As cases of coronavirus rise across America, shouldn’t death rates be going up too? Del Bigtree breaks down how COVID-19 tests may be seriously flawed by providing less than accurate results and why the majority of positive cases could be false.
In this July 17, 2020 interview on This Week In Virology with hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Rich Condit, Dr. Anthony Fauci explains if a COVID-19 PCR test has a cycle threshold of 35 or more, the chances of it being replication competent are MINISCULE and you’ve got to say it’s just DEAD NUCLEOTIDES, period.
HOST: All right there have been a number of reports of patients who shed viral rna for weeks as determined by pcr, doesn’t seem to be infectious virus, and the real question is are they a threat for transmission. And I’m wondering if you think we could use a cut off of viral loads determined by pcr to say this patient is no longer infectious, can go home, can go to a nursing facility, because right now the physicians are really having a hard time with that.
FAUCI: Right, again, a good question, and what is now sort of evolving into a bit of a standard that if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more that the chances of it being replication competent are minuscule. So that if somebody, and you know we do, we have patients, and it’s very frustrating for the patients, as well as for the physicians, somebody comes in and they repeat their pcr and it’s like 37 cycle threshold but you never, if you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle. So I think if somebody does come in with 37, 38, even 36, you’ve got to say you know it’s just dead nucleotides, period.
HOST: Yeah because as you know we can’t easily culture infectious viruses, you don’t have a bsl3 lab everywhere.
FAUCI: Exactly, exactly.
HOST: Okay so is the threshold cycle, is reporting that a pretty standard practice in doing a diagnosis now rather than just positive or negative?
FAUCI: Yeah, yeah.
HOST: Okay good
FAUCI: Yeah I mean when you go in, when I get my test, you know, it’s negative. When someone comes in and it’s positive, they don’t give them the threshold until you go back and ask for it.
WHO Changes CCP Virus Test Criteria in Attempt to Reduce False Positives
The World Health Organization (WHO) has cautioned experts not to rely solely on the results of a PCR test to detect the CCP virus. In updated guidance published on Jan. 20, 2021 the WHO said that lab experts and health care practitioners should also consider the patient’s history and epidemiological risk factors alongside the PCR test in diagnosing the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. 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. The WHO didn’t reply to an inquiry from The Epoch Times.
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. A higher threshold value indicates less viral load and that the person is less likely to be infectious, while a person with a lower cycle threshold value has a higher viral load, or is more infectious. The WHO did not specify what the threshold value cutoff should be for a positive diagnosis, but said to only “determine if manual adjustment of the PCR positivity threshold is recommended by the manufacturer.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says its PCR tests have a cycle threshold cutoff of 40 cycles. The federal agency finally included information on cycle threshold value in its Frequently Asked Questions about COVID-19 for laboratories on Nov. 12, 2020. 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.
Prior to the CCP virus pandemic, for individuals to be considered a case, they must test positive and show clinical signs and symptoms. But 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.
The WHO is now advising that a positive PCR test that does “not correspond with the clinical presentation” should be verified by taking “a new specimen” and retesting it. This advice may also help lower CCP virus cases in hospitals as it more clearly defines who is considered a hospitalized case.
