Roughly 99.5% of people born before 1980 are infected with herpes zoster, yet only 33% will develop its clinical manifestation: shingles. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that 98% of people in the U.S. have been infected with COVID, but roughly 30% of our population has been symptomatic to the extent that they are registered as “cases.” It's time to discuss the infection enigma - “the puzzling observation that only a small minority of infected people die from infection or even develop clinical disease.”
