21 ms·

Just speculating here, but maybe because of false positives where flu cases get labeled as Covid? I've heard that PCR tests were not meant to be used for large

Just speculating here, but maybe because of false positives where flu cases get labeled as Covid? I've heard that PCR tests were not meant to be used for large scale virus detection. EDIT: The PCR test quote was fact checked and deemed to be misleading, but it still sounds like they are not very accurate [0]. [0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN24420X https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN2442...

jimbob45 5y ago
You don’t deserve the downvotes. There’s long been speculation that flu cases may be getting reported as COVID and vice-versa because of the symptom overlap.
- space_fountain 5y ago
  Hum, I think I've only heard of this speculation coming from people who deny covid is a big deal and not that that position should be dismissed out of hand, but the overwhelming evidence is that the strong version of it at least is wrong. I'm also struggling to understand how symptom overlap would lead differences in the number of confirmed cases with PCR tests. These aren't cases confirmed by doctors talking to you and running through a checklist, these are tests that with a great degree of accuracy confirm if you have flu or covid in your system
  - linuxftw 5y ago
    Perhaps the corona virus is asymptomatic for some people (as is known to be), and the effects they are feeling are from the flu. How many people get a false positive (or true positive that would otherwise be asymptomatic) while also being positive for the flu? Maybe corona virus is an enabler of some other disease, like a particularly virulent flu or some other respiratory infection. This questions are inconvenient, so they'll go unasked by the media, let alone answered.
    - alpaca128 5y ago
      > This questions are inconvenient, so they'll go unasked by the media, let alone answered. Literally an infinite number of questions go unasked by the media. Often because they're a pointless waste of time. I'd say if leading virologists around the world looked at it in a lab and agree it's not some mystery illness, most media will go with that. At least the reputable ones not fishing for cheap attention from paranoid conspiracy theorists.
      - linuxftw 5y ago
        Leading virologists said not to give people anti-inflammatories at the beginning of the pandemic and probably killed a bunch of people. > At least the reputable ones not fishing for cheap attention from paranoid conspiracy theorists. We're not talking about paranoid conspiracy theories here, we're talking about the inexplicable disappearance of influenza globally, when it should have the same transmission characteristics as corona virus. Corona might spread more rapidly, but it should spread in the same manner. It's entirely possible that the bulk of people with symptoms actually have a concurrent infection (eg, the flu). We already know the vast, vast majority of deaths have a 'comorbidity.'
        space_fountain 5y ago
        > when it should have the same transmission characteristics as corona virus. Corona might spread more rapidly, but it should spread in the same manner. That's just like not true. Different diseases spread differently. It seems like covid will spread better through smaller droplets for example. And even if it were you just said that covid spreads easier. Disease transmission isn't linear so if interventions were enough to dip Flu's reproduction rate below 1 we'd see more or less what we've seen. Very little spread. Even if we ignore all of that and pretend you're right and really this year of horror has just been Flu cases, the health care system almost collapse in Italy, NYC, LA, and now India is still a huge deal. Hugely more people are dying this year than do in an average year. People died, literally dies in all of these places because they weren't able to get into a hospital. I don't care if it was actually covid (it was) or not killing them
- alpaca128 5y ago
  This speculation has also been long debunked with a look at the mortality per week/month compared to the same time period in 2019. Which revealed that at least in early 2020 a ton of deaths were unaccounted for, due to limited Covid-19 testing as well as deaths indirectly caused by Covid-19(delayed surgery thanks to overloaded hospitals etc.)
- ibejoeb 5y ago
  This is the problem with "presumptive positive." If you call the physician and he says "sounds like covid, call me if you develop serious breathing problems" and that never happens, like in most cases, now were are not counting anything, or worse, counting one as the other.
- collyw 5y ago
  It's even possible that you could have both. They aren't mutually exclusive as far as I am aware.
