Will Joe's national mask mandate save us from COVID? Jane M. Orient, M.D., advocates 'natural immunity, sensible precautions and early treatment'

I’m absolutely serious. I’m a scientist who spent the bulk of my career in advisory roles, I know how this works.

Instead of blaming Dr. Fauci who is acting on the best information available, how about putting blame where it belongs, on the Chicoms? They tried to hide the outbreak when it first occurred and persecuted the doctors who tried to raise the alarm about it. By lying and covering-up instead of taking decisive action to control the outbreak at the beginning, the Chicoms virtually guaranteed that it would become a pandemic. And they are still trying to cover-up for their early lack of action.

Wrong.

I was a hospital administrator in the Air Force during my military career and I had overall responsibility for procurement of most of the medical equipment and supplies in the 4 hospitals I worked at. Medical masks were one such item.

None of the masks that are being touted today are designed to stop viruses. They are designed and manufactured to stop bacteria and germs.

Viruses are submicroscopic in size. They can pass freely though the weave of the mask material and through and around any openings around the mask. For the weave of the mask material to be tight enough to stop the corona virus from passing through it, it would have to be so small, that you would not be able to breathe with it on.

Masks that people are wearing today are meant to stop the spread of germs and bacteria, big bugs. And they are not meant to be worn all of the time.

Medical personnel wear masks for the function they are performing and then dispose of them in biohazard waste containers. Lay people nowadays are wearing these thing all of the time and never change them.

This is the reason masks don't work to stop a virus. They weren't designed for that. And now the CDC wants us to wear two, three or more masks. And to wear a nylon hose as well as the masks. Really?

These people are morons. Floundering around like three year olds doing a job that adults should be doing.

The efficacy of masks has been shown in several recent studies

The meta study to which I linked from mid-2020 showed no statistically significant mitigation benefit from "Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures." The gap between what you cite and my citation MAY be because...

people choose to wear them incorrectly by pulling them down below their nose or by wearing the vented masks.

It could also be due to other factors, such as a relatively higher prevalence in the US of comorbidities vs say Sweden where their per capita fatality rate is well below that of the US (and where masks aren't mandated).

I would also suggest that the prevalence of fatalies occurring in octogenarians and that virtually everyone on the planet knows you should be - and are - careful near Grandma, also points towards masks not being a meaningful part of the solution.

That the evidence on masks is mixed doesn't mean we should use more masks. I also don't think they should be discarded totally. But let's understand the trade-off: the one study in Cairo where hand washing etc worked was coupled with mildly police-state like tactics.

I still believe a risk-based approach whereby people under 50 aren't compelled to mask-up, with heightened precautions being taken for the old and infirm, is much more prudent and backed by evidence, than this one size fits all hysteria.

Masks only have to reduce virus spread, not stop it. The public health recommendations are not meant to achieve BSL4 conditions, but to reduce virus spread. Masks are part of that. Social distancing is another part of that.

Viruses are emitted in droplets of various sizes, all of which are larger than bare viruses. The mask permeability studies have looked at the ability of masks made from various materials to stop particles of a range of sizes.

The goal of all interventions is to reduce the R naught value to less than one. We’re getting close to that.

I was a laboratory officer during my military career. I had to read a LOT of medical journal articles in my work; I would never make a recommendation in a public forum without researching it thoroughly. And the medical literature supports the use of masks (and social distancing and face shields) to decrease the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Here is a sampling; more can be found in the medical and scientific literature:

Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis—https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext

Face Masks Considerably Reduce COVID-19 Cases in Germany: A Synthetic Control Method Approach—http://ftp.iza.org/dp13319.pdf

Masks Do More Than Protect Others During COVID-19: Reducing the Inoculum of SARS-CoV-2 to Protect the Wearer—https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7393808/

Potential utilities of mask‐wearing and instant hand hygiene for fighting SARS‐CoV‐2—https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7228401/

The meta study to which I linked from mid-2020 showed no statistically significant mitigation benefit from "Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures." The gap between what you cite and my citation MAY be because...

