Despite the fact that influenza can also spread asymptomatically, the CDC didn’t assume that the same would apply for the novel coronavirus. On January 28, Anthony Fauci said during a Coronavirus Task Force press conference that in “all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. . . . Even if there’s a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.”
