Posted on 07/20/2020 8:59:31 AM PDT by Basket_of_Deplorables
“Cases” and “Case Counts” are incredibly misleading, and should not be used to make decisions, for two main reasons.
1. PCR tests cannot distinguish between live virus and dead, including dead fragments leftover after your body has successfully fought off the virus—you’re fine.
2. Case Counts are being used pseudo-scientifically to give an indication of the spread and trajectory of the virus, but without knowing how many currently have it or already recovered, it is meaningless.
1. PCR Tests
I read this excellent article by a great Swiss immunologist Beda M Stadler:
https://medium.com/@vernunftundrichtigkeit/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809
Please read it if you have not.
Stadler says that PCR tests—the most widely used by far—will show positive for dead virus fragments! I had to make sure, so I web searched (no quotes) “PCR test dead virus” and dozens of hits came up. Here are a few important ones:
This one is on the 200+ Koreans who tested positive again long after recovery. Remember the headlines about people getting it twice? Turns out: “The tests even showed the presence of these fragments even weeks after making full recoveries.”
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200504/Dead-virus-fragments-are-causing-COVID-19-reinfection-false-positives.aspx
This one is simply titled, “Doctors Wonder What to Do When Recovered COVID-19 Patients Still Test Positive”. Title explains the dilemma.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/932013
This one is a longer read and reveals much more in detail:
https://codeblue.galencentre.org/2020/06/01/positive-sars-cov-2-rt-pcr-test-virus-dead-or-alive-dr-tan-poh-tin/
“Viral cultures are usually negative from as early as the 10th-11th day of illness, even though the RT-PCR may remain positive for 2–6 weeks.
In re-positives or persistently positive cases, the RT-PCR test could be picking up dead viral components which are no longer transmissible nor infective to others.”
This one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4178667/
“Even the most fundamental physiological state, viability (“live virus”—ed), cannot be assessed cross-sectionally by standard DNA-targeted methods such as PCR.
There are many, many more papers and articles discussing this. Please see for yourself.
This means that a positive “case” may or may not be an active infection. It could be someone had it 6 weeks ago, cannot possibly transmit to anyone now, and is told she is positive! But the truth is, they simply don’t know. So why all the screaming? I think we all know.
2. Case counts are pseudo-science
“Cases” do not necessarily mean active infections, and “case count!” does not indicate how widespread the active virus is. (See above for active infection b.s.)
Statistically, if you want to find out how widespread something is, you either test the entire population, or take statistically justified samples and infer from the results. When the sampling is not carefully thought out and executed, the results are misleading or meaningless.
For example, when test subjects self-select, like they do when they get in line for a drive-through covid test, the results only applies to that person. You cannot extrapolate any information onto the population as a whole. And hospital admissions test subjets are, of course biased to illness, otherwise they wouldn’t be there.
So “cases” and “Case counts” tell us nothing reliable about how widespread the virus is, and its trajectory (increasing, decreasing, stable).
The ONLY way you can find how widespread the virus is, is to take well thought out random samples from the population as a whole. Indeed, taking names out of a phonebook would be a much better representation of the spread than self-selected subjects in a drive-through or everyone admitted to a hospital. And the only way to find the trajectory is to take repeated samplings, at least once a week. Assuming your tests are valid, that is!
There are PCR tests that can distinguish between live and dead virus. From the last reference above: “New PCR-based strategies, collectively called molecular viability analyses, have been developed that differentiate nucleic acids associated with viable cells from those associated with inactivated cells.” But they are much more expensive and are not being widely used.
(There are random antibody tests currently underway in a few locations around the country. However, they do not show current infections, and they are only sampled every 3-4 weeks.)
Conclusion: Cases and Case counts are a completely invalid method to represent how much active covid infection is around, and which way it is going. Only the PCR test that distinguishes live from dead virus and random sampling with that test can do that. Therefore, Case Counts should not be used to make decisions on anything!
(Now think about why we are not doing weekly random tests. This is outrageous and another complete failure by the CDC!)
Comments appreciated! Basket_Of_Deplorables
Links for above:
https://medium.com/@vernunftundrichtigkeit/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/932013
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4178667/
The case counts keep going up like once someone gets it they are doomed to die and never recover.
They don’t show the number of recoveries for political reasons..................
All of the MSM is in on the conspiracy to allow the people to assume that “cases” is an indication of people who actively HAVE Covid-19.
“Cases”, from what I understand, is some unscientific estimate, meant to cause panic and alarm, which multiplies each actual positive test by 10-15, to add to the total cases.
There is NO ONE in the media, asking the question of how many people actually HAVE Covid-19 NOW?
The data for this is so far from being meaningful and accurate at this time, POTUS should at least put out some info on what has been going into making up the numbers we are seeing.
JMHO
Also, I have some good proof but am not ready to put out there:
In Florida, up to 80% of Covid-19 Positive tests are from asymptomatic people. I am pretty sure that the asymptomatic PCR Positive cases are all recovered patients that are now immune. That’s right, all the “cases”, and the running total “case counts!” are mostly measuring immune people. I’ll publish that here when it’s ready.
“There is NO ONE in the media, asking the question of how many people actually HAVE Covid-19 NOW?”
The only way to do it is through Random Sampling. Push hard for it!!! Ask them why they are not doing it!
I’m sending Desantis a letter today. Callyour state reps—pass on the above info if you like.
“They don’t show the number of recoveries for political reasons.”
YES!!!
Hospitals Get Paid More For ‘Coronavirus’ Patients, Even If They Haven’t Been Tested
Corrections, insights welcome.
You’re right. ICUs are incredibly expensive. And covid patients are reimbursed 100%. Milton Friedman would laugh.
I cannot believe this is still a thing.
We were talking about how the case numbers were BS, back in January.