Or it could be because the studies used for the meta-analysis were weak in design and did not really answer the question of whether masks in real world settings reduce virus spread. That meta study pointed out several shortcomings in the data.

It could also be due to other factors, such as a relatively higher prevalence in the US of comorbidities vs say Sweden where their per capita fatality rate is well below that of the US (and where masks aren't mandated).

As far as I know, comorbidities do not affect whether a person gets sick, but how serious the disease is. Also, mandates are not as important as how diligently people adhere to the recommendations for avoiding disease. As I recall, Sweden was used early on as an example of how measures to slow the spread were not needed, but in actual fact, Sweden was affected more severely than its neighbors (at least, as of a few months ago).

When I look at Sweden data as compared to world data for the pandemic (numbers as of this morning):

Sweden had 608,411 cases and 12,428 deaths out of a population of 10.29 million. This comes out to a death rate of 2.042% and one infection per 16.9 people.

Worldwide, there were 108,289,000 cases and 2,392,030 deaths out of a population of 7.8 billion. This comes to a death rate of 2.209% and one case per 72 people.

So Sweden has a death rate only slightly lower and more cases per capita than the world average.

For comparison, the death rate in the US is lower than those of Sweden or the world, at 1.749%, but we have a very high per capita case count, with one case per every 12 people.

I still believe a risk-based approach whereby people under 50 aren't compelled to mask-up, with heightened precautions being taken for the old and infirm, is much more prudent and backed by evidence, than this one size fits all hysteria.

Every time I see some suggestion that we should take special measures to protect the old, while allowing Covid-19 to rampage through the rest of the population unchecked, I think of that story about belling the cat. It sounds nice, until you start considering how it is to be accomplished. What are we going to do, imprison everyone over age 50 in sterile facilities for their protection? Furthermore, Covid-19 is NOT completely harmless at any age. People of every age have died from it.

In any case, masks are far from a restriction on our liberty as so many try to portray. They enable us to get out and go shopping and conduct other activities that would be highly restricted without that protective measure.

Masks are worthless for the job the government is trying to use them for.

To think they will work now after wearing them for a year is a fool's errand.

The question of this thread is will Biden's national mask mandate save us from covid?

The answer is no. There is no way the government is going to get 350 million people to wear masks properly all of the time. Not possible. This is not a country of 350 million mindless robots.

And therin lies the problem with big government solutions from the liberals. People are going to do or not do, what they want to do regardless of what the government says. This is still a free country.

I don't even own a mask. Haven't worn one at all since this "pandemic" started. Why is it that my choice is less effective and more risky than someone else's choice to wear a mask 24/7? I haven't contracted the covid.

And yet the CDC claims that in 89% of all cases of people who have contracted covid, the patients either wore a mask all of the time or most of the time. Only 11% didn't wear a mask at all or very little. Those numbers would suggest that my strategy of not wearing a mask at all is a less risky and wiser choice.

This virus is not going to just go away. We live with viruses in our lives everyday. The best thing we can do is to stop spending a dollar to try and save a nickel. This virus is hardly deadlier that the seasonal flu or common cold.

And yet we have ruined our economy, people's livelihoods and lives over something that only kills .02% of the population. And 80% of those deaths are in people over 70 years old with other contributing medical issues.

We need to take off the masks and open the society back up and move on with our lives. The CDC just admitted that the death numbers from covid are 1,600% overstated. That's a real confidence builder when it comes to believing what the government experts are telling us.

We need to step back and see the forest for the trees and stop thinking masks are the solution. They're not. They are a crutch.

That meta study pointed out several shortcomings in the data.