nodesocket 5y ago
Absolutely agree that standard flu cases are surely being reported as covid.
- sputr 5y ago
  Usually only positive PCR test leads to a covid diagnosis and reporting.
  - corty 5y ago
    Depends, different countries (and sometimes states) have different standards there. And those reporting standards also sometimes changed over time. Which is why numbers are not completely comparable internationally and from different periods of the pandemic without a lot of additional interpretation.
aeternum 5y ago
I'd also like to see the data normalized by number of flu tests administered. Maybe people are just not getting tested for flu to avoid a possible covid exposure.
khuey 5y ago
What in that link sounds "not very accurate"?
- hammock 5y ago
  The test detects "viral material" and "does not indicate that the virus is fully intact and infectious, i.e. able to cause infection in other people." The fraud is not in the test itself, but in the reporting of test results. When a PCR test comes back positive, more often than not it is assumed the patient is infected with COVID (which may not be the case) - and cases of infected people are reported widely using these PCR test results.
  - nojokes 5y ago
    In your opinion what is the percentage of the questionable test results in your opinion? What other method would you suggest in replacement to verify if a person is possibly infectious?
petertodd 5y ago
It may even be the case that fewer people are seeking medical care for symptoms that they (correctly) think are just the flu. The lack of smell that COVID often causes is very distinct; easy to imagine people who are sick with the flu, but have not lost their sense of smell deciding to stay home both out of fear of covid, and because accessing medical care during a pandemic is less convenient. Some people may also be worried that they do have covid (or will get a false positive), and don't want to get a positive test due to quarantine requirements, embarrassment, etc.
- tpmx 5y ago
  For all of the weird things my country Sweden has done (and perhaps more importantly - not done) in the past year, shaming and financially punishing people with covid is not one of them. The flu didn't happen here either according to the long standing sentinel testing program. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/folkhalsorapportering-statistik/statistik-a-o/sjukdomsstatistik/influensa-veckorapporter/aktuell-influensarapport/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/folkhalsorapportering-st... (Swedish, published today) Summary: 145k people were tested (1.4% of the total population), 29 people tested positive for an influenza variant during the winter season 2020/2021. Typical numbers for previous years are in the thousands. Graph comparing winter seasons: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/a9433fcecdc24c788e11ea0d47fdf21b/v15-16-figur-influensa.jpg https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/a9433fcecd... (X-axis: week number, Y-axis: number of cases.)
dheera 5y ago
I mean, no shit, they didn't ask me, so their stats are wrong. Pretty sure I got the flu last year during the pandemic. (Got a negative COVID test.)
linuxftw 5y ago
Most people (with flu-like symptoms) don't contract influenza in a given year, and the number of cases the CDC puts out each year are comprised mostly of 'suspected' cases. Between the flu and covid, case reporting numbers are wildly unreliable. One might ask, what incentives are there to over report a given illness at any given time?
- ibejoeb 5y ago
  If you are Newsom or Cuomo, you get enormous amounts of power.
- txsoftwaredev 5y ago
  "One might ask, what incentives are there to over report a given illness at any given time?" It allows the government to create fear and panic and pass broad sweeping bills with huge budgets. All in the name of "Covid Relief" etc.
mrtksn 5y ago
Yes, that's the hypothesis of the "There's no Covid-19" crowd that will disappear whenever hospital corridors are filled with dead bodies. On the other hand PCR test are not inaccurate at all, at least regarding false positives. There are detailed articles and even Youtube videos on the process and if you take a look, you will understand why it's quite accurate. In essence, they create a reaction that will mass produce specific parts of the virus gene until it's detectable with a sensor. They run the reaction multiple times and then the sensor looks for luminance if I recall correctly. Because you can't accidentally produce Covid-19 genes, the tests are very accurate. However, you might not get enough virus material when taking the sample from the patient(which can fail your reaction or you might need more cycles than usual to create a detectable amount) or it could be the case that there's a mutation in the gene that you are attempting to multiply, therefore you can get a negative test for an infected person.
