I have been following Carl Heneghan since the start of this debacle and he was very much screaming about the misuse of PCR tests as they did not give information on infectivity. I sent his original piece on this topic to my family members in California and received little interest. Thank you for another great piece.
Only 4% of asymptomatic “infections” are actually infectious! And for this we still have people out in the community wearing loose blue surgical 😷 or cloth masks and they think they are doing something to protect others. (guess that’s what they think because they certainly can’t be thinking that they are protecting themselves). So many foolish and expensive decisions made. Thanks for the great work, David.
Glad we made it so much better in California by shutting the beaches when people were desperate to get out and absorb some needed fresh air and vitamin D. It is laughable they even shut playgrounds and walking loops. Where was the science!!!!
I have been furious so many times since the beginning of this pandemic but this might be the most infuriating. Had we been able to use this test there would not have been a pandemic - no forced vaccinations, lockdowns, lapses in health care, etc. The hideous amount of damage inflicted on all of us especially children would never have happened. Thank you for writing about this - I hope this gets shared far and wide.
Yet another very important piece in understanding the ineptitude/malfeasance of this disastrous period. The negative implications of thinking at some level that anyone could be dangerous will persist for decades. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!
i remember researchers saying that asymptomatic transmission had been heretofore unheard of with respiratory viruses. and i remember that having a big effect on my view of things.
My feeling about asymptomatic spread was that if that was the case then what would be the point of forced NPIs. If it’s *that* contagious then there would be no point in mandates masking or distancing or capacity restrictions. People that want to avoid exposure could do this or that and the rest of us could do whatever.
If asymptomatic spread isn’t a thing and they knew about it since summer 2020, I need Fauci, Birx, Redfield, Jha, Walensky, etc... to explain themselves. Did they know about this?
Fascinating twist to the testing saga. As an engineer, this was a primary issue - that these tests don't tell you anything useful.
Yet to advocate for these improved tests feels like giving in to the Hypochondriac Hysteria that gripped much of the press, government, and cultural zeitgeist the last 3 years. Suppose these tests are better at telling you if you might have been infectious yesterday. Who cares? Eupyppius makes the same argument in his critique of RJK Jr's book - where the obsession with suppressed treatments (IVM, HCQ) is no different than the other side of the germaphobes who obsess over masks and boosters [1]
Obsessively testing for nuisance viruses - outside of limited scenarios (perhaps as you note, before chemotherapy?) - is a complete waste of money and time.
How many hundreds of billions would we need to have this testing apparatus running? What is the end game for these people? Could we PCR test each person, everyday, for Covid, flu, RSV, the other 6 coronaviruses, the other 200 known viruses?
When a threat detected, what then? What is the mandatory quarantine time? Do we alert contacts? Should they put on moon suits?
Suppose this actually works, and we manage to avoid catching any virus for years on end? Is that good for our body or was George Carlin right all along? [2]
Testing is useful when the results of the test give you something to act on. Finding out you have strep tells your doctor an antibiotic is in order, for example.
Here, finding out you might have been contagious yesterday with a virus that resolves quickly on it's own 99.9% of the time does nothing.
Maybe we should just stay home when sick. Seek medical care when necessary. Stop engaging in this virus larping and grow up. You will get sick sometimes. It's ok. Not a big deal. Take your 18 trillion dollars [3] you want to test the country with and spend it on going to Mars, a monorail, health care and college for everyone, or an escalator to nowhere [4]. All have better ROI.
[3] 330 million people x $150 fully loaded cost of PCR test x 365 days a year = $18.1 trillion. This assumes a single PCR swab can check for the 300 known pathogens.
David, one item that may be of interest to look into: remember at the start of the pandemic, when we were warned about surface transmission? I notice it was dropped pretty fast once 'aerosolized' and 'asymptomatic' became watchwords of the day.
I do wonder however, *why* surface spread concerns were pushed aside so quickly. The only reference to them I can recall after the first few weeks was of hypochondriacs wiping down their groceries with Lysol, the same people who left the house double masked, with plastic face shields and wearing two pairs of rubber gloves and Kleenex boxes on their feet.
I suppose I should be grateful it was dropped --one less thing to get barked at from public health despots-- but the conspiracy theorist wonders if economic concerns helped marginalize it. Imagine the impact on Amazon for instance if there were questions that they were sending covid through the mail.
Would love to know if Walmart or Amazon or other retailers had a quiet chat with CDC or NIH officials and got surface spread crossed off the list of Things To Worry About.
hi David, great piece but an important factor is overlooked in your essay and by Hogan et al. In this context of asymptomatic people who test positive, all of the people are, by definition asymptomatic. That mathematically guarantees that a large majority of these people are in fact simply false positives, not "asymptomatic non-infectious positives" or whatever tortured phrase one might use. This is the case b/c of the base rate fallacy that is sometimes in this context called the false positive paradox. Even very accurate tests in the lab will result in very high proportions of false positives when used on asymptomatic people. I go through the math and epidemiology in this piece and cite a number of peer reviewed papers in the literature: https://tamhunt.medium.com/the-false-positive-catastrophe-that-results-from-widespread-covid-19-testing-fc6febac8689
I have been following Carl Heneghan since the start of this debacle and he was very much screaming about the misuse of PCR tests as they did not give information on infectivity. I sent his original piece on this topic to my family members in California and received little interest. Thank you for another great piece.
It also shows once more how emergencies - alleged or real - are the worst moments to stifle debate or to censor dissident voices.
