Post by chipbutty on Dec 13, 2020 14:06:29 GMT
As referenced in the tiers thread, the Portuguese appeals court ruled that PCR tests are unreliable and that it is unlawful to quarantine people based solely on a PCR test and I understand that similar cases are being pursued in other EU countries. This is of particular concern as it is the results of these PCR tests that are the sole reason why the bulk of Europe finds itself under some form of lockdown. To re-iterate:
A “case” is a positive PCR test. No symptoms are involved. A “COVID-19 admission” to a hospital is a person testing positive by PCR before, on entry or at any time during a hospital stay, no matter the reason for the admission or the symptoms the patient is presenting. A “COVID-19 death” is any death within 28 days of a positive PCR test (no matter what the circumstances). It has been suggested that “ the degree of misattribution is so large that the number of deaths from the top 10 leading causes have been pushed far below normal levels, which is highly suggestive of these deaths having been mislabelled “
Given the criticality of this test then, it is surely a reasonable and fair expectation that it is extremely accurate and the Government is confident that it is making life changing decisions using quality data ?
Hmm – maybe not:
Firstly - The UK Government has confirmed that it does not know the operational false positive rate, but they have suggested that the OFPR rate from prior related tests (anywhere from 0.8% to 2.3%) could be used. However, this is not a robust and repeatable base line for two reasons:
1) Each PCR test will have a unique OFPR (apparently)
2) The range set above was for earlier, smaller scale tests conducted to the requisite standards.
Secondly – In an effort to deliver mass testing, the Government have had to rely on private labs to provide the required capacity and turn around speed, which in turn, appears to have been responsible for a worrying drop in standards (there are significant reported issues relating to poorly qualified/trained testers and cross contamination of samples – I believe both Panorama and Channel 4 dispatches have produced programmes on this topic).
What this means in simple terms is that if an OFPR of 2.3% is assumed, then a test rate of 500,000 per day would yield 11,500 false positives. What is the OFPR when we have inexperienced testers and contaminated sampling (10% + ?) and what is the impact as the UK does reach 500,000 + tests per day ?
Since October, the lateral flow test has been used in mass testing experiments in Liverpool, Merthyr Tydfil and now Universities various. As I understand it, LFTs are more robust than PCR tests in that they are not subject to the same flaws (although even this is contested). In all examples, the positives found were tiny (as in barely any higher than the accepted OFPR) and indicated an almost total absence of Covid (based on the accepted OFPR for this testing).
So – the problem for the Government is this:
If the PCR test (in it’s current guise and volume) could easily yield 10,000 + positives in a country that is completely free of Covid, how in God’s name are they going to prove the vaccines post roll out have been effective ? They still plan to spend £100 billion on mass testing despite the plan being wildly derided due to the risks which could clearly end up with 200,000 + false positives on a daily basis (2.3% of 10 million daily tests).
Despite being reluctant to even engage with the false positive discussion to date, I would guess that PCR testing accuracy is going to become a very hot topic in the near future and it would give the Government all the justification they need to ditch PCR testing and scale back all of this moon shot nonsense.
The problem for us is that we can never end this puritanical self-flagellation if the only barometers (cases and deaths) are powered by unreliable test outputs. Given the volume of testing conducted, it only needs a low OFPR to generate hundreds of recorded deaths and thousands of recorded cases – all of which would be false positives.
I really cannot understand why this topic hasn’t been more openly discussed and debated (tin foil hat mode disabled for now) over the last 9 months within the media and government, especially as we cannot go a single bloody day without another “ expert “ telling us we are all morons who should be locked down again because of “ out of control “ positive cases or cases that haven’t dropped enough.
Discuss, debunk, etc...
A “case” is a positive PCR test. No symptoms are involved. A “COVID-19 admission” to a hospital is a person testing positive by PCR before, on entry or at any time during a hospital stay, no matter the reason for the admission or the symptoms the patient is presenting. A “COVID-19 death” is any death within 28 days of a positive PCR test (no matter what the circumstances). It has been suggested that “ the degree of misattribution is so large that the number of deaths from the top 10 leading causes have been pushed far below normal levels, which is highly suggestive of these deaths having been mislabelled “
Given the criticality of this test then, it is surely a reasonable and fair expectation that it is extremely accurate and the Government is confident that it is making life changing decisions using quality data ?
Hmm – maybe not:
Firstly - The UK Government has confirmed that it does not know the operational false positive rate, but they have suggested that the OFPR rate from prior related tests (anywhere from 0.8% to 2.3%) could be used. However, this is not a robust and repeatable base line for two reasons:
1) Each PCR test will have a unique OFPR (apparently)
2) The range set above was for earlier, smaller scale tests conducted to the requisite standards.
Secondly – In an effort to deliver mass testing, the Government have had to rely on private labs to provide the required capacity and turn around speed, which in turn, appears to have been responsible for a worrying drop in standards (there are significant reported issues relating to poorly qualified/trained testers and cross contamination of samples – I believe both Panorama and Channel 4 dispatches have produced programmes on this topic).
What this means in simple terms is that if an OFPR of 2.3% is assumed, then a test rate of 500,000 per day would yield 11,500 false positives. What is the OFPR when we have inexperienced testers and contaminated sampling (10% + ?) and what is the impact as the UK does reach 500,000 + tests per day ?
Since October, the lateral flow test has been used in mass testing experiments in Liverpool, Merthyr Tydfil and now Universities various. As I understand it, LFTs are more robust than PCR tests in that they are not subject to the same flaws (although even this is contested). In all examples, the positives found were tiny (as in barely any higher than the accepted OFPR) and indicated an almost total absence of Covid (based on the accepted OFPR for this testing).
So – the problem for the Government is this:
If the PCR test (in it’s current guise and volume) could easily yield 10,000 + positives in a country that is completely free of Covid, how in God’s name are they going to prove the vaccines post roll out have been effective ? They still plan to spend £100 billion on mass testing despite the plan being wildly derided due to the risks which could clearly end up with 200,000 + false positives on a daily basis (2.3% of 10 million daily tests).
Despite being reluctant to even engage with the false positive discussion to date, I would guess that PCR testing accuracy is going to become a very hot topic in the near future and it would give the Government all the justification they need to ditch PCR testing and scale back all of this moon shot nonsense.
The problem for us is that we can never end this puritanical self-flagellation if the only barometers (cases and deaths) are powered by unreliable test outputs. Given the volume of testing conducted, it only needs a low OFPR to generate hundreds of recorded deaths and thousands of recorded cases – all of which would be false positives.
I really cannot understand why this topic hasn’t been more openly discussed and debated (tin foil hat mode disabled for now) over the last 9 months within the media and government, especially as we cannot go a single bloody day without another “ expert “ telling us we are all morons who should be locked down again because of “ out of control “ positive cases or cases that haven’t dropped enough.
Discuss, debunk, etc...