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Coronavirus Pt3 – Testing: What are we doing? What does it mean?

TOPICS:antibody testingcivil disobedienceCOVID19RT-PCR testingSARS-CoV-2serology

coronavirus testing

Posted By: VaxxterAdmin2 05/18/2020

by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, DO, AOBNMM, ABIHM*

In 1965, scientists identified the first human coronavirus; it was associated with the common cold. The Coronavirus family, named for their crown-like appearance, currently includes 36 viruses. Within that group, there are 4 common viruses that have been causing infection in humans for more than sixty years. In addition, three pandemic coronaviruses that can infect humans: SARS, MERS, and now, SARS-CoV-2.

As the news of deaths in China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran began to saturate every form of media 24/7, we became familiar with a new term: COVID-19. To be clear, the name of the newly identified coronavirus is SARS-CoV-2; short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2. This virus’s symptoms include fever, cough, chest pain, and shortness of breath. These are the complex of symptoms that form the diagnosis of COVID-19.

Public Health Emergency

The Trump administration declared a public health emergency on January 31, 2020. Then on February 2, they placed a ban on the entry of most travelers who had recently been in China. On February 4, Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a declaration of public health emergency and activated the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, otherwise known as the PREP Act. This nefarious legislation provides complete protection of manufacturers from liability for all products, technologies, biologics, or any vaccine developed as a medical countermeasure against COVID-19. For those nervously waiting for the vaccine to become available, be sure to understand the PREP Act before rushing to the get in line.

Calls for testing – to see if a person is or isn’t infected – began soon after the emergency was declared. But performing those tests was initially slow due to an inadequate number of test kits. As the kits became available, those developed by the CDC had a defect: The reagents reacted to the negative control sample, making the test inaccurate and the kits unusable.

In various countries, thousands of test kits purchased from China were found to be contaminated with the SARS-CoV-2 viruses. No one really knows how that happened, but theories spread like wildfire. Could the test kit infect the person receiving testing? Or, did it mean the test would return a false-positive result, driving up the numbers of those said to have an infection so those in power could implement stronger lockdowns and accelerate the hockey-stick unemployment rates? There are no adequate answers for any of those questions.

Mandatory Testing … of what? 

Authorities claim that testing is important for public health officials to assess if their mitigation efforts – “shelter in place” and “social distancing” and “wearing a mask” – are making a difference to “flatten the curve.” Officials also claim that testing is necessary to know how many persons have an infection within a community and to understand the nature of how coronaviruses spread.

Are these reasons sufficient to give up our health freedom and our personal rights, being tested and shamed in public?

Despite the challenges with test kits, testing began. By the end of March 2020, more than 1 million people had been tested across the US. By May 9, the number tested had grown to over 8.7M. Testing methods include a swab of the nasal passages or by inserting a long, uncomfortable swab through the nose to scrape the back of the throat. Specimens have also been obtained bronchoalveolar lavage, from sputum, and from stool specimens.

The call for mandatory testing has been gathering steam and becoming ever more onerous. In Washington state, Governor Inslee has declared:

Individuals that refuse to cooperate with contact tracers and/or refuse testing, those individuals will not be allowed to leave their homes to purchase basic necessities such as groceries and/or prescriptions. Those persons will need to make arrangements through friends, family, or state provided “family support” personnel.

But what do the results really mean?

Who Should Receive Testing

On May 8, 2020, the CDC has listed specific priorities for when testing should be done. As of May 16, more than 11-million samples have been collected and more than 3700 specimens have not yet been evaluated.

High Priority

  • Hospitalized patients with symptoms
  • Healthcare facility workers, workers in living settings, and first responders with symptoms
  • Residents in long-term care facilities or other congregate living settings, including prisons and shelters, with symptoms

Priority

  • Persons with symptoms of potential COVID-19 infection, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, vomiting or diarrhea, and/or sore throat
  • Persons without symptoms who are prioritized by health departments or clinicians, for any reason, including but not limited to public health monitoring, sentinel surveillance, or screening of asymptomatic individuals according to state and local plans.

