why we need to teach scientific literacy, a thread...

1/

In late November, @NatureComms published this paper on COVID-19 screening in Wuhan that occurred during a period approximately 5 to 8 weeks after lockdowns ended.

nature.com/articles/s4146…

2/

About a month later, a junk news website you've probably never heard of (and I'm not linking to), published a complete misinterpretation of the findings stating that the paper said asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 did not occur and lockdowns were unnecessary.

3/

Like clockwork, in the last few days all the typical #antimask conservative buffoons on Twitter started linking to the junk news article instead of the @NatureComms pub.

4/

The actual article states these important facts:

1) Only 6 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Wuhan between lockdown end and beginning of screening 5 weeks later.

2) Screening of 9.9 million residents found ZERO newly confirmed cases & 300 asymptomatic positive cases.

5/

3) No positive cases by tracing 1,174 contacts from the 300 asymptomatic positive cases.

6/

Other important factors:

A) This is AFTER a lockdown.

B) Mask usage in Wuhan extremely high.

C) Fear of getting sick likely high, leading to additional precautions.

7/

So, it's an absurd overreach to state that these limited contextualized findings in Wuhan mean that COVID-19 could NEVER spread via asymptomatic positive individuals. Anyone with basic science literacy could skim the research themselves and figure this out.

8/

Not only that, I now see people citing this article as evidence we need to "reopen things" and we can "stop wearing masks."

9/

We will always have individuals with large platforms to spread misinformation and misinterpretations (thanks, internet). However, if we teach basic scientific literacy, we can increase the percentage of the population that can see through the garbage and ignore it.

10/10

Then we have tweets like this which are just factually incorrect. The paper, which she does not link to, does not state "no asymptomatic or presymptomatic spread of Covid."

https://twitter.com/jennybethm/status/1343276619780255744

The paper states "We found significantly higher secondary attack rates from symptomatic index cases than asymptomatic or presymptomatic index cases, although less data were available on the latter...

jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…

...The lack of substantial transmission from observed asymptomatic index cases is notable. However, presymptomatic transmission does occur, with some studies reporting the timing of peak infectiousness at approximately the period of symptom onset."