RE: FRAUD: CDC showing again they are a political/propaganda arm and not practicing science...
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
The false positive rate is 2.3% (mean)
Nah. Show me evidence of that. That is heavily dependent on WHERE you are measuring. With there being no clear definition of the CTs to to use you immediately should understand that rate would vary from location to location depending upon what CT they use.
It is irrefutable that using different measurements and treating them as any kind of equivalence is not scientific and will produce corrupted data.
I mean you can try to refute it (you seem to be) but if you are being logical and at all trying to keep it scientific it really can't be done.
If you can show me they are using the same CT for all of the RT-PCR testing across all the regions then we can have a discussion about what % rates are. I mean I can also give you widely different % of mortality statistics depending upon where I take that sample from.
Should I cherry pick the one that fits what I want the narrative to be?
I definitely try not to and would accept being called out on it.
The truth is there is no standard. Even the document I based this post upon accepts 28 OR LESS. That or less is important because that can be anything from 1 CT to 28 CT. That is a huge variance and if you followed the links I provided on the RT-PCR and how it works it immediately becomes clear how useless that information actually would be to any scientific comparison.
It is very useful to politics, propaganda, or defending a desired narrative.
As to false positives. The fact you even bothered sharing that 2.8% in the face of knowing there is no standard CT is a bit concerning.
Some articles about the false positive rate below though I haven't found the one that had that particular mean value. Yes, it depends on where you are, and even more on how prevalent COVID-19 is where you are. A bigger problem (or at least a more significant percentage of wrong results) is false negatives. I did not grab the links but one article suggested near 100% false negative early after an infection and 20% false negative 5 days after infection. Another article suggested current COVID-19 tests result in false negatives 33% of the time on average. I suspect the false negative rate is much lower once you've reached the point of being symptomatic which typically takes 5-6 days but up to 14 days. Various studies (no doubt with various CT values) on false positives seem to suggest a false positive rate of 1 to a few percent. I don't get the impression that the CT values used thus far (up to 40) commonly give false positives so much as they are more likely to detect early infection and recent recovery. True false positives seemed to be most commonly caused by contamination at various points in the testing process (contamination of reagents, contamination during collection, etc.)
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v1.full.pdf
"Review of external quality assessments revealed false positive rates of 0-16.7%, with an interquartile
range of 0.8-4.0%. Such rates would have large impacts on test data when prevalence is low. Inclusion of
such rates significantly alters four published analyses of population prevalence and asymptomatic ratio. "
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21255029v2
"Using current data providing by the Public Health England (PHE) as of the most recent complete data, a false positive rate of 1.16% (95% CI 1.09 - 1.23%) was found for the PHE PCR test for the period 1 January through 29 March 2021."
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-tests-are-pretty-accurate-but-far-from-perfect-136671
The below article explains why different CT values are useful in different scenarios and what a positive result likely means at different CT values. It seems that it actually makes sense to test an asymptomatic person who has had the vaccine at a lower CT value just as it would make sense to test a symptomatic person at much higher values. But yes, you have to be very careful how you compare the results for the purposes of counting infections.
https://medicine.yale.edu/labmed/sections/virology/COVID-19%20Ct%20values_YNHH%20Aug.%202020%20_395430_36854_v1.pdf
My point is measuring with different CT values is fine as long as the effects of different CT values are understood and taken into account when publishing results. I would think that would be obvious. On the other hand, if you are using results from different CT values and just taking the raw numbers without considering the effect of the different cycle counts, then yes, of course it would be misleading. I'm just saying it isn't automatically misleading. It depends on if and how they account for the difference when reporting the results. Scientific studies (which tend to be published as something a bit longer than a paragraph and include a lot of data you don't necessarily get unless you read the study itself) will probably take these things into account. They usually do. What the media reports and politicians say in their one sentence summaries of such reports may be a completely different story. Often "science" is blamed for being political when it isn't the science so much as how the results are selectively interpreted.
You seem to be suggesting that they shouldn't use different CT values in different circumstances but the above article explains why it is useful to do so. The fact of the matter is that it can make sense to test people at different CT levels based on their circumstances and the purpose of doing so isn't to nefariously make invalid comparisons though of course someone could do that.
Bigger, smaller, I don't know. I do know it is a problem. They really needed to find a good CT value and stick with it. As you pointed out it is not the only test and the other tests are likely more reliable but they are not as fast I think. There are good reasons the inventor of the RT-PCR test said it shouldn't be used the way they are using it.
I think you agree with me on all of that though.
Some very rare cases of 21 days.
That doesn't match the claims of the guy that invented those tests. :)
Though I will state that someone discovering a hammer doesn't mean they are the best person at using a hammer that will ever walk the planet. There is a potential that he was wrong about his own discovery.
There is not enough transparency to know. Hell it is difficult in some cases to even find out what CT you were tested on. Again, it depends where you are.
That is indeed probably the biggest problem. Also I don't consider Dr. Fauci anything other than a politician at this point. He hasn't actually practiced medicine for decades. He has pretty much been an administrator, and the guy to deal with the politics thus a politician.
So when he speaks I think he often causes a lot of the problems. The recent interview with Rand Paul was pretty bad IMO. He lied outright a number of times. The paper trail is there.
People see someone like him. They know enough to detect the lies. Then that colors their impression of the entire process.
We all have bias.
Useful sure. Depending upon your GOAL.
I mainly stress it isn't scientific. That doesn't mean it is without use.
It is just simply not something I'd bash someone over the head with calling it "science".
Science follows a very specific methodology. It is simply a tool, a process. If you vary the measuring technique and then compare those as if equivalent that corrupts the process.
That doesn't mean there may not be reasons you would do it. Yet it shouldn't then get to hide behind the label "Science" when trying to shut people down who ask questions.
Actually if we are using science we wouldn't be shutting people down for asking questions.
Damn politics and power have corrupted too many institutions and people and by extension their actions often lead people to think "science" is dead.
It isn't. Things that are not scientific are often labeled as though they are in order to silence any opposition. Science is as it always was. There are just a lot of these things claiming to be science that are not.
Does everything need to be science? No.
If we can keep our bias out of things we should and that is what the scientific method is there for. Yet it is only useful if we can accurately measure and observe things.
It isn't particularly useful if we don't yet understand or see...
Excellent response by the way. I'd give you a higher value vote if I could.