You certainly can have pneumonia without symptoms. I had pneumonia for at least a year without symptoms. Maybe more? By the time I developed symptoms, I had a CT and 3 different doctors read my CT and the PULM Dr, told me "if you were my wife, I would have you on an operating table..". That was over 20 years ago, saw Dr Ellis at NJH and when I mentioned I had nodule, he looked at me and said, "you don't have one nodule, you have hundreds". I thought I had lung cancer and he said: "if this was cancer, you would not be sitting here". He said, I'm 99% sure you have an infection. I had an atypical form of pneumonia. I was on antibiotics for 3.5 years. So, anything can happen. People can be seriously ill for years and never have a symptom. We're all different with different experiences. At the end of my treatment, he told me I had a tiny area with BE and if I ever get sick, go on antibiotics. Unfortunately, I moved from Denver to Phoenix, and did not have the best doctors.