Saying someone with a positive COVID test is a “case” is fraudulent. For comparison, blood glucose has an upper test limit of 140. Is everyone above that number a diabetic? Even if they just ate a doughnut or ice cream cone before testing? Or does it take more than a single blood glucose level before one is diagnosed with diabetes? Does a single elevated blood pressure test make one hypertensive? Certainly not.
As many Americans recover from their
“virtual Thanksgiving,” sharing prayers and turkey across the internet,
the media is pushing their November propaganda narrative, that Dementia Joe
really won the presidential election and that COVID cases are once again
surging across America.
The Washington
Post claims that Wuhan coronavirus cases are “skyrocketing” while
the New
York Times wails that “It has hit us with a vengeance.” Yet the media
is oblivious, either ignorantly or deliberately, to the reality that positive tests
are not the same thing as cases.
A “case” has a very specific
definition, apparently beyond the intellectual realm of Wolf Blitzer or Neil
Cavuto. The CDC provides a specific “case definition.” A case is not
just a positive test. Instead, what is needed is
"presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR
epidemiologic evidence." Notice the AND, meaning not simply a
positive test.
The current COVID surges are
positive tests, and even those are suspect, without regard to whether those who
test positive are actually sick or not. I was curious about drive-by testing
and last weekend gave it a whirl. It only took about 20 minutes and was free,
meaning I got what I paid for. Results were promised within three days but
took just over seven days to find out that I was virus free.
Given the sensitivity of the
COVID PCR test, it is likely that some of those being tested, without any symptoms
or exposure, will be reported as test positive and added to the case tickers
running constantly on Fox News and CNN.
YouTube screen grab
Saying someone with a
positive COVID test is a “case” is fraudulent. For comparison, blood glucose
has an upper test limit of 140. Is everyone above that number a diabetic? Even
if they just ate a doughnut or ice cream cone before testing? Or does it take
more than a single blood glucose level before one is diagnosed with diabetes?
Does a single elevated blood pressure test make one hypertensive? Certainly
not.
COVID is tested using PCR which
amplifies any viral fragments found in the nose repeatedly until the test is
positive. This is called the amplification cycle and the higher that number the
more likely a positive test will be returned, even if it is clinically
insignificant.
From that bastion of right-wing
conspiracy, the New
York Times,
The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people
who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.
Most of these people are not likely to be contagious, and
identifying them may contribute to bottlenecks that prevent those who are
contagious from being found in time.
The amplification cycle is the
problem.
The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles;
the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in
the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be
contagious.
With too high an amplification
cycle, the PCR test is hyper-sensitive. Most commercial tests set this
threshold at 40, whereas it would be more clinical meaningful if much lower,
say at 30. Otherwise as the NY Times notes,
Tests with thresholds so high may detect not just live
virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers from infection that pose no
particular risk — akin to finding a hair in a room long after a person has
left.
The CDC admits the
test is too sensitive,
The CDC’s own calculations suggest that it is extremely
difficult to detect any live virus in a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles.
In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who
tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed
negative if the threshold were 30
cycles.
Garbage in, garbage out. With
an overly sensitive test, almost 90 percent of the so-called surge is fake
news, fear porn to justify unnecessary lockdowns and business closures.
This is easily understandable
basic science and arithmetic, not string theory. If the CDC and NY Times can
figure it out and acknowledge it, other “journalists” can as well and should be
asking questions and providing caveats to their surge reporting rather than
their typical hair on fire reactions.
Also unmentioned by the media
is the fact that PCR testing was not designed as a test to screen for viral
infection. Don’t take my word for it. That’s the opinion of
Kary Mullis who invented PCR and won a Nobel Prize for his efforts.
Beyond cases, when we look at
deaths, we see the same 3-card monte. Remember last spring when we heard about
deaths rather than cases? Fox news had a death ticker sidebar just as they
might have a Dow ticker running during the business day.
Death counts are back in vogue,
each and every one blamed on President Trump, even the deaths cause by NY
Governor Cuomo sending infected patients into nursing homes. We are told that
COVID is killing hundreds of thousands.
Johns Hopkins University
recently published a study which
found,
In contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of
deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on
deaths in the United States.
In other words, the same number
of people died this year compared to last year, with the only variable this
year being the Wuhan virus.
It seems deaths due to heart
and respiratory disease, influenza, and pneumonia are down this year, the
difference made up in deaths attributed to COVID, but the total number of
deaths unchanged from last year to this year. Such a study is certainly
inconvenient to the “shut it all down” narrative and not surprisingly John
Hopkins deleted the
study from their website.
Perhaps message crafting is
related to financial contributions to Johns Hopkins, whether from China or the
$1.8 billion from failed
presidential candidate and Trump hater Michael Bloomberg. Hopkins’ motto is,
“The truth will set you free.” But to paraphrase Orwell, some truths are more
equal than others.
The ruling classes and their
media allies are happy to play loose with COVID numbers, cherry picking and
massaging the data to create fear. For many reasons.
COVID fear was used as an election
campaign issue, blaming everything on Trump. It served as an excuse for mail-in
ballots and last-minute changes to electoral laws favoring Sleepy Joe Biden.
Shutdowns, masks, and distancing are a way of wannabe dictator governors to
flex their power, lest the hoi polloi become restless and protest electoral
fraud. In the quest for safety and security, American must relinquish freedom
and liberty.
It’s almost as if this was all
planned out, part of a grand scheme for the administrative state to subversively
take over the government, rather than through free elections seeking the
consent of the governed.
Keep your eye on the case
numbers, which are simply positive tests, perpetuating the big con that things
are far worse than they really are.
Brian C. Joondeph,
M.D., is a Denver-based physician and freelance writer for American Thinker,
Rasmussen Reports, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Parler, and QuodVerum.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/the_covid_case_con_continues.html