Hey y'all, quick note. Here on shortwave, we will continue to regularly cover the pandemic.

We've got another episode today. Because even though it might feel like things are going back to normal,

we are still right in the middle of this thing. Rest assured, we will still bring you stuff about space

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now is the perfect time. Okay, onto the show. You're listening to shortwave

from NPR. Maddie, if you're here with NPR, science reporter Ping Huang, Ping, how the heck are you?

Maddie, I am doing pretty well right now. So Ping, the story that you've brought us today

starts last week. Hello everyone and welcome to this regular COVID-19 press briefing.

Scientists at the World Health Organization were having a virtual press conference, a normal

thing they do, just giving updates on the virus and how it's moving around the world. And then

something kind of confusing happens. Yeah, so Maria Vienkirkov, who's one of WHO's top epidemiologists.

Thanks for that question, absolutely. She was answering a question about asymptomatic transmission,

about people who spread the virus to others while having no symptoms themselves. She talked about

what the data looked like in a couple different settings and then she said this, we are constantly

looking at this data and we're trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this

question. It still appears to be rare that an asymptomatic individual actually transmits

onward. Now, she seemed to be saying that if you have the virus but you never get symptoms from it,

it's very rare that that person would pass the virus to someone else. It's very rare. And that

much of that is not published in the literature. And that was confusing to people, right? Because

a big reason of why we wear masks and social distance is that we don't know who could potentially

have or spread the virus. Right. And listening to Vienkirkov, you'd think, well,

why did we lock down? Why do we wear masks? She left listeners with the impression that anyone

...