Understood about the misquote and did not know this, but how effective or reliable is PCR if the amplification is ramped up to “find” the pathogen? What I mean is if the amplification cycle is 40+ vs 25 what is the percentage of false positives for those two rates?
If one takes a sample and multiply it 40 times you are bound to find something.
You are right that there IS a problem with PCR testing: it is that you might show positive weeks or months after having COVID. So if it is being used to quarantine someone, or as a determination as to whether you can get on a plane, it may effectively show a false “contagious” positive. It could show you as sick when that is clearly no longer true because it is amplifying old genetic material. But the one thing it is effective at is showing whether you’ve had COVID at some point, so it is a reasonable way to count total cases. There will be a low false positive for total cases, and high false positive for currently sick.