First, some fun hot off the press hot mic from the Whitehouse briefing room.
“…so that makes it 0.1 - 0.3… so it’s suggesting the case fatality rate is about a (one) tenth of what it seems to be… puts it right in line with the flu…”
The Numbers
Everything hangs on the numbers. Everything.
The numbers are generated by the testing.
There was a lot of speculation about Chinas numbers and also the Chinese capacity to do enough testing, and that as an issue has not vanished, and should not vanish but my impression is, there is little interest in the media to court the issue.
Since I have regularly encountered online suggestions and speculation that as high as an 80% false positive rate (being reported very early on) suggest that numbers simply can not be trusted it was not until something like the below article appeared to put some meat on the bones of the many reservations expressed around the matter of accurate and reliable testing - The key info is the PCR test, how and why it was designed as a manufacturing process (very interesting stand alone story) the piece claims the creator of the PCR process (since deceased) vehemently opposed it being used as a binary type positive or negative test for viruses, as it was employed in the early days of the HIV.
…In China, generally, they diagnose ‘Corona’ with CT scans and one or two positive PCR tests. In the US, it’s difficult to find out what makes a “case,” ie what the case definition is. Absent CT scans, we are in a bio-tech free-fall. One website offers this distressingly unclear definition: “The novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been spreading worldwide, resulting in growing numbers of infected individuals since late 2019 and increased mortality numbers since early 2020. So far, experts have seen that while there are severe cases, the infection is usually mild with non-specific symptoms. And there are no trademark clinical features of COVID-19 infection…
… “PCR detects a very small segment of the nucleic acid which is part of a virus itself. The specific fragment detected is determined by the somewhat arbitrary choice of DNA primers used which become the ends of the amplified fragment. “
If things were done right, “infection” would be a far cry from a positive PCR test.
“You have to have a whopping amount of any organism to cause symptoms. Huge amounts of it,” Dr. David Rasnick, bio-chemist, protease developer, and former founder of an EM lab called Viral Forensics told me. “You don’t start with testing; you start with listening to the lungs. I’m skeptical that a PRC test is ever true. It’s a great scientific research tool. It’s a horrible tool for clinical medicine. 30% of your infected cells have been killed before you show symptoms. By the time you show symptoms…the dead cells are generating the symptoms.”
There are no trademark clinical features? What then, collapsed the world? I sure hope this isn’t all riding on a “test,” as bio-tech Oracle.
… I asked Dr. Rasnick what advice he has for people who want to be tested for COVID-19. “Don’t do it, I say, when people ask me,” he replies. “No healthy person should be tested. It means nothing but it can destroy your life, make you absolutely miserable.”
Other topics within the realm of testing that also come to mind:
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Contaminated or Sub-Standard tests, yea, weird right. What was and is going on there?
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Antibodies - Also there are the much talked about Antibodies tests and from what I can gather are even less reliable as any virus may trip a positive (or any past corona virus exposure), therefore no clear determination can be made. I am open to correction as this requires further investigation and expose but the call for testing by many seems like political points scoring and/or a play for positive optics.
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Medical Classification (Cooking the books)? - there are continual claims that the medical re-classification of patients admitting to hospital is being used to skew the numbers in terms of deaths, everything coming in the door is being classed as Sars-nCov19
Finally, a few points based on last nights US White House Briefing.
Listening to Brix, if I remember correctly she stated they need to run 9/10 test on a symptomatic patient to get the one very important positive and if I also understand another point, that with 99% coverage you still only get 50% false negative (open to correction on this point). This actually tallies with other sources I have read in this respect assuming it has all melded in my mind correctly.
Further, based on last nights press briefing. In real terms, I detect the tactic of the Trump admin is to keep on ramping up testing of all kinds, so they have own unassailable numbers (dataset), this after dumping the models for “their own” numbers, and this will be used to make a broader case against the critics and enemies of the USA - some of which held up testing as a club to beat the Trump admin in the early days. It is notable that narrative has already shifted to the next thing and away form not enough tests. I will leave the for another thread.
I do not have time to follow up with all the source material right now, but if times allows I will edit the OP and post further links and sources.