Indeed, "Most studies were underpowered because of limited sample size, and some studies also reported suboptimal adherence in the face mask group." At the risk of this becoming a lecture, I would encourage a perusal of the Appendix, which provides a deeper discussion on these drawbacks. (I'll come back to the drawbacks later.) This was, in part, why I did the deep dive on the Cairo study which HAD a meaningfully-large sample size (4M+), and it SUPPORTED these types of controls (though that wasn't a mask study). Before leaving that part of our chat, it IS worth documenting that the mask pool of studies HAD some decent "n", and while not perfect, I'm not dismissive of the results:

Sweden....I could talk about SE and COVID19 for a LONG time. Unlike many FReepers, while I applauded their approach I was VERY vocal early on about how Sweden's size-adjusted fatality totals were higher than that in the US. I did a deeper dive (I can't find the link) and this was chiefly due to SE being "Cuomo-level efficient in killing the elderly". My biggest problem with Sweden was they "trusted the science" which, from the nation that gave us Greta Thunberg (who, btw, I blame less than her awful parents), doesn't inspire confidence AND means that - since science isn't math - anyone could twist facts to change policy. I prefer the demolition derby approach in America to the dutiful obedience of Sweden.

That said, as you note, while Sweden isn't setting records, per Worldometers, they ARE 23rd globally in per capita fatalities (1,226 per 1MM) vs the US' 9th place (1,493), with a global per capita fatality total of 1,121 per 1MM. Your case fatality rates suggest Sweden's cases have a higher chance of dying vs that in the US, yet the virus kills more people per capita in the US. We also are assuming uniformity of testing intensity, which may be a heroic assumption.

What this says to me, getting back to masks, is that the US - Sweden comparison doesn't make mask-wearing a slam-dunk idea.

Also, mandates are not as important as how diligently people adhere to the recommendations for avoiding disease.

masks are far from a restriction on our liberty as so many try to portray.

There is the rub...State govts requires masks but they aren't working as intended. This ties in to the aforementioned drawbacks to studies - people behave as people, unless you are a child in Cairo and there are some pretty heavy controls placed on you. Whether masks aren't working because they really don't do the trick, due to sloppy compliance, because of less-than-sanitary use or ill-fitting masks, that points to simply giving up the charade or fine/jail people for being sub-optimal. I'm not being flip...that's really our only bottom line choice set.

Every time I see some suggestion that we should take special measures to protect the old, while allowing Covid-19 to rampage through the rest of the population unchecked, I think of that story about belling the cat. It sounds nice, until you start considering how it is to be accomplished. What are we going to do, imprison everyone over age 50 in sterile facilities for their protection? Furthermore, Covid-19 is NOT completely harmless at any age. People of every age have died from it.

First, that is some pretty heavy phrase choice there. We were getting along so swimmingly up to that point.

I don't have great national data by age for cases, hospitalization and fatality. The state of MA has the BEST such disclosure out of the dozens of states where I perused. They changed the reporting format so here is the December 31, 2020 report with specific focus on pp39, 41, and 43. On p39, clearly the virus was rampaging through the 60 and younger group for the prior two weeks. And yet, if we flip to p41, they under 61 crowd account for only 17.9% of hospitalizations (and yes, I know the cases may need more than 2 weeks to get worse but work with me) and even less on a per capita basis. Finally, the fatalities on p43 are even more skewed to the 61+ age brackets. Indeed, for this two week period, nobody under 20 died.

Parenthetically, I never said COVID19 is COMPLETELY harmless for some age bracket, but cmon...bank robbers hit banks because that's where the money is; worrying obsessively about younger people after looking at the MA data is like holding up a briar patch.

If it is YOUR assertion that the young ones are transmitting the disease to the elderly, then given the stunning difference of the case vs hospitalization vs fatality data by age, well...yes...why NOT defend the elderly vs tie down everyone under 61? We need not use hyperbole and imprison them in sterile facilities.

There are the Mask Karens, who believe it is their duty to tell everyone that they need to wear a mask lest they infect Karen and the rest of the planet. They are Stasi-like people, who make your business THEIR business.

Then, there are the AntiMask Zealots, who believe it is their duty to tell everyone that wearing a mask is a sign of moral and intellectual inferiority, and that you will soon be rounded up like turkeys in mid-November. They consider themselves to be like the main character in Ayn Rand's Anthem, when in reality they have more in common with William Kristol.

