One response to “I found increased amount of gravel in the driveway because I looked at it.”
The NPR article is an absurdity.
Sensitivity of the PCR tests has to do with amplification of genetic material from the virus. The fewer cycles required for the amplification, the higher the viral load and greater likelihood of being contagious. By setting the cycle threshold of amplification too high, the test is overly sensitive.
Imagine a home security alarm so sensitive that it is triggered by a wind gust or leaf hitting a window. The homeowner will certainly be alerted if an intruder is attempting to break in, but the alarm will be going off constantly with false, or in the case of the virus, non-clinically significant positives. Or as the NY Times put it,
Tests with thresholds so high may detect not just live virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers from infection that pose no particular risk — akin to finding a hair in a room long after a person has left.
30 to 33 amplification cycles is the typical upper limit for detecting live virus, according to the CDC, but most commercial labs are using 40 or 37 cycles as a positive test, in essence sounding the burglar alarm when a bird lands on the back deck.
The NY Times found, “Up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus.” Yet lockdowns of businesses and schools continue based on these wildly inaccurate numbers.
Is this purposeful or incompetence? I suggest the former. President Trump downplayed testing in favor of therapeutics such as hydroxychloroquine. The Democrat-controlled corporate media establishment immediately pushed for more testing and told everyone that hydroxy was as deadly as cyanide.
Fox News crackpot and Never-Trumper Neil Cavuto said of hydroxy, “It will kill you.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claiming an “evidence-based” approach to combating the “Chinese” flu, pushed for “testing, testing, testing.” Yet both of those admonitions were fear-based, not evidence-based.
In essence, the more cycles run for the PCR test, the more extraneous cellular, tissue debris, virus and DNA particles, etc. If they have to run 40 cycles to get a viral particle to appear, then the test is worthless. The PCR test is not a quantitative one, but a qualitative test. So, the higher number of cycles needed to find a viral particle, the fewer the number of viruses present and thus the individual likely is not sick and is not contagious — but the powers-that-be will call it a “case.”
alternativebyfritz 
The NPR article is an absurdity.
Sensitivity of the PCR tests has to do with amplification of genetic material from the virus. The fewer cycles required for the amplification, the higher the viral load and greater likelihood of being contagious. By setting the cycle threshold of amplification too high, the test is overly sensitive.
Imagine a home security alarm so sensitive that it is triggered by a wind gust or leaf hitting a window. The homeowner will certainly be alerted if an intruder is attempting to break in, but the alarm will be going off constantly with false, or in the case of the virus, non-clinically significant positives. Or as the NY Times put it,
Tests with thresholds so high may detect not just live virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers from infection that pose no particular risk — akin to finding a hair in a room long after a person has left.
30 to 33 amplification cycles is the typical upper limit for detecting live virus, according to the CDC, but most commercial labs are using 40 or 37 cycles as a positive test, in essence sounding the burglar alarm when a bird lands on the back deck.
The NY Times found, “Up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus.” Yet lockdowns of businesses and schools continue based on these wildly inaccurate numbers.
Is this purposeful or incompetence? I suggest the former. President Trump downplayed testing in favor of therapeutics such as hydroxychloroquine. The Democrat-controlled corporate media establishment immediately pushed for more testing and told everyone that hydroxy was as deadly as cyanide.
Fox News crackpot and Never-Trumper Neil Cavuto said of hydroxy, “It will kill you.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claiming an “evidence-based” approach to combating the “Chinese” flu, pushed for “testing, testing, testing.” Yet both of those admonitions were fear-based, not evidence-based.
In essence, the more cycles run for the PCR test, the more extraneous cellular, tissue debris, virus and DNA particles, etc. If they have to run 40 cycles to get a viral particle to appear, then the test is worthless. The PCR test is not a quantitative one, but a qualitative test. So, the higher number of cycles needed to find a viral particle, the fewer the number of viruses present and thus the individual likely is not sick and is not contagious — but the powers-that-be will call it a “case.”