Read that last priority again: That means virtually everyone can be required to get a test.

Is that a violation of your personal rights? And, if you submit to testing, what does a “positive test” actually mean?

Types of Testing: RT-PCR

PCR, short for polymerase chain reaction, is a highly specific laboratory technique. The key to understanding PCR testing is that PCR can identify an individual specific virus within a viral family.

However, a PCR was created to identify DNA viruses; the SARS-CoV2 virus is an RNA virus. Therefore, multiple steps are necessary to “magnify” the amount of genetic material in the specimen. Researchers used a method called RT-PCR, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, to specifically identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It’s a complicated process. To read more about it, go here and here.

If a nasal or a blood sample contains a tiny snip of RNA from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, RT-PCR can identify it. This leads to a high probability that the person has had exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

However – and this is important – a positive RT-PCR test result does not necessarily indicate a full virus is present. The virus must be fully intact to cross from person-to-person and cause illness.

RT-PCR Testing: The Importance of Timing

Even if a person has had all the symptoms associated with a coronavirus infection or has had exposure to persons who have had a COVID-19 diagnosis, the probability of an RT-PCR test being positive decreases with the number of days past the onset of symptoms.

According to a study done by Paul Wikramaratna and others:

  • For a nasal swab, the percentage chance of a positive test declines from about 94% on day 0 to about 67% by day 10. By day 31, there is only a 2% chance of a positive result.
  • For a throat swab, the percentage chance of a positive test declines from about 88% on day 0 to about 47% by day 10. By day 31, there is only a 1% chance of a positive result.

In other words, the longer the time frame between the onset of symptoms and the time a person tests for COVID-19, the more likely the test will be negative.

The Purpose of Repeat Testing

Repeat testing of persons who have a negative test may (eventually) confirm the presence of viral RNA, but this is impractical. Additionally, repeated testing of the same person can lead to even more confusing results. The test may go from negative, to positive, then back to negative again as the immune system clears out the coronavirus infection and moves to recovery.

And what makes this testing even more confusing is that the FDA admits that “The detection of viral RNA by RT-PCR does not necessarily equate with an infectious virus.”

Let’s break that down:

You’ve had all the symptoms of COVID19, but your RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 is negative.

  • Does that mean you’re “good to go” – you can go to work, go to school or you can travel?  OR…
  • Does that mean your influenza-like illness was caused by some other pathogen, possibly one of the four coronaviruses that have been in circulation for 60 years? OR…
  • Does that mean the result is a false-negative and you still have the infection, but it isn’t detectable by current tests? OR…
  • Does that mean it was a sample that was inadequately taken due to the faulty technique by the technician? OR…
  • Does that mean you have not been exposed, and you are susceptible to contracting the infection, and you need to stay in quarantine?

So, what does a “positive” test actually mean? And that’s the problem:

No one knows for sure.

Read more here: https://vaxxter.com/covid19-testing-what-are-we-doing-what-does-it-mean/

Cochrane Collaboration: Flu Vaccines of No Benefit

October 10, 2012

This is the season that many Americans are advised-even pressured–to get flu shots. Indeed, flu shots are being hawked at every drug store chain…
But what does the evidence show about the effectiveness of the flu vaccine when vaccinated and unvaccinated groups are compared ?

Well, the finding of a comprehensive review of 50 published reports by the highly credible Cochrane Collaboration should discourage healthy people from getting the flu shot:

“The results of this review seem to discourage the utilisation of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health measure.
As healthy adults have a low risk of complications due to respiratory disease, the use of the vaccine may be only advised as an individual protection measure against symptoms in specific cases.”

Specifically, the EVIDENCE REFUTES the claims that the flu vaccine prevents the flu;

the EVIDENCE REFUTES the claim that it prevents viral transmission in healthy adults;

and  the EVIDENCE REFUTES the claim that the vaccine prevents complications and “saves lives.”

