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As U.S. COVID-19 Cases Spike, It’s Important to Note How Inaccurate COVID-19 Tests Really Are
By: David Deschesne
Fort Fairfield Journal, July 1, 2020
COVID-19 appears to be a perfectly engineered virus for authoritarian governments. It can persist and be passed among up to 35% of those infected without showing any symptoms at all; it can present in a multitude of ways in those that do show symptoms so every time you turn around it can look like something else; and governments are expanding the “symptoms list” so virtually everything from a sprained wrist to an ingrown toenail can be classified as “COVID-19” in order to keep the hype running in perpetual motion. It’s certainly a dream virus for command and control authoritarians since everyone “could” have it and not know it and thus need to be locked down.
With all the talk as of late of the spike in “new cases” in the U.S., a reasoned and objective analysis of the testing methods and what the results actually mean is absent in a fear-mongering media cheerleading for a virus which they seem to want to “win” against the people. It seems government is seeking to continue a flu pandemic well into the summer months when flu viruses typically go dormant and it is certainly curious that COVID-19 seems to be increasing in strength as the summer months come into full swing. Or is it, really?
At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., the FDA used its emergency powers to approve dozens of tests which were developed quickly and not subjected to any type of research that would validate them.
The U.S. CDC initially developed a COVID-19 test but recalled it early due to its blatant inaccuracies. A scramble then ensued to produce reliable tests and hundreds of manufacturers participated. Tests were hastily approved under the FDA's emergency use authorization but their accuracy has continued to be plagued with problems. This is because they were only required to perform well in test tubes - not real world use. They did not take into account cross contamination in the environment the test is performed in, or the fact that some people who have had COVID-19 can have leftover virus RNA particles in their system for up to six months after they are no longer infected or contagious and the tests have no way of distinguishing between an active case and one who is no longer active, but hasn't completely shed all the virus fragments from their bodies. This was recently confirmed by the South Korea CDC and has rendered results for the popular, oft-used PCR test completely moot when trying to determine who actually has an infectious version of COVID-19 in their system at a given point in time.
With this said, many of those tested in the so-called “spike” in cases in the U.S. - and perhaps the world over are being tested with faulty tests - some of which have an error rate as high as 50%. It is impossible to tell, absent full scale serology testing for anti-bodies how many of the new “positive” cases for COVID-19 aren't people who had the virus months ago and still retain scrap fragments of it inside their bodies. It is also impossible to tell how many of those tested positive have received a false result but that number could be as high as 50%.
Also, since the tests are so inaccurate, the “asymptomatic” cases may have just been false positives where the person didn’t have the virus, at all.
But just focusing on new cases, as the government and media does incessantly, isn't really that informative when trying to determine the extent or severity of a disease in the public. The U.S. CDC recently released a report which stated 35% of COVID-19 patients didn't even have symptoms and live their lives entirely unaffected by it. The CDC also listed a wide range of case fatality rates from very low for children to very high for people over 65 years of age with serious, chronic adverse health issues already.
Relying on error-ridden, inaccurate tests to pump up the COVID-19 numbers isn't enough for control-hungry authoritarians. In order to further inflate the case numbers, some scientists are suggesting to create new, subjective diagnoses to label someone as a COVID-19 case even if they have not been conclusively shown to have it.
“There's a need to keep the fear going and in order to do that, you have to have lots of cases,” said Dr. Pam Popper. “One of the best ways to continue a fake pandemic is to broaden the diagnostic criteria. I found an article in the Lancet that suggests just exactly this.”
Dr. Popper explains how the the authors of a new article in the prestigious medical journal note that testing remains inadequate so it's important to develop new symptom profiles to help identify people who should be quarantined. “In other words, we can't test people fast enough so, what we need to do is without any testing just say, based on this symptom, you definitely have Covid and you should be quarantined.”
The article suggests that the loss of taste and smell are 'highly predictive' of COVID-19 and anybody who's experiencing these symptoms should self-isolate and assume that they have it.
“Now, before you say that sounds like a good idea, there are many causes of the loss of taste and smell,” explained Dr. Popper. “These include aging - especially after the age 60, allergies, nasal and sinus problems like sinusitis or polyps, medications like Beta blockers and ACE inhibitors, dental problems, cigarette smoking, head or facial injury, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and then just having a common cold or other type of viral infection. In fact as much as twenty percent of the general population has a prolonged smell disorder which means that if this idea were to catch on in a country like the United States, you could gin up 70 million cases just by saying if you've lost smell or taste, then you must have COVID.”
The basis for the researchers in the Lancet article who suggest using loss of taste and smell as a diagnostic tool is derived from the results of an online app where 60 percent of the 579 people who reported testing positive said that they lost their sense of taste and smell, but almost 18 percent of the 1,123 who tested negative also said that they had loss of taste and smell.
The online app was a non-scientific study with no control parameters or any way other than the “honor system” to determine if the participants were in fact telling the truth about their test result, or symptoms.
“I don't think you can gather from this article that loss of taste and smell should be “the test” that sends these people home to quarantine unless, of course, you're trying to keep a fake pandemic going and then it makes perfect sense.”
The researchers acknowledge many limitations which include the symptoms are non-specific and they lack predictive power. Then out of the other side of their mouths, they say adding loss of taste and smell to the diagnostic test for Covid-19 is “of great value” as it will trace almost 16% of cases it otherwise would have missed. In other words, it will add 16% more cases of COVID-19 to the official count when the people diagnosed as such in all likelihood do not even have COVID-19, but may have any of the other illnesses that can cause loss of taste and smell.