If 98% of people who died had underlying symptoms (in MA), if nursing home residents are hit harder (especially for minorities) there has GOT to be a less disruptive and less intrusive to the general public approach to deal with this.

We need to step back and see the forest for the trees and stop thinking masks are the solution. They're not. They are a crutch.

Masks are not a crutch, nor are they the whole picture. They are one component of a multi-variable strategy to decrease the contagiousness, i.e. the R naught, of Covid-19 to less than one. The overall goal is to protect 60% of the population from disease by whatever means. Yes, physical inhibition of virus spread such that 60% of the population is protected is a valid surrogate for herd immunity.

Masks are worthless for the job the government is trying to use them for.
To think they will work now after wearing them for a year is a fool's errand.

Oops, I forgot to address this in my previous post.

The pandemic case data demonstrates that masks and the other control measures do, in fact, work.

I have been tracking the numbers since April, but I was able to find case data from March. On March 20, there were 19,624 cases. I used the R naught of 2.5 and a replication time of 9 days (which was how often each round of transmission took place early on) to calculate that every person in the US would have been infected by mid to late June.

Worldwide, there were 1,531,392 cases by April 9. Using the R naught of 2.5 and replication time of 9 days, I calculated that the entire world population would have been infected by mid to late July.

The real number of cases as of this morning are 27,576,443 in the US, or about 8.4% of the population (330M). Worldwide, there have been 108,623,994 cases, or about 0.14% of the population.

The fact that we are still far below the number of cases that would have happened without any control measures means that the control measures have been effective. This is true even in the US, where we had a number of idiots refuse to wear masks correctly and who scoffed at social distancing.

I can see, in the data, when people complied with the guidelines, and when people started to refuse to comply. Cases spiked when the BLM riots started. Case growth has been decreasing now, at a time when I see fewer people wearing masks incorrectly and the vaccine is rolling out.

The numbers tell the story.

Oh, my.

That said, as you note, while Sweden isn't setting records, per Worldometers, they ARE 23rd globally in per capita fatalities (1,226 per 1MM) vs the US' 9th place (1,493), with a global per capita fatality total of 1,121 per 1MM. Your case fatality rates suggest Sweden's cases have a higher chance of dying vs that in the US, yet the virus kills more people per capita in the US.

In the case of an infectious disease, I would NEVER use per capita death rates as a measure of how serious the disease is. That may be a valid measure in the case of non-infectious diseases like heart disease or most cancers in which the disease occurrence is a predictable function of population age and size, but NOT for highly contagious infectious disease. Using the per capita death rate, one would conclude that rabies is nothing to worry about, because rabies kills maybe 1 in 150M? (2018 data) But since the case fatality rate for rabies is 100%, I would take a wild animal bite seriously.

Whether masks aren't working because they really don't do the trick, due to sloppy compliance, because of less-than-sanitary use or ill-fitting masks, that points to simply giving up the charade or fine/jail people for being sub-optimal. I'm not being flip...that's really our only bottom line choice set.

Even with sub-optimal mask and social distancing compliance, the case data supports the value of these measures in combating the spread of Covid-19. The fact is, without taking measures to control transmission, we would have already reached the saturation point of infections in mid to late June in the US, mid to late July worldwide. I see it in the data. Cases drastically increased when BLM started having riots, after case growth had been dropping for several weeks. In November, cases went up to the 100k and 200k range, at the same time some people were refusing to wear masks or observe social distancing. And in 6 out of 7 days during the last week, there were fewer than 100k new cases per day. What do I see occurring now? Fewer people are refusing to mask up properly. Fewer social gatherings. Some people are getting vaccines, though not nearly enough to reach that magical level of herd immunity.

I'm not at all ready to tell people to ditch the masks, because that is not supported by the daily case data (which I have been recording since April) or the controlled research data. The fact that total and new cases are both significantly below what they would be without efforts to control spread tells me that the aggregate of control measures has been effective.

If 98% of people who died had underlying symptoms (in MA), if nursing home residents are hit harder (especially for minorities) there has GOT to be a less disruptive and less intrusive to the general public approach to deal with this.