- collyw 5y ago
  > On the other hand PCR test are not inaccurate at all, at least regarding false positives. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30453-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2... between 0.8% and 4% false positive rate according to that, making them completely unsuitable for mass testing. On top of that BBC's panorama did a program pointing out the sloppy standards at centers where the tests are processed.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    How did you decide that this range exactly is unsuitable enough that we are better off we simply assume that the reality is the one that suits our agenda? IMHO that's a pretty good accuracy, significantly better than the "I feel like", "I want to believe that", "what if it's all about" or the "It's suits me better if" methodologies. I'm not being snarky, I simply want to outline the alternatives I'm aware of. I respect the accuracy of the PCR, it can literally tell us why people in India are dying off on the streets right now in thousands and we even cannot see the assailant through optical magnification. It can also tell us that it's the same thing that caused the exact same situation in NY and Italy. It's amazing, much more intriguing than any other explanation that I came across.
SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
I know in our region they aggressively and specifically checked for flu and found none this year, so it is definitely not for a lack of testing. I have no idea why people are so uncomfortable with the idea that what worked to deter COVID had an even greater effect on the flu. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-nears-end-of-extraordinary-flu-season-with-zero-cases-recorded-1.5968795 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-nears-end-of...
dundarious 5y ago
I am deeply skeptical. There are major differences between influenza and COVID-19 symptoms. Never mind the shakiness of your premise about PCR tests.
silicon2401 5y ago
The inventor of the PCR test himself, Kary Mullis, was very critical of Fauci and the way that PCR is being used today [1]. Are there any rebuttals or counterpoints to his statements on PCR? 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0aMow7FrZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0aMow7FrZo
- tripletao 5y ago
  Kary Mullis also doubts that HIV causes AIDS, believes in astrology, and once saw a fluorescent talking raccoon. Clearly a brilliant guy, but not someone whose advice should directly determine clinical practice. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-history/man-who-photocopied-dna-and-also-saw-talking-fluorescent-raccoon https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-history/man-who... See my other comment here for the reasons why I believe almost all SARS-CoV-2 PCR positives are true positives (as to whether the patient is or was very recently infected; the kernel of truth is that they don't necessarily indicate that the patient could infect others right now).
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    That's an ad-hominem argument. You might as well say Isaac Newton also believed in astrology, so we should throw out all his work on math and physics. As a non-religious person, astrology and religion are no different to me, so then you might as well throw out any knowledge innovated by like 99% of people who have ever lived. I have no stake or attachment to Kary Mullis, whether he's wrong or right is irrelevant to me. I just find it interesting that the creator of PCR, which has a lot of attention these days, had opinions that don't get a lot of attention these days. I'll give your comment a look, but am also curious if anybody else has a counter to Mullis' claims.
    - tripletao 5y ago
      > That's an ad-hominem argument. And yours was an argument from authority. You gave no explanation of or support for Mullis's arguments, and you gave no reason to believe his conclusion except a positive aspect of his reputation (i.e., his discovery of PCR in the first place). In that case, negative aspects of his reputation (i.e., the fluorescent raccoon; or, closer to the domain in question, his belief on HIV and AIDS) are surely also relevant. They don't mean what he's saying is false, but they'd cause a reasonable person to approach his unsupported statements with more care. For convenience, I'm linking my other comment below. This is a detailed explanation of why I believe almost all patients who test positive by PCR are (or were very recently) infected with SARS-CoV-2, fully referenced. It has so far received zero