Was "covid" testing of healthy people part of a longer-term trend towards conducting more and more meaningless "screening"?
“Tonya” left an interesting comment under an article I published a few days ago:
I hadn’t really thought about the explosion in screening (eg “Wellman” tests) being a type of asymptomatic testing, but I suppose it can be regarded as such.
Of course, the difference is that the asymptomatic testing (for “covid”) was justified on the basis of protecting others, whereas disease screening is promoted as a way of protecting onseself through “detecting it earlier”.
Regardless, it’s quite possible that the longer-term trend towards adopting the idea that “a test” is necessary, desirable and useful did contribute towards the over-eager acceptance of mass testing of people with no symptoms of anything (other than delusional psychosis) during the covid era.
Anyway, the video Tonya recommended is below. It’s a very clear and straightforward explanation by cardiologist Rohin Francis (who writes occasional substack articles here) as to why nearly all “screening” fails in practice to deliver any meaningful results - apart from to the shareholders of the companies conducting the tests.
He explains that nearly all purported benefits from “early detection” are actually illusory for 2 reasons:
Lead-time bias - in which “survival” simply appears longer because of early detection, but that longer survival is only because of the earlier detection, the earlier intervention having actually made no difference.
Over-treatment - where harms caused by uncecessary treatments consequent to “finding something” outweigh any benefits.
We probably all have stories of how our GP sought to get us onto one or other (or several) of the now almost traditional “medicines for life” (blood pressure lowering, anticholesterol, antidepressant drugs).
None of these have good datasets demonstrating that long term use is a net benefit to the person taking them.
I hadn’t realised how young they start trawling for victims. Our local pharmacist’s waiting area features adverts like “Over 40 & not on a blood pressure lowering medication? See your doctor now”.
My wife’s GP used to push these drug classes at her at every encounter.
It’s unsurprising to find that GP still lining up people of all ages for the mRNA injections, despite warnings from me, initially verbally and later in writing, why she should not do so.
Not only is she harming people who trust her, but she’s helping to install a dystopian hell on earth in which she too will be trapped.
Her new German SUV isn’t going to do her any good then.
In addition to stupidity, greed and possibly evil (my own hunch is that the first two characteristics were sufficient) she’s unable to think about the future implications of what she’s mired in.
Same with trolls and assorted fools online, still maintaining whatever they were trained to say online years ago, for money.
Our current rule of thumb is to keep the hell away from all parts of the “healthcare system”.
When it comes to certain kinds of screenings for certain cancers, I am genuinely wondering about the difference between a "cancer survivor" and a "cancer treatment survivor."