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COVID-19: WHO Changes Guidance to Address False Positives PCR Tests with Absurdly High Ct Cutoff Value, and no Baseline Rate Metric
Related: ethics in medicine, gears of the machine, GIGO, logical fallacy, medical test accuracy, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus, The Epoch Times
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.
— Lloyd Chambers
re: Is the PCR test used by Germany and the USA a Medical Fraud?
re: Is the Cycle Cutoff Value (Ct value) for PCR Tests Way Too High? False Positives Used to Destroy Lives
re: Belgian Medical Doctors on PCR Tests for COVID-19
How much have COVID-19 infection rates actually risen? That is, if you have a test whose false positive rate is anywhere close to the baseline rate, you’re just producing garbage data (GIGO). A point lost on the public and the news and seemingly even medical experts addressing the public.
Even the WHO now questions the data — false positive PCR tests stemming from an absurd cutoff value (cycle threshold value aka Ct value). And an unknown baseline rate. In other words, a well-recognized logical fallacy is driving public policy.
COVID positive tests are GIGO (junk) data and have been for a long time. Ditto for COVID death statistics.
They are moving-the-goalposts right before your eyes. Is the timing of the change political? Maybe, maybe not, but at least it seems to be more sensible.
The Epoch Times: WHO Changes CCP Virus Test Criteria in Attempt to Reduce False Positives
The new guidance could result in significantly fewer daily cases... It’s unclear why the health agency waited over a year to release the new directive...
Scientists and physicians have raised concerns for many months of an over-reliance on and a misuse of the PCR test as a diagnostic tool since it can’t differentiate between a live infectious virus from an inactivated virus fragment that is not infectious.
Additionally, the high cycle threshold values of most PCR tests—at 40 cycles or higher—increases the risk of false positives.
...But many medical experts consider a threshold value cutoff of 40 cycles to only return false positives since samples that go through many amplification cycles will pick up negligible RNA sequences regardless if the virus is inactivate or the viral load is exceedingly low to pose any problem.
...to be counted as a CCP virus case, only a positive PCR test is required. And no matter how many times an individual is tested, each positive test is counted as a separate case...
...This advice may also help lower CCP virus cases in hospitals as it more clearly defines who is considered a hospitalized case.
...
WIND: OMG. OMG. OMG.
In other words, it’s all GIGO. No one knows what the real infections are or the real deaths. Is it off by 90%, 50%, 25%, 10%, what? No one knows, and no one can say. This isn’t science.
- COVID infections are garbage data with no statistical validity.
- COVID death data are garbage data with no statistical validity.
- 4 tests on the same day of the same person are.... 4 cases! WTF?
The math
First, the PCR Ct value for many tests is 40, meaning that viral bits are multiplied by 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776 (about a trillion). A much more reasonably number would be 2^30 = 1,073,741,824, or about a billion, 1024 times less. And you only do the test where clinical symptoms manifest, in order to reduce the false positive problem.
MITMedical: Was my PCR test result a false positive? [argues for low false positive rate for one test]
Second, no test has any validity without establishing the baseline rate. Any test lacking a baseline rate is committing a logical fallacy. But that is exactly what we see with COVID infection data. It’s not clear to me that even most doctors 'get' that.
For example, suppose you test 1000 people, 1 of which is actually infected. If the false positive rate is 1% (it’s probably much higher), then you get 11 positives (assuming no false negative for the infected person). That’s an error of 1000% (one thousand percent). And that is what public policy has been based on. Within rising infections, maybe the error rate is now down to 100%?
Corruption in science
Scientific hooliganism is at work here. No honest clinician could accept these pathetically weak metrics for data characterizing the pandemic.
I am not doubting a large number of infections, but the infection rate data and COVID death statistics are garbage data (GIGO) that wouldn’t pass peer review by any honest clinician.
We are witnessing the most grotesque corruption of science I have seen in my lifetime. We have “experts” like wet-noodle Dr Fauci now saying how they “feel”, as if reality changes because of who the boss is. Good luck with science based on feelings.
The chances of the gullible public understanding the logical fallacy of the baseline rate versus the false positive rate is a logical fallacy never mentioned in the news. So politicians and “experts” craving power and influence can inflict any amount of harm on the populace, all based “on the data” and “on science”. We just have to “listen to the experts”, who over and over have been shown to be full of shit on almost every important question about COVID.
The number of quoted casualties from COVID is another GIGO number, one lacking any rigorous scientific basis, with no proof of any kind required. Indeed, patients can be admitted to hospitals with a false positive for COVID and become yet another COVID statistic.
