The first sentence of the paper cites a reference for a claim, but the reference doesn't support the claim at all. That's an immediate rejection of the paper fr

The first sentence of the paper cites a reference for a claim, but the reference doesn't support the claim at all. That's an immediate rejection of the paper from me. Specifically, the paper says "Symptomatic Covid-19 disease (as caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus) is observed in 2.5 percent of infected individuals [2]". That's an interesting claim, so I checked the reference. Reference 2 explicitly says "All estimates are based on persons who developed symptoms, and this work makes no inferences about asymptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2." In other words, the reference does not describe what percentage of infected individuals show symptomatic disease. The 2.5% number apparently comes from the reference's estimate that "fewer than 2.5% of infected persons will display symptoms within 2.2 days of exposure." (Symptoms show up after a median of 5.5 days.) Thus, the paper claims 2.5% of infected individuals have symptomatic disease, but the reference to support the claim says that 2.5% of infected individuals with symptoms show symptoms within 2.2 days! My conclusion is that the paper is misusing references, either carelessly or maliciously. Reading a paper like that is a waste of time, since you can't trust anything it says without checking every reference. [2]: https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation-period-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-from-publicly-reported https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation-period...