PCR-Test Cycle Threshold Issue

You're saying that it is better to use a cycle threshold that will kick out so many false positives that the results will be meaningless rather than determine at what threshold the person (not patient) tested positive. That would have made sense.

Experts knew that performing a cycle threshold of 40+ would give meaningless results, but stood by, quiet as a mouse, as labs did just that. You seem to be an apologist for those experts who knew the results would be meaningless, yet failed to mention it. Why would you want to do that?

Yeah, we had to shut it down to save the most vulnerable members of society.

Should we have maybe only locked down . . . vulnerable members of society?? Nope. Not unless an expert tells us that that makes perfect sense. Should check out the survivability rate of age groups. It really brings it all into perspective.

Tony said that a PRC-test cycle threshold of anything over 35 is meaningless. Do you question the veracity of that scientific statement?

Nope, but right now it's a statement suspended in a certain time. All I'm doing is absorbing all the differing information. I'm not trying to debate the topic, I was commenting on the topic. Please allow me to leave the certainty of the subject matter to you and Max.

This isn't the first time I mistook a serious debate as a conversation, again sorry for the intrusion.

Almost seems too obvious doesn’t it. That was the main point Musk made in his rant this morning. It shouldn’t take a genius to see the logic. He also noted that his businesses did not slow down for a minute this past year but set new production records instead.

(not counting that short period of insanity when California forced Fremont factory to temporarily close, after which Elon announced the move to Texas for his headquarters.) That made me smile.

That’s your problem, you need a little foresight.

I was saying these same things a year ago.

I have no idea what that means.

But with foresight one can be wrong. Never with hindsight.

Okay

Covid-19 Quotations: Questioning PCR Reliability

“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.” — The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.

https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download

“PCR-based testing produces enough false positive results to make positive results highly unreliable over a broad range of real-world scenarios.” — Andrew N. Cohen, Ph.D.1*, Bruce Kessel, M.D.2, Michael G. Milgroom, Ph.D.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v3.full.pdf

“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.” — The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention

https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download

“…all or a substantial part of these positives could be due to what’s called false positives tests.” — Michael Yeadon: former Vice President and Chief Science Officer for Pfizer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch7wze46md0&t=90s

“…false positive results will occur regularly, despite high specificity, causing unnecessary community isolation and contact tracing, and nosocomial infection if inpatients with false positive tests are cohorted with infectious patients.” — The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases

https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(20)30614-5/fulltext

“…you can find almost anything in anybody…it doesn’t tell you that you’re sick and it doesn’t tell you the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you…” — Dr. Kary Mullis, PhD (Nobel Peace Prize Winner inventor of the PCR test)

https://maskoffmn.org/#kary

“I’m skeptical that a PCR test is ever true. It’s a great scientific research tool. It’s a horrible tool for clinical medicine.” — Dr. David Rasnick, biochemist and protease developer

“…up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus.” — The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

“…detection of viral RNA by qRT-PCR does not necessarily equate to infectiousness, and viral culture from PCR positive upper respiratory tract samples has been rarely positive beyond nine days of illness.” — Muge Cevik, clinical lecturer1 2, Krutika Kuppalli, assistant professor3, Jason Kindrachuk, assistant professor of virology4, Malik Peiris, professor of virology5Francis Drobniewsk – Professor of Global Health and TB, Imperial

“A positive RT-qPCR result may not necessarily mean the person is still infectious or that he or she still has any meaningful disease.” — Michael R Tom, Michael J Mina

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/16/2252/5841456

“PCR does not distinguish between infectious virus and non-infectious nucleic acid” — Barry Atkinson: National Collection of Pathogenic Viruses (NCPV) Eskild Petersen: infectious disease specialist

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30868-0/fulltext

“Detection of viral RNA does not necessarily mean that a person is infectious and able to transmit the virus to another person” — The World Health Organization

“Caution needs to be applied to the results as it often does not detect infectious virus. PCR results may lead to restrictions for large groups of people who do not present an infection risk.” — The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19

Why COVID-19 Testing Is a Tragic Waste
“The challenge is the false positive rate is very high, so only seven percent of tests will be successful in identifying those that actually have the the virus. So the truth is, we can’t just rely on that…” — Dominic Raab – First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs

https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-covid-19-testing-tragic-waste/5729700

“positive results […] do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite.” — FDA

https://www.fda.gov/media/136151/download

“A positive RT-qPCR result may not necessarily mean the person is still infectious or that he or she still has any meaningful disease.” — Michael R Tom, Michael J Mina

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/16/2252/5841456

“…no single gold standard assay exists. The current rate of operational false-positive swab tests in the UK is unknown; preliminary estimates show it could be somewhere between 0·8% and 4·0%.” — Dr. Elena Surkova; Vladyslav Nikolayevskyy – Public Health Englamd; Francis Drobniewsk – Professor of Global Health and TB, Imperial College

“…detection of viral RNA by qRT-PCR does not necessarily equate to infectiousness, and viral culture from PCR positive upper respiratory tract samples has been rarely positive beyond nine days of illness.” — Muge Cevik, clinical lecturer1 2, Krutika Kuppalli, assistant professor3, Jason Kindrachuk, assistant professor of virology4, Malik Peiris, professor of virology5Francis Drobniewsk – Professor of Global Health and TB, Imperial College

My God!, are people now that cowardly that they will never risk being wrong while seeking the good? Is fear all that guides them?

My apologies to all for praying on-line, I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.