The EVIDENCE shows little or no benefit for influenza vaccinations.

“This review includes 15 out of 36 trials funded by industry (four had no funding declaration). An earlier systematic review of 274 influenza vaccine studies published up to 2007 found industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this finding.”

Repeat:
“…industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies…”

“…reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin…”

“…there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions…”

Most assuredly, the “content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this finding”!

So, it would be prudent to be highly skeptical about the pronouncements and recommendations of public health officials about the value or necessity of various vaccines.
There are hidden financial conflicts of interest.

See, Part III of AHRP’s examination of America’s Healthcare Crisis  https://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/873/9/
with links to a detailed analysis of the intricate web of financial conflicts of interest that dominate public health vaccine policies.

Vera Sharav

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001269.pub4/abstract

The Cochrane Collaboration (Wiley publication)

Vaccines for preventing Influenza in Healthy Adults

Tom Jefferson, Carlo Di Pietrantonj ,Alessandro Rivetti ,Ghada A Bawazeer ,Lubna A Al-Ansary ,Eliana Ferroni

Published Online: 7 JUL 2010

We included 50 reports. Forty (59 sub-studies) were clinical trials of over 70,000 people. Eight were comparative non-RCTs and assessed serious harms. Two were reports of harms which could not be introduced in the data analysis. In the relatively uncommon circumstance of vaccine matching the viral circulating strain and high circulation, 4% of unvaccinated people versus 1% of vaccinated people developed influenza symptoms (risk difference (RD) 3%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2% to 5%). The corresponding figures for poor vaccine matching were 2% and 1% (RD 1, 95% CI 0% to 3%). These differences were not likely to be due to chance. Vaccination had a modest effect on time off work and had no effect on hospital admissions or complication rates. Inactivated vaccines caused local harms and an estimated 1.6 additional cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome per million vaccinations. The harms evidence base is limited.

Authors’ conclusions

Influenza vaccines have a modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms and working days lost. There is no evidence that they affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission.

WARNING:
This review includes 15 out of 36 trials funded by industry (four had no funding declaration). An earlier systematic review of 274 influenza vaccine studies published up to 2007 found industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this finding.

Plain language summary

Over 200 viruses cause influenza and influenza-like illness which produce the same symptoms (fever, headache, aches and pains, cough and runny noses). Without laboratory tests, doctors cannot tell the two illnesses apart. Both last for days and rarely lead to death or serious illness. At best, vaccines might be effective against only influenza A and B, which represent about 10% of all circulating viruses. Each year, the World Health Organization recommends which viral strains should be included in vaccinations for the forthcoming season.

Authors of this review assessed all trials that compared vaccinated people with unvaccinated people. The combined results of these trials showed that under ideal conditions (vaccine completely matching circulating viral configuration) 33 healthy adults need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms. In average conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms. Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalised or working days lost but caused one case of Guillian-Barré syndrome (a major neurological condition leading to paralysis) for every one million vaccinations. Fifteen of the 36 trials were funded by vaccine companies and four had no funding declaration.

Our results may be an optimistic estimate because company-sponsored influenza vaccines trials tend to produce results favorable to their products and some of the evidence comes from trials carried out in ideal viral circulation and matching conditions and because the harms evidence base is limited..

Read more here: https://ahrp.org/cochrane-collaboration-flu-vaccines-of-no-benefit/

THE DAMNING CHINA COVID TIMELINE

THE DAMNING CHINA COVID TIMELINE

White House Coronavirus Task Force Advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas, has recently come under fire from Microsoft founder, Bill Gates. Del does a deep dive into the COVID timeline, shining light on Bill Gates’ intimate ties to the World Health Organization, Dr. Tony Fauci and China. As the rest of the world spirals into economic ruin, China’s economy is booming; is this a power play by the communist country?

#Fauci #BillGates #China #WHO #Atlas #Coronavirus #COVID19 #WearAMask #Election2020

Watch the video here:

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