Only things we know for sure is that PCR tests used to diagnose covid19 produce a ridiculously high number of false positives. And that there are documented instances of gross abuses when it comes to fatalities attributed to covid19. From there, imo, we can consider that the number of death attributed to covid19 is not only inaccurate, but way over estimated
We don’t know what the percent of “false positives” is.
We need to get our definitions straight. Someone who has the virus in their body should be differentiated from people that becomes symptomatic. They currently call all these people cases. Meanwhile influenza “cases” are people that present at emergency rooms with extreme symptoms of influenza who test positive. So comparing case fatality rate of covid and influenza is meaningless.
I don’t think the number of covid fatalities has been inflated. Total deaths in america is up by 10 or 15 percent and that number is comparable to the reported numer of covid deaths.
People who don’t know any old people or don’t live in a hard hit area might be inclined to think no one is dying because it hasn’t happened to anyone they know. But in urban areas a lot of people are dying.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/507937-covid-pcr-test-fail/
>Four German holidaymakers who were illegally quarantined in Portugal after one was judged to be positive for Covid-19 have won their case, in a verdict that condemns the widely-used PCR test as being up to 97-percent unreliable.
Ill say it again. We need to get our definitions straight.
What is your definition of “false positive”? If you think this test is generating 97% of positive results due to random error, you are wrong. That’s not what they are saying.
People on both sides of the argument are just parroting bullshit stats back and forth with no understanding of what they really mean.
The study in question cultured test swabs which were also used with the PCR test. They tried to grow the virus in a petri dish with human cell medium.
For swabs that tested positive at 25 cycles of the PCR test, 70% had enough virus to infect the cells in the petri dish. At 30 cycles, only 20% of the positive swabs had enough virus to infect the cells. At 35 cycles (standard) that number was 3%.
This percentage would not necessarily directly indicate the percentage of tested subjects that are capable of being infectious. But it would correlate to it.
So this could be an indication that a PCR test using 35 cycles is testing positive for people that have the virus but are very unlikely to pass it on or ever develop and infection.
But in this case your are actually testing for contagiousness. Not presence of the virus.
So know your fucking definitions.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1491/5912603
(post is archived)