My daughter (who had covid a little more than 6 months ago) decided she needed to get away as she had been on her school campus for quite a while - many of her classes were online and she has family in Florida so she decided to go there for a week. She wasn't going to a party area just went to stay with her aunt and cousin at their house.

Long story short - even though she had covid previously and it was not required for her to get tested to go back - she did as she did not want to chance bringing it back to campus. She took one of the rapid tests, the pharmacy called her because it came back positive - she told him that she had covid previously and he seemed shocked she would be positive. He did explain that the rapid test does bring back more false positives and suggested the PCR test (which can take one - three days to get results) - she has to reschedule her flight as there was no way she could fly even if it was thought it was a false positive - went and took the other test in three days it came back negative and then was free to go back to school.

Moral of the story is -- the false positive test did inconvenience her a little bit, but it was worth it to not potentially cause an outbreak at her school or among her housemates.

I think the test is ok - if it does not cause major disruptions - as you can be retested - the worst is it causes you to self quarantine for a few days at most. My worry would be if the tests would be the opposite where it tests you are negative when you are not; giving you and others a false sense of security - then you are "freeing" people out into the public thinking they are covid free - free to fly on a plane for example like my daughter.

Are they having issues where testing is coming out negative when someone is actually ill with covid?

Another person who really thinks it's better to use a cycle threshold that will kick out so many false positives that the results will be meaningless rather than determine at what cycle threshold the person (not patient) tested positive. Over a 90% false positive rate because "experts" didn't bother to mention that the PCR-test cycle threshold is set too high.

I've shown you clearly that the "experts" were either unaware of the cycle threshold being set way too high, or they knew it, and thought that they'd keep it to themselves. Doesn't matter now anyway. Fact is it was deliberately set too high, and unless the ones who deliberately set it too high come right out and tell you that the test is meaningless, you're going to put your intellect on hold because you've been convinced that you don't understand what a 90% false positive rate means about a pandemic.

Over a 90% false positive rate, and what is everyone's response? We better get a mask on!

I think the thing you are missing is that the false positive rate is obviously not 90%. I've been tested many times (work related) and never come up with a false positive. My children have had periodic tests in college, no positives. Some of their friends and my friends have tested positive and those tests have been confirmed. Of course, I don't know (and honestly don't care) what testing regime is being used, but I don't know anyone who has received a false positive and we've been testing hundreds of employees at work for a while. If your argument is "Covid is way overblown due to all the false positives" you would have us believe that 9 of 10 positive results are incorrect. I don't think the data supports that. My experience absolutely does not.

Thanks for the meaningless anecdotal response.

Who said this:

“Positive results are indicative of active infection with 2019-nCoV but do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease. Laboratories within the United States and its territories are required to report all positive results to the appropriate public health authorities.

"Negative results do not preclude 2019-nCoV infection and should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or other patient management decisions. Negative results must be combined with clinical observations, patient history, and epidemiological information."
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Oh, and how does the PCR-test determine the amount of virus, the state of the virus, and the identity of the virus?

Ninety people who received positive COVID-19 results did not have the virus, according to the state Department of Public Health.

Experts: US COVID-19 positivity rate high due to 'too sensitive' tests

Up to 90 percent of people tested for COVID-19 in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada in July carried barely any traces of the virus and it could be because today's tests are 'too sensitive', experts say.

Health experts say PCR testing - the most widely used diagnostic test for COVID-19 in the US - are too sensitive and need to be adjusted to rule out people who have insignificant amounts of the virus in their systems because they're likely not contagious.

Today the PCR test, which provides a yes or no answer if a patient is infected, doesn't say how much of the virus a patient has in their body.

PCR tests analyze genetic matter from the virus in cycles and today's tests typically take 37 or 40 cycles, but experts say this is too high because it detects very small amounts of the virus that don't pose a risk.

Doctors say fewer cycle thresholds, meaning the number of cycles needed to detect the virus, hone in on those with greater amounts of the virus who do pose risks, according to the New York Times.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

What could it mean?

Here is a link to that: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/experts-us-covid-19-positivity-rate-high-due-to-too-sensitive-tests/ar-BB18wE8B

When you are talking the difference between 90% and 0%, you don't need a lot of data. If you know two people who tested positive and it was confirmed with no false positives, you know that that false positive rate is less than 90% to a 95% confidence level. If you know three, you know the rate is less than 63% to a 95% confidence level. If you know 10 (and I do), it is less than 26%. If the false positive rate is greater than 90%, just about everyone should know people who have experienced a false positive. I don't know anyone. This observation should give you pause.

Where did you get that stat that it is over a 90% false positive rate - sorry I do not read all of your posts because you just goes on and on with various useless links.

Granted this is my personal experience - but we (as a family) had been tested several times (mostly due to needed travel out of state and school requirements) - my one daughter that I mentioned also played college basketball where they were tested at least 3 times a week in order to play - she only tested positive once (the rapid test as I mentioned) as well as her entire team - none on the team had once tested positive - so I think the 90% is a bit far fetched.

My other daughter like I mentioned traveled out of state (as well as I did) with our strict state regulations we had to test negative when we got back - not once did we test positive.

Not sure everyone else situations, but I think the 90% must be a bit over exaggerated.

Ok - engineer has had similar experiences.

I confirm that I have heard of only one false positive test of which was a rapid test which is confirmed it tends to have more than the PCR test. I do know some kids at my daughter's high school that had rapid tests and none tested positive. Although that count is significantly less than the number I know of taking the PCR test.