The deeper you look at PCR testing the worse it looks.

Earlier today I posted an article by a Mike Hearn on modeling, specifically the Ferguson / Imperial modeling used to justify the lockdowns.

I decided to have a look at other work published on Medium by the same author, who I see published 2 pieces on PCR testing / pseudoepidemics which you can see here and here and are well worth reading. They contain a wealth of useful references.

The 2nd of those contained a link to this hilariously on-message puff piece talking up PCR testing accuracy. You can get the flavour of the article from its closing words:

But what caught my eye was this:

The link given leads to this piece which describes how the “Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics” (FIND) is “testing the tests” (phew!).

FIND’s website can be found here. Interestingly, they just announced this:

FIND certainly appears to be pretty central to the pandemic preparedness - industrial complex. Here is one of the 3 things listed on their “what we do?” page:

And as you’d expect, donors include BMGF, the German Federal Government, CEPI, GAVI, UNITAID, WHO, Rockerfeller Foundation and many other “usual suspects”.

Rick Bright - in the news recently - is on the Board of FIND. Here he is bloviating about the widespread avian flu outbreak. (I am sure “coming soon” is meant to apply to the serology data but I can’t help regarding this as a Freudian slip by which he really means “avian flu outbreak coming soon”.)

On FIND’s website, you can navigate to a section listing the results of all the evaluations performed to date. Here’s the link to the one commenced in February 2020.

Of particular note from the methodology described therein:

Note how everything is determined by reference to the Tib Molbiol assay? For those who don’t know, this is the testing company part-owned by Christian Drosten and no doubt the tests are based on his infamous passed-peer-review-in-24-hours PCR protocol, developed without any access to clinical specimens:

In the present case of 2019-nCoV, virus isolates or samples from infected patients have so far not become available to the international public health community. We report here on the establishment and validation of a diagnostic workflow for 2019-nCoV screening and specific confirmation, designed in absence of available virus isolates or original patient specimens. Design and validation were enabled by the close genetic relatedness to the 2003 SARS-CoV, and aided by the use of synthetic nucleic acid technology.

(There’s a rather unconvincing brushing-off of concerns about the potential for conflicts of interest here.)

I was interested to see what Ct values were reportedly used during the testing validation, however I could not find those listed, so I thought I would try to find a more detailed report.

The IEEE article linked above contains a link to a report which is now broken, but I could find it via Wayback Machine here, and I have downloaded a copy which you can see below:

Find Sars Cov2 Molecular Assay Evaluation Results 05jun2020

132KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The right-hand column of the results table on page 2 reveals that the lowest Ct cut-off recommended by a manufacturer was 38, with some specifying as high as 42. But 5 manufacturers with “hold my beer” bravado stated that ANY positive signal should be considered positive.

The 3rd column contains “average Ct values”, but it’s unclear if these are from the testing of positive or negative controls, and in any event without seeing a range is of little value.

Remember also that the results in this validation apply to small controlled runs of testing by (presumably) expert technicians - a far cry from what happened in practice around the world. There has been hardly any end-to-end testing (where control samples arrive unannounced at testing labs). What little did happen produced rather startling findings - see here.

Regardless, it is clear that the manufacturers were recommending a degree of amplification which meant that any results obtained were essentially meaningless practically.

That’s not to say that even if they had not, and even if the PCR testing was actually saying anything useful about contagiousness, it could be justified, scientifically, morally or ethically. It could not. It was used as a tool of oppression and that would have been the case however “accurate” it was.

There’s plenty more to be said about the way PCR testing was used - and is still being used - as such a tool, but that’s it for now.

Interested in your comments below.