excalibur
Diamond Member
- Mar 19, 2015
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Real science, not the crazy stuff overreacting to the virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was on CNN Monday morning, lamenting the number of daily positive tests for COVID-19. Of course, these are always called “cases,” which makes people with a medical background want to tear their hair out for several reasons. However, it is crucial to the preferred narrative that you think there are 40,000 new sick people every day. People who could need the type of sophisticated care being given to President Trump at Walter Reed Medical Center.
This idea is ridiculous, misleading, and alarmist for many reasons. First, citing “cases” of illness suggests individuals have symptoms of it. In a significant number of people who are testing positive for COVID-19, this is simply not the case. People who are not and won’t get ill receive a positive test result because of the way the most common type of test used to detect the virus works.
The PCR test does not detect a live virus. For a virus to infect an individual or be transmitted to another person, it must be capable of replication. The PCR does not measure the ability of the material detected to make additional copies of itself. It is appropriate to use the word material because the PCR test looks for pieces of the virus’s RNA. It does not require a complete RNA strand to return a positive result.
...
As Dr. Beda M. Stadler, a Swiss biologist, emeritus professor, and former director of the Institute of Immunology at the University of Bern, noted that the same virus particles found in a recovered patient will be found in someone with an effective immune response to COVID-19 (emphasis mine):
So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Correct: Even if the infectious viruses are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].
Reporting at The New York Times echoed this observation. According to a study done on positive samples in New York, Massachusetts, and Nevada, 90% of tests had very little viral debris in the sample, indicating that infection and transmission are unlikely:
In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.
On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.
...
This idea is ridiculous, misleading, and alarmist for many reasons. First, citing “cases” of illness suggests individuals have symptoms of it. In a significant number of people who are testing positive for COVID-19, this is simply not the case. People who are not and won’t get ill receive a positive test result because of the way the most common type of test used to detect the virus works.
The PCR test does not detect a live virus. For a virus to infect an individual or be transmitted to another person, it must be capable of replication. The PCR does not measure the ability of the material detected to make additional copies of itself. It is appropriate to use the word material because the PCR test looks for pieces of the virus’s RNA. It does not require a complete RNA strand to return a positive result.
...
As Dr. Beda M. Stadler, a Swiss biologist, emeritus professor, and former director of the Institute of Immunology at the University of Bern, noted that the same virus particles found in a recovered patient will be found in someone with an effective immune response to COVID-19 (emphasis mine):
So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Correct: Even if the infectious viruses are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].
Reporting at The New York Times echoed this observation. According to a study done on positive samples in New York, Massachusetts, and Nevada, 90% of tests had very little viral debris in the sample, indicating that infection and transmission are unlikely:
In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.
On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.
...