And that comes back to the question of how we would protect the most vulnerable people with minimal disruption to younger healthy people (who are not a majority of the population). I.e., how are we going to bell the cat? Are we going to lock up the vulnerable people in pathogen free facilities, with outsiders required to take disinfectant showers and suit up in a minimum of BSL2 level protection--like we keep lab animals? That seems a bit repressive to me, far more repressive than just telling people that they can go about their daily activities as long as they wear a mask properly and observe social distancing.

If 98% of people who died had underlying symptoms

If 98% of the people who were infected had taken early treatment by a knowledgeable doctor, then we'd have never heard of the words lockdown or pandemic.

When I lost my smell and taste on the 3rd day of symptoms, I found a FRONTLINE Doctor. He prescribed the listed treatment and as with almost everybody who is treated w/in the first FIVE days of symptoms, I started showing improvement within 12 hours. A couple of days later, ALL symptoms were gone.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Did Fauci withhold treatment for C-19 because he is an idiot

OR

Did Fauci withhold this treatment because he wanted BIG PHARMA to make $Billions by scaring the public?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

ARTICLE Dr. George Fareed and Dr. Brian Tyson share early treatment protocol

If these doctors treating thousands of patients with only a handful of short hospitilizations is not sufficient proof that the treatments are a CURE, then maybe you are dumb enough to think a mask is going to prevent your infection.

In the article is a preventative, over the counter dose that means masks are NOT needed under any circumstances. The treatment dose is a prescription that can be optained by using a TELEMED doctor.

Oh, my.

Yea...I get that a lot...I promise this is the end.

As odd as a statement as this may seem, we are possibly not TOO far apart on this subject. You believe there is meaningful preventive value in masks, based on data. I believe outside of a lab setting, the value of masks is mixed at best, based on data. Dear I say it, we are both fairly smart and not belligerent and we are TRYING to solve a problem vs start a flame war. On some level we deserve a medal.

I have a different take on the case counts and why I don't focus on that metric much. First, the cases for COVID19 aren't "cases" in the traditional sense, because a "case" usually means "with symptoms." COVID cases simply require a positive test result, and while I don't doubt most positive-testing people also have symptoms, across the history of medical research cases almost always have symptoms as well. This means, among other things, any horizontal case fatality rate comparisons will be biased.

Second, testing intensity can sway the case counts. I remember in the summer there was a surge in testing which also accounted, in part, for a rise in cases. This likely contributes to the summer "hump" in case counts national, though the riots etc also likely also contributed as well.

Third, early on we didn't have a decent test or distribution network. Therefore, early case counts are more "traditional" in that they likely also came with symptoms, which adds to the weak homogeneity in the case count time series.

Fourth, and I apologize in advance for repetition because I post this frequently (I.e., Oh, my), the case and fatality patterns are likely less associated with mask use/non-use/selfish teens etc but more to do with seasonality. Consider the time-series plot of pandemic data in the US. It follows a seasonal pattern, aside from the riot bump in the summer.

This is nothing new. The majority of deaths in most countries can be attributed to causes that feature a distinct seasonal pattern. The figure depicts the relative monthly frequencies of nine selected causes of death in the United States for women and men combined for the years 1959–2014. The reported number of counts in parentheses in the title of each panel is the actual number of deaths.

Viruses gonna virus. Even non-viruses gonna non-virus.

My bottom, bottom line, is the data tell me that this bug will be with us until The End. Like influenza, this will be a seasonal nasty - less contagious, but slightly more fatal. It will not go away like SARS. We will have some herd immunity, but no amount of immunization, quarantine, social distancing or masking will snuff it. When this dawns upon Us, people will need to make a choice: mask and vaxx up etc to possibly live longer, or roam freely and possibly die earlier.

The great thing about FR is rational people can have rational debate and, while disagreeing, can walk away as we came, in peace. You have been very spirited and cogent, and I trust in turn, I've been the same. Thank you for everything.

