a pandemic question

       OK, I'm the guy who asks questions. With that in mind, I'm a cynic, a skeptic, an iconoclast.
       So, here’s the thing: how is it that an individual, supposedly diagnosed with COVID-19, shows absolutely no symptoms (as was recently reported in the press)? Meanwhile, the guy next to her keels over and dies from, apparently, the same damn virus!? Is that even possible? Or has the first person perhaps been mis-diagnosed as having COVD-19? Because really, how can someone have absolutely no symptoms of something as awful as this, yet still be considered a carrier? While the next person has supposedly the exact same affliction and dies from it? Doesn't pass my logic test. Or, am I just not getting it?
            Now, I'm no doctor and I’m not casting medical efficacy in the trashcan. Please believe me, I have great respect for the medical profession (yet I'm more than happy to admit I know nothing about medical issues, the result, I suppose, of having been raised in a family of suck-it-up stoicism where, if we had an aspirin a year, it was a bad year!). And yes, I'll acknowledge from all the reading I've done on the pandemic that this virus is particularly pernicious. But still… in applying my cynic’s filter, I'm just wondering if we’re dealing with more than one affliction here?
            Probably doesn’t really matter in the end, does it? But I just wonder if, in the rush to pandemic judgment, people with no symptoms are being labeled "carriers" where they may well have some other malady?
            If you're someone with medical experience and can set me straight, please do so: I'm all ears.

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