Wouldn’t the antibody test show what we need to know, that a patient had had the virus and his/her immune system has manufactured antibodies? But the antibody tests are a great secret, if they are really being run. It was stated in the beginning that the antibody test results were being “mistakenly” added into the live positive test result totals- is this still going on? Seems to be all Fake News.
Basket_of_Deplorables wrote:
“Also, I have some good proof but am not ready to put out there:
In Florida, up to 80% of Covid-19 Positive tests are from asymptomatic people. I am pretty sure that the asymptomatic PCR Positive cases are all recovered patients that are now immune. That’s right, all the “cases”, and the running total “case counts!” are mostly measuring immune people. I’ll publish that here when it’s ready.”
Many thanks for the info & research!
It’s clear these tortured data shouldn’t be used for public health decisions but they work amazingly well when used for political decisions ... like stopping Americans from re-electing Trump.
“Wouldn’t the antibody test show what we need to know... “
I don’t know. But Stadler says, in the first link:
“A study by John P A Ioannidis of Stanford University — according to the Einstein Foundation in Berlin one of the world’s ten most cited scientists — showed that immunity against Sars-Cov-2, measured in the form of antibodies, is much higher than previously thought. Ioannidis is certainly not a conspiracy theorist who just wants to swim against the stream; nontheless he is now being criticised, because the antibody tests used were not extremely precise. With that, his critics admit that they do not have such tests yet. And aside, John P A Ioannidis is such a scientific heavy-weight that all German virologists combined are a light-weight in comparison.”
So it seems the antibody tests are missing a lot of people who are immune. But antibodies are just 1 line of defense. We have several. Stadler also:
“In mid-April, work was published by the group of Andreas Thiel at the Charité Berlin. A paper with 30 authors, amongst them the virologist Christian Drosten. It showed that in 34 % of people in Berlin who had never been in contact with the Sars-CoV-2 virus showed nonetheless T-cell immunity against it (T-cell immunity is a different kind of immune reaction, see below). This means that our T-cells, i.e. white blood cells, detect common structures appearing on Sars-CoV-2 and regular cold viruses and therefore combat both of them.”
Stadler thinks many, many are already immune and we’re behind deceived by the PCR tests. See the above quotes, and these:
” When the first statistics from China and later worldwide data showed the same trend, that is to say that almost no children under ten years old got sick, everyone should have made the argument that children clearly have to be immune. For every other disease that doesn’t afflict a certain group of people, we would come to the conclusion that that group is immune. When people are sadly dying in a retirement home, but in the same place other pensioners with the same risk factors are left entirely unharmed, we should also conclude that they were presumably immune.
But this common sense seems to have eluded many, let’s call them “immunity deniers” just for fun. This new breed of deniers had to observe that the majority of people who tested positive for this virus, i.e. the virus was present in their throats, did not get sick.... “
“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]. That’s exactly what happened, when there was the global news, even shared by the WHO, that 200 Koreans who already went through Covid-19 were infected a second time and that there was therefore probably no immunity against this virus. The explanation of what really happened and an apology came only later, when it was clear that the immune Koreans were perfectly healthy and only had a short battle with the virus. The crux was that the virus debris registered with the overly sensitive test and therefore came back as “positive”. It is likely that a large number of the daily reported infection numbers are purely due to viral debris.’
We need to object to the PCR test as a good measure of anything!!! It’s complete bullshiite.
And from the BBC of all places:
“Coronavirus: Immunity may be more widespread than tests suggest”
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53248660
“People testing negative for coronavirus antibodies may still have some immunity, a study has suggested.
For every person testing positive for antibodies, two were found to have specific T-cells which identify and destroy infected cells.
This was seen even in people who had mild or symptomless cases of Covid-19.
But it’s not yet clear whether this just protects that individual, or if it might also stop them from passing on the infection to others.
Researchers at the Karolinksa Institute in Sweden tested 200 people for both antibodies and T-cells.
Some were blood donors while others were tracked down from the group of people first infected in Sweden, mainly returning from earlier affected areas like northern Italy.
This could mean a wider group have some level of immunity to Covid-19 than antibody testing figures, like those published as part of the UK Office for National Statistics Infection Survey, suggest.
It’s likely those people did mount an antibody response, but either it had faded or was not detectable by the current tests.
And these people should be protected if they are exposed to the virus for a second time.
Prof Danny Altmann at Imperial College London described the study as “robust, impressive and thorough” and said it added to a growing body of evidence that “antibody testing alone underestimates immunity”.
As a side note, anyone claiming that 98% of people are not immune to this virus need to be laughed out of the room. The Diamond Princess months ago proved most people do not get sick from it.
They’re talking “pool” testing now!
So those Korean folks had contracted it, tested positive, then got over it, and at a later date gotten tested again and tested positive for it, even though they were perfectly ok.
This small fragments weren’t doing anything.
What a scam by the medical profession...
“
So those Korean folks had contracted it, tested positive, then got over it, and at a later date gotten tested again and tested positive for it, even though they were perfectly ok.
This small fragments weren’t doing anything.
What a scam by the medical profession...”
Yes! Covid-19 is a single strand RNA virus. The RNA strand is too long to search for in any kind of PCR type test. So they look for some small chain unique to it, and search just for that part. It is called, “The Target Sequence.”
But if a white blood cell (T-Cell), for instance, already destroyed a cell full of it, the RNA strand is demolished, too, into fragments. The PCR test can pick up a fragment with the target sequence, amplify it, and bingo! Positive Case!
Many med centers are quietly trying to figure out what to do, without rasing a big alarm, like they should. So now they’re saying, if you test positive, but no symptoms for 2 weeks, you are safe from passing it on to others.
Technically true, but it leaves a lot out.
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