interaction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26984429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26984429 If you think I'm wrong, please explain why, and I'll reply. If you think I'm right, then I'd also appreciate a reply. The belief that coronavirus cases are grossly over-diagnosed is a common element of claims that no precautions against it are necessary, which cause real harm; so I hope you don't want to falsely spread that belief. ETA: And for completeness, here's a paper discussing the ability to culture virus from PCR-positive samples. I believe that's the real point Mullis was alluding to in his comments, that people who test PCR positive aren't necessarily shedding replication-competent virus; but that's a separate question from whether they are (or very recently were) infected. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1491/5912603 https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
tripletao 5y ago
The test positivity in lightly-affected areas is very small, for example <0.1% in much of Australia. This includes both true and false positives, so it bounds the specificity of the test. https://covidlive.com.au/report/positive-test-rate https://covidlive.com.au/report/positive-test-rate A Lancet article cited below references a paper that estimates much worse specificity of PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 based on the specificity of tests for other RNA viruses (original SARS, MERS, influenza, etc.): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v... But why would anyone do that, when we have direct experience with the actual test for the actual virus? Of course the false positive rate in heavily-affected areas may be higher, due to sample contamination--with more true positive patients, there's more opportunity for one true-positive patient to contaminate multiple samples. But such cross-contamination can occur frequently only if there are actually lots of true positive patients. For another sanity check, the sensitivity of antibody tests is established on a sample of patients who tested positive by PCR, who are assumed to all be true-positive. So any PCR false-positive among those patients will show up as an antibody false-negative, so that bounds the apparent sensitivity of those antibody tests. But antibody tests show sensitivity around 85%: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237548 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... So even if the antibody tests were perfect, at most 15% of their positive sample was false-positive. (Note that this is a different quantity from the PCR specificity, and can't be translated into such without knowing the true prevalence in the population that the sample was drawn from.) Of course the antibody tests also aren't perfect, and I'd guess that 15% is almost entirely antibody false-negatives rather than PCR false-positives. You can also compare reported COVID deaths (which are generally established by PCR) with year-over-year excess mortality. The agreement isn't perfect, but it's pretty close. The vast majority of patients who test positive by PCR are or were infected by the virus. That's a different question from whether a positive test indicates the presence of replication-competent virus (i.e., whether the patient could infect others right now), since RNA from dead virus can trigger the positive too; but that dead virus had to come from somewhere.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
g3e0 5y ago
I believe the source of that quote comes from this Q&A session with Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3IqZjT_9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3IqZjT_9A The relevant quotes from Kary are: "With PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything, in anybody" "If you can amplify one single molecule up to something that you can really measure - which PCR can do - then there's just.. very few molecules that you don't have at least one single one of them in your body" "It doesn't tell you that you're sick" My interpretation is that Kary Mullis did believe it was at least possible to "misinterpret" the results of a PCR test. It doesn't seem such a stretch to believe that you could be sick with the flu, while also having a single molecule of a coronavirus gene present in your nasal cavity (triggering a positive coronavirus test). Note: I know this is an inflammatory topic. The views of Kary Mullis are not necessarily my own. I am posting this here because I think it is interesting.
- markus92 5y ago
  That's why there's digital qPCR now, testing has come a long way since 1993. Larger targets etc.
jedberg 5y ago
Every COVID test I took included a separate influenza test. Not sure if that was the case everywhere though. But at least in my case flu would get labeled flu.