You're kidding yourself if you think "the numbers tell the story." If the numbers were accurate, that may be true but they haven't been from the start.

This whole "pandemic" has been manipulated by the politicians and bureaucrats the meet their narratives and agendas. Basing your conclusions on inaccurate numbers is going to give you an inaccurate picture of what is really going on. Your conclusions are at best anecdotal.

Even the WND article this thread is based on, suggests masks aren't the answer. "Natural immunity, sensible precautions and early treatment" are what the author advocates.

I don't know where you get your data from but the creators of the most commonly used test to determine whether you are infected or not, and therefore whether a person is a new case or not, openly admit that the tests for the corona virus are notoriously unreliable in their results:

The creators of the RT-PCR test, the most commonly used coronavirus test, say it yields between 80 and 97 percent false positive results

So right off the bat, the numbers used to determine new cases, are dodgy at best. Inaccurate and unreliable at worst.

On another thread on FR today, Senator Rand Paul explains why he thinks masks are not useful. He talks about a study in the last month from Stanford. In 10 different countries where mask mandates and other virus control measures where in effect, there was no evidence that the mask or the other things made a difference in the trajectory of the virus which had been growing exponentially. Almost everybody getting infected said they were wearing a mask almost all of the time before they got infected.

Rand Paul & Masks

But I keep coming back to the underlying reasons why people like you think people ought to wear masks and why they work.

Environmental economist Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, believes in climate change. But he says that it is not a problem the world should be spending their money on to solve. He says that if we spent all of the wealth of in the world on nothing else but climate change, it would yield such negligible results, as to be imperceptible.

And likewise, why are we spending all of this time, money and wasted effort on stopping a virus that at best will only kill less than one quarter of one percent of the population (.02%), with 80% of those deaths being people over 70 years old who are entering the years when most people are susceptible to dying of old age issues and other complications anyway? Like I said before, we are spending a dollar to try and save a nickel.

I suspect that I will never convince you of what you already believe in. I've seen your comments and postings on other threads on FR about this same subject. You remind me of why I don't argue with climate change believers.

You're good at numbers it looks like, though you wade way too far into the long weeds for my liking. But you fail to see the practical implications and ramifications of those numbers. I suspect in another life you would be named Karen and would be the head of what I call the Fellowship of the Perpetual Mask Wearers sect or cult.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

I am correcting a statement I made in my last response:

".... only kill less than one quarter of one percent of the ~~population~~ (.02%)

It should have read, ".... only kill less than one quarter of one percent of those who contract the covid infection...."

I wish there was an edit feature on FR but there is not.

More evidence that the PCR test, used to define whether an individual is a COVID “Case” or not is a notable risk of false results. The results are not reliable.

Fauci, FDA, WHO All Now Admit False Results From PCR Tests

This disclosure runs against your claim the the number count. It seems we can't count on the numbers being used to explain the severity of the pandemic.

You're kidding yourself if you think "the numbers tell the story." If the numbers were accurate, that may be true but they haven't been from the start.
This whole "pandemic" has been manipulated by the politicians and bureaucrats the meet their narratives and agendas. Basing your conclusions on inaccurate numbers is going to give you an inaccurate picture of what is really going on. Your conclusions are at best anecdotal.

Sorry, but I don't get into conspiracy theories. I prefer solid data, such as the numbers that have been compiled by public health agencies.

"Natural immunity, sensible precautions and early treatment" are what the author advocates.

If "natural immunity" worked so well, no one would have ever thought of trying to stop infectious diseases. In reality, people have been more likely to die of infectious disease than any other cause throughout most of history. The author is a quack, who is probably trying to sell snake oil and/or useless books.

I do not know if you are aware of it, but your own conspiracies contradict each other. (This is one reason why I have never found conspiracy theories appealing: no internal consistency.)

