How can parasites live in the intestines for years without causing any symptoms?
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Many symptoms of disease come from your own body’s attempts to kill the pathogen. Parasites often produce immunosuppressive chemicals to hide from your immune system and weaken attacks against the parasite. Also, since they’re living inside of you is not very advantageous to kill you. They have generally evolved not to be disruptive unless they need to be.
And they usually do still cause symptoms, just often more subtle like weight loss or fatigue that may not be extreme or immediately apparent.
The parasites that are more likely to straight up kill you are the ones that evolved for a different host and ended up inside a human. Or, like malaria, they just gtfo before you perish from the damage they caused.
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