jimbob45 5y ago

You don’t deserve the downvotes. There’s long been speculation that flu cases may be getting reported as COVID and vice-versa because of the symptom overlap.

space_fountain 5y ago
Hum, I think I've only heard of this speculation coming from people who deny covid is a big deal and not that that position should be dismissed out of hand, but the overwhelming evidence is that the strong version of it at least is wrong. I'm also struggling to understand how symptom overlap would lead differences in the number of confirmed cases with PCR tests. These aren't cases confirmed by doctors talking to you and running through a checklist, these are tests that with a great degree of accuracy confirm if you have flu or covid in your system
- linuxftw 5y ago
  Perhaps the corona virus is asymptomatic for some people (as is known to be), and the effects they are feeling are from the flu. How many people get a false positive (or true positive that would otherwise be asymptomatic) while also being positive for the flu? Maybe corona virus is an enabler of some other disease, like a particularly virulent flu or some other respiratory infection. This questions are inconvenient, so they'll go unasked by the media, let alone answered.
  - alpaca128 5y ago
    > This questions are inconvenient, so they'll go unasked by the media, let alone answered. Literally an infinite number of questions go unasked by the media. Often because they're a pointless waste of time. I'd say if leading virologists around the world looked at it in a lab and agree it's not some mystery illness, most media will go with that. At least the reputable ones not fishing for cheap attention from paranoid conspiracy theorists.
    - linuxftw 5y ago
      Leading virologists said not to give people anti-inflammatories at the beginning of the pandemic and probably killed a bunch of people. > At least the reputable ones not fishing for cheap attention from paranoid conspiracy theorists. We're not talking about paranoid conspiracy theories here, we're talking about the inexplicable disappearance of influenza globally, when it should have the same transmission characteristics as corona virus. Corona might spread more rapidly, but it should spread in the same manner. It's entirely possible that the bulk of people with symptoms actually have a concurrent infection (eg, the flu). We already know the vast, vast majority of deaths have a 'comorbidity.'
      - space_fountain 5y ago
        > when it should have the same transmission characteristics as corona virus. Corona might spread more rapidly, but it should spread in the same manner. That's just like not true. Different diseases spread differently. It seems like covid will spread better through smaller droplets for example. And even if it were you just said that covid spreads easier. Disease transmission isn't linear so if interventions were enough to dip Flu's reproduction rate below 1 we'd see more or less what we've seen. Very little spread. Even if we ignore all of that and pretend you're right and really this year of horror has just been Flu cases, the health care system almost collapse in Italy, NYC, LA, and now India is still a huge deal. Hugely more people are dying this year than do in an average year. People died, literally dies in all of these places because they weren't able to get into a hospital. I don't care if it was actually covid (it was) or not killing them
alpaca128 5y ago
This speculation has also been long debunked with a look at the mortality per week/month compared to the same time period in 2019. Which revealed that at least in early 2020 a ton of deaths were unaccounted for, due to limited Covid-19 testing as well as deaths indirectly caused by Covid-19(delayed surgery thanks to overloaded hospitals etc.)
ibejoeb 5y ago
This is the problem with "presumptive positive." If you call the physician and he says "sounds like covid, call me if you develop serious breathing problems" and that never happens, like in most cases, now were are not counting anything, or worse, counting one as the other.
collyw 5y ago
It's even possible that you could have both. They aren't mutually exclusive as far as I am aware.

nodesocket 5y ago

Absolutely agree that standard flu cases are surely being reported as covid.

sputr 5y ago
Usually only positive PCR test leads to a covid diagnosis and reporting.
- corty 5y ago
  Depends, different countries (and sometimes states) have different standards there. And those reporting standards also sometimes changed over time. Which is why numbers are not completely comparable internationally and from different periods of the pandemic without a lot of additional interpretation.

aeternum 5y ago

I'd also like to see the data normalized by number of flu tests administered. Maybe people are just not getting tested for flu to avoid a possible covid exposure.

khuey 5y ago

What in that link sounds "not very accurate"?

hammock 5y ago
The test detects "viral material" and "does not indicate that the virus is fully intact and infectious, i.e. able to cause infection in other people." The fraud is not in the test itself, but in the reporting of test results. When a PCR test comes back positive, more often than not it is assumed the patient is infected with COVID (which may not be the case) - and cases of infected people are reported widely using these PCR test results.
- nojokes 5y ago
  In your opinion what is the percentage of the questionable test results in your opinion? What other method would you suggest in replacement to verify if a person is possibly infectious?

petertodd 5y ago

It may even be the case that fewer people are seeking medical care for symptoms that they (correctly) think are just the flu. The lack of smell that COVID often causes is very distinct; easy to imagine people who are sick with the flu, but have not lost their sense of smell deciding to stay home both out of fear of covid, and because accessing medical care during a pandemic is less convenient. Some people may also be worried that they do have covid (or will get a false positive), and don't want to get a positive test due to quarantine requirements, embarrassment, etc.

