UMD Biologist’s New Book Explores COVID’s Secret Weapon

Photo courtesy of Joshua Weitz

Weitz, then a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a leading researcher in quantitative viral dynamics, had spent two years collaborating with scientists from around the world, trying to decipher the spread of COVID-19. In 2020, he led a highly successful rapid-response risk assessment and asymptomatic testing effort at Georgia Tech that reached more than 16 million people.

But in that moment, Weitz began to see COVID-19 from an urgent new perspective, helping to spur his book, “Asymptomatic: The Silent Spread of COVID-19 and the Future of Pandemics,” out Tuesday from Johns Hopkins University Press.

“I began to grow worried that we weren’t going to learn the lessons that we needed to learn and communicate them moving forward,” he said.

Weitz is now a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland, where he holds the Clark Leadership Chair in Data Analytics and recently joined the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing, said “Asymptomatic” is not just for scientists, but for anyone interested in science, health and society.

“My hope is that ‘Asymptomatic’ will resonate with readers interested in epidemics, policymaking and public health who want to understand something essential and often misunderstood about a disease that transformed our lives,” he said.

And the book has a powerful central message to share: “COVID-19 has shown that diseases that don’t necessarily cause as much individual harm can cause extreme, what I would call catastrophic societal harm, especially when those diseases can transmit even in the absence of symptoms,” Weitz said. “The disease was going outside of our conventional approaches to detection and that makes outbreaks hard to stop.”

With a narrative that meshes the science of viral infections with the real-world challenges of responding to a rapidly changing pandemic threat, Weitz’s book recalls the sometimes-misguided predictions, misconceptions, superspreader events and lockdowns that unfolded during the pandemic—and what scientists were learning about the silent and surprising ways that COVID was able to quickly circle the globe.

“Weitz helps us understand how the virus spread and the role that asymptomatic infection played in it. A must-read for anyone interested in respiratory viral epidemics and their prevention,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine who helped advise the NCAA’s COVID response.

“Asymptomatic” also delves into how our understanding of what went right—and wrong—in the fight against COVID-19 can help us prevent future pandemics—even if, for some, those details might already be lost in the fog of memory.

“I think there are some key details of the pandemic that we, the ‘insiders’ working on pandemic response, saw as being quite disturbing early on, but for the general public, probably just disappeared into noise,” Weitz noted. “For me, these are critical take-homes that are signals of what the public and public health decision-makers should prioritize moving forward.”

Weitz explains how a diverse repertoire of approaches to combat asymptomatic transmission including real-time risk assessment, easier access to testing, improved indoor air quality, targeted masking and updated vaccines can inform smarter policies to protect the population in the future and fight the silent spread of infection that made COVID-19 so devastating.

“The book explores how COVID-19’s asymptomatic spread led to catastrophic impacts and looks forward at how we can prevent disease outbreaks in the future,” Weitz said. “How do we change the landscape of public health prevention to focus on reducing transmission, not just treating symptoms after they occur?”

Weitz’s research and his new book on the COVID pandemic continue to advance a scientific mission that has inspired and motivated him for more than two decades—elevating our understanding of how viruses shape human and environmental health and the fate of our planet. If we can learn from our experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, Weitz believes we have a better chance of preventing the next one.

“We need to start building the infrastructure now,” Weitz said. “If not, we could be back in the same place all over again when the next disease of pandemic potential hits.”