Carriers

"THE ONLY GOOD CARRIER IS A DEAD CARRIER!"

- Graffiti in The Park

A Carrier is a person exposed to the Infection who appears asymptomatic due to a natural resistance to symptoms but lacks an immune response to degrade the disease. Without degradation, the person "carries" the disease in their body and can unintentionally transmit the disease to others rendering carriers a threat to public safety. The application of Carriers to the Left 4 Dead world is another story element (like the Green Flu) that has received no official or definitive explanation by Valve. Rather, there are random graffiti, in-game conversations, and posters throughout the game that suggest how carriers were handled by both CEDA and the military.

Carrier VS. Immunity
It is a highly misconceived notion that the terms carrier and immune are one in the same when in fact their meanings are very different. Completely immune individuals are persons who are not resistant to the symptoms of a disease but have an unnaturally fast and strong immune response that fights off the disease quickly. Put another way, immune individuals have had an immune system response to the disease and do not carry or can transmit the disease. Carriers have no immune response usually due to a genetic factor or defect in the body that inhibits the disease from growing or causing symptoms. For example, H5N1 (commonly known as bird flu) is a strain of influenza that currently does not react with humans because the virus only has interaction capabilities with the cells of birds. A human exposed to the avian strain would have no immune response because human genetic factors are different than avians but the same person could potentially transmit the disease if the person comes into contact with birds.

Scientifically, it's difficult to determine which is more advantagous. If the virus mutates, which is likely, the immune person may become symptomatic as his or her body may not be able to combat the infection as efficiently. A person who is a carrier would likely remain asymptomatic, even with minor viral mutations. The real concern for carriers would be if they were to contract another disease, after being infected with the Green Flu. If any person is infected with multiple viral diseases, the viruses interact and theres an increased chance for major mutations. A real life example of such an occurrance is the recent H1N1 outbreak when someone with seasonal influenza A (H3N2) also was a carrier of H1N1 and the two viruses interacted allowing H1N1 to begin interacting with human cells. One must also consider the long term benefits of either being immune or being a carrier. If everyone is dying from the infection, then eventually the virus will run out of hosts and the outbreak would be over. However, as long as carriers continue to exist, the infection will exist keeping those who are immune at risk. In the long run, carriers do not need immune individuals to continue to live and immune individuals most likely cannot live while carriers do. Natural Selection will win eventually, but the only question is: will carriers or immune individuals remain?

CEDA/Containment
To learn of a carrier, there must have been proof that someone who was asymptomatic was infecting normal healthy people. Therefore, it's likely that CEDA inadvertently caused the infection of thousands by grouping all non-infected individuals together before realizing that there were carriers among them. The next step would have been to quarantine and test each asymptomatic survivor to see if they tested positive for the Green Flu. Such tests would likely taken hours and when you're having to test hundreds of thousands of people, all while the apocalypse is occurring, the general population would probably have little to no patience to wait. If CEDA was overrun by unruly citizens fleeing the infection, then containment would have failed and CEDA was likely pulled from running the show.

The Military
When it was determined that CEDA weren't doing their job to the best of their capabilities, the military took over and took in all Survivors. Like CEDA, they would separate Carriers from other Survivors. Unlike CEDA, however, instead of examining Carriers for information regarding the Green Flu, they would simply shoot and kill Carriers to prevent the Infection from spreading. The military then also bombed entire towns and cities with fighter jets to slow down the spread of infection. However, it is possible that Survivors are caught up in the bombing runs, like the new Survivors were in New Orleans. Although this may have helped minimize the rate and spread of Infection, this may have also minimized the number of Survivors who hadn't yet made it to military encampments.