Only 4% of asymptomatic “infections” are actually infectious! And for this we still have people out in the community wearing loose blue surgical 😷 or cloth masks and they think they are doing something to protect others. (guess that’s what they think because they certainly can’t be thinking that they are protecting themselves). So many foolish and expensive decisions made. Thanks for the great work, David.
Glad we made it so much better in California by shutting the beaches when people were desperate to get out and absorb some needed fresh air and vitamin D. It is laughable they even shut playgrounds and walking loops. Where was the science!!!!
I have been furious so many times since the beginning of this pandemic but this might be the most infuriating. Had we been able to use this test there would not have been a pandemic - no forced vaccinations, lockdowns, lapses in health care, etc. The hideous amount of damage inflicted on all of us especially children would never have happened. Thank you for writing about this - I hope this gets shared far and wide.
Yet another very important piece in understanding the ineptitude/malfeasance of this disastrous period. The negative implications of thinking at some level that anyone could be dangerous will persist for decades. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!
i remember researchers saying that asymptomatic transmission had been heretofore unheard of with respiratory viruses. and i remember that having a big effect on my view of things.
🤬🤬🤬
My feeling about asymptomatic spread was that if that was the case then what would be the point of forced NPIs. If it’s *that* contagious then there would be no point in mandates masking or distancing or capacity restrictions. People that want to avoid exposure could do this or that and the rest of us could do whatever.
If asymptomatic spread isn’t a thing and they knew about it since summer 2020, I need Fauci, Birx, Redfield, Jha, Walensky, etc... to explain themselves. Did they know about this?
Fascinating twist to the testing saga. As an engineer, this was a primary issue - that these tests don't tell you anything useful.
Yet to advocate for these improved tests feels like giving in to the Hypochondriac Hysteria that gripped much of the press, government, and cultural zeitgeist the last 3 years. Suppose these tests are better at telling you if you might have been infectious yesterday. Who cares? Eupyppius makes the same argument in his critique of RJK Jr's book - where the obsession with suppressed treatments (IVM, HCQ) is no different than the other side of the germaphobes who obsess over masks and boosters [1]
Obsessively testing for nuisance viruses - outside of limited scenarios (perhaps as you note, before chemotherapy?) - is a complete waste of money and time.
How many hundreds of billions would we need to have this testing apparatus running? What is the end game for these people? Could we PCR test each person, everyday, for Covid, flu, RSV, the other 6 coronaviruses, the other 200 known viruses?
When a threat detected, what then? What is the mandatory quarantine time? Do we alert contacts? Should they put on moon suits?
Suppose this actually works, and we manage to avoid catching any virus for years on end? Is that good for our body or was George Carlin right all along? [2]
Testing is useful when the results of the test give you something to act on. Finding out you have strep tells your doctor an antibiotic is in order, for example.
Here, finding out you might have been contagious yesterday with a virus that resolves quickly on it's own 99.9% of the time does nothing.
Maybe we should just stay home when sick. Seek medical care when necessary. Stop engaging in this virus larping and grow up. You will get sick sometimes. It's ok. Not a big deal. Take your 18 trillion dollars [3] you want to test the country with and spend it on going to Mars, a monorail, health care and college for everyone, or an escalator to nowhere [4]. All have better ROI.
____________________
[1] https://www.eugyppius.com/p/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-the-progressive
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29lF43mUlo
[3] 330 million people x $150 fully loaded cost of PCR test x 365 days a year = $18.1 trillion. This assumes a single PCR swab can check for the 300 known pathogens.
[4] https://youtu.be/JcU95OeY48I
I own several healthcare facilities. Is it possible to obtain these tests on any sort of commercial basis?
And could we not also have been told cycle count's?
To this day we are unable to access that information
David, one item that may be of interest to look into: remember at the start of the pandemic, when we were warned about surface transmission? I notice it was dropped pretty fast once 'aerosolized' and 'asymptomatic' became watchwords of the day.
I do wonder however, *why* surface spread concerns were pushed aside so quickly. The only reference to them I can recall after the first few weeks was of hypochondriacs wiping down their groceries with Lysol, the same people who left the house double masked, with plastic face shields and wearing two pairs of rubber gloves and Kleenex boxes on their feet.
I suppose I should be grateful it was dropped --one less thing to get barked at from public health despots-- but the conspiracy theorist wonders if economic concerns helped marginalize it. Imagine the impact on Amazon for instance if there were questions that they were sending covid through the mail.
Would love to know if Walmart or Amazon or other retailers had a quiet chat with CDC or NIH officials and got surface spread crossed off the list of Things To Worry About.
Imagine if the powers that be had focused on truly best practices, including this test and early treatment. But no, because...
hi David, great piece but an important factor is overlooked in your essay and by Hogan et al. In this context of asymptomatic people who test positive, all of the people are, by definition asymptomatic. That mathematically guarantees that a large majority of these people are in fact simply false positives, not "asymptomatic non-infectious positives" or whatever tortured phrase one might use. This is the case b/c of the base rate fallacy that is sometimes in this context called the false positive paradox. Even very accurate tests in the lab will result in very high proportions of false positives when used on asymptomatic people. I go through the math and epidemiology in this piece and cite a number of peer reviewed papers in the literature: https://tamhunt.medium.com/the-false-positive-catastrophe-that-results-from-widespread-covid-19-testing-fc6febac8689
what about the minus-strand -Test results of SYMPTOMATIC Cases!?
we have to compare those results with the shown results for asymptomatic cases.
only that comparison allows to estimate the difference between both groups of interest !
Second question is about time of follow up concerning first occur of symptoms after testing ?
in other words... whether there was a presymptomatic case classified as 'asymptomatic' or a durable real asymptomatic case.