I don't know where you get your data from but the creators of the most commonly used test to determine whether you are infected or not, and therefore whether a person is a new case or not, openly admit that the tests for the corona virus are notoriously unreliable in their results:

The creators of the RT-PCR test, the most commonly used coronavirus test, say it yields between 80 and 97 percent false positive results [original links to a World Tribune article]

I read that article, and found nothing except a bunch of quotes from people I've never heard of (yet who are supposedly experts in my field) saying over and over that this one paper was bad. But they never got into details of what is wrong with it. The only real detail they gave was that the PCR primers had been designed based on a published sequence. This is, in fact, how PCR primers are designed: the person developing the test downloads a sequence. Then she runs the sequence through a program that assesses the sequence based on a number of known properties of nucleic acids. The program returns a number of potential primer pairs, which the researcher then examines based on a number of parameters. This process can be completed manually, but it's easier and faster to use one of the many software programs designed for this purpose.

In other words, it is NOT necessary to have actual viral material to design a PCR experiment.

The next step after designing the primers is to validate them. You don't even need virus here: it is sufficient to use an engineered piece of genetic material that contains a sequence that is identical to a part of the virus. Etc. I've designed hundreds of PCR experiments, so I am quite familiar with the process.

The only mention of the "80 and 97 percent false positive results" was from an "investigative reporter," not a scientist who is familiar with PCR. Based on how PCR works, it is difficult to think of how a PCR primer pair could possibly return such a high number of false positives; in any case, such a primer pair would never pass the first round of validation testing.

Also, I will note that I checked the original paper, “Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time PCR.” The researchers validated their primers against real patient samples. It looks like they used solid standard techniques and widely used laboratory reagents to develop and validate the PCR assays.

So right off the bat, the numbers used to determine new cases, are dodgy at best. Inaccurate and unreliable at worst.

This is an example of not going to the sources and checking the information for yourself. Any time someone makes an iffy claim supposedly based on research, I always want to review the original research publication for myself to see what the researchers *really* found. I.e., I fact-check. The more dubious the claim, the more likely it is that the research was completely misrepresented.

It should have read, ".... only kill less than one quarter of one percent of those who contract the covid infection...."

Now here is where the conspiracy contradicts itself. On the one hand, the conspiracy claim is that there are bazillions of false positives so that the case numbers are wildly inflated. On the other hand, the conspiracy claim is that Covid-19 is hardly any more serious than ordinary colds. These are direct contradictions.

Actual US case data, as of this morning, as reported on the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering.: 27,898,118 cases and 493,176 deaths.

The case fatality rate (CFR) is determined by dividing the number of deaths by the number of cases and multiplying by 100 to make the number a percent. Thus, the CFR for Covid-19 is 493,176/27,898,118 x 100 = 1.768%.

However, the claim of that World Tribune article is that Covid-19 cases are wildly inflated, due to a claimed false positive rate of 80 to 97 percent. Let's calculate the range of cases this would represent if true:

A false positive rate of 80% means 20% (0.2 for calculations) real positives. Likewise, a 97% false positive rate means 3% (or 0.03 for calculation purposes) real positives. So, using these values, the "real" number of cases would be between:

0.2 x 27,898,118 = 5,579,624 cases, and

0.03 x 27,898,118 = 836,944 cases.

These values result in wildly inflated CFRs for Covid-19:

493,176/5,579,624 x 100 = 8.839%, and

493,176/836,944 x 100 = 58.926%.

But your claim is that only 0.02% of those who catch Covid-19 die. In order for this to be true, there would have to be a vast majority of Covid-19 cases that are never diagnosed. Back-calculating case data for a CFR of 0.02% (or 0.0002 for calculations) gives me:

493,176/0.0002 = 2,465,880,000 cases.

That's more than 7 times the population of the US.

If I back calculate from the worldwide Covid-19 deaths, I get:

2,444,329/0.0002 = 12.2 billion, or about 1.57 times the world's population.

In short, the conspiracy numbers don't add up.

And this is why the Oregon school board wants to start teaching that correct mathematics are an expression of white supremacy. Without a solid grasp of mathematics and logic, it is easy to produce a generation of kids with no critical thought ability who are very amenable to socialist propaganda.

As I said before, the numbers tell the story. But you have to know their language to understand the story.