tpmx 5y ago
For all of the weird things my country Sweden has done (and perhaps more importantly - not done) in the past year, shaming and financially punishing people with covid is not one of them. The flu didn't happen here either according to the long standing sentinel testing program. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/folkhalsorapportering-statistik/statistik-a-o/sjukdomsstatistik/influensa-veckorapporter/aktuell-influensarapport/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/folkhalsorapportering-st... (Swedish, published today) Summary: 145k people were tested (1.4% of the total population), 29 people tested positive for an influenza variant during the winter season 2020/2021. Typical numbers for previous years are in the thousands. Graph comparing winter seasons: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/a9433fcecdc24c788e11ea0d47fdf21b/v15-16-figur-influensa.jpg https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/a9433fcecd... (X-axis: week number, Y-axis: number of cases.)

dheera 5y ago

I mean, no shit, they didn't ask me, so their stats are wrong. Pretty sure I got the flu last year during the pandemic. (Got a negative COVID test.)

linuxftw 5y ago

Most people (with flu-like symptoms) don't contract influenza in a given year, and the number of cases the CDC puts out each year are comprised mostly of 'suspected' cases. Between the flu and covid, case reporting numbers are wildly unreliable. One might ask, what incentives are there to over report a given illness at any given time?

ibejoeb 5y ago
If you are Newsom or Cuomo, you get enormous amounts of power.
txsoftwaredev 5y ago
"One might ask, what incentives are there to over report a given illness at any given time?" It allows the government to create fear and panic and pass broad sweeping bills with huge budgets. All in the name of "Covid Relief" etc.

mrtksn 5y ago

Yes, that's the hypothesis of the "There's no Covid-19" crowd that will disappear whenever hospital corridors are filled with dead bodies. On the other hand PCR test are not inaccurate at all, at least regarding false positives. There are detailed articles and even Youtube videos on the process and if you take a look, you will understand why it's quite accurate. In essence, they create a reaction that will mass produce specific parts of the virus gene until it's detectable with a sensor. They run the reaction multiple times and then the sensor looks for luminance if I recall correctly. Because you can't accidentally produce Covid-19 genes, the tests are very accurate. However, you might not get enough virus material when taking the sample from the patient(which can fail your reaction or you might need more cycles than usual to create a detectable amount) or it could be the case that there's a mutation in the gene that you are attempting to multiply, therefore you can get a negative test for an infected person.

collyw 5y ago
> On the other hand PCR test are not inaccurate at all, at least regarding false positives. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30453-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2... between 0.8% and 4% false positive rate according to that, making them completely unsuitable for mass testing. On top of that BBC's panorama did a program pointing out the sloppy standards at centers where the tests are processed.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  How did you decide that this range exactly is unsuitable enough that we are better off we simply assume that the reality is the one that suits our agenda? IMHO that's a pretty good accuracy, significantly better than the "I feel like", "I want to believe that", "what if it's all about" or the "It's suits me better if" methodologies. I'm not being snarky, I simply want to outline the alternatives I'm aware of. I respect the accuracy of the PCR, it can literally tell us why people in India are dying off on the streets right now in thousands and we even cannot see the assailant through optical magnification. It can also tell us that it's the same thing that caused the exact same situation in NY and Italy. It's amazing, much more intriguing than any other explanation that I came across.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago

I know in our region they aggressively and specifically checked for flu and found none this year, so it is definitely not for a lack of testing. I have no idea why people are so uncomfortable with the idea that what worked to deter COVID had an even greater effect on the flu. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-nears-end-of-extraordinary-flu-season-with-zero-cases-recorded-1.5968795 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-nears-end-of...

dundarious 5y ago

I am deeply skeptical. There are major differences between influenza and COVID-19 symptoms. Never mind the shakiness of your premise about PCR tests.

silicon2401 5y ago

The inventor of the PCR test himself, Kary Mullis, was very critical of Fauci and the way that PCR is being used today [1]. Are there any rebuttals or counterpoints to his statements on PCR? 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0aMow7FrZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0aMow7FrZo

tripletao 5y ago
Kary Mullis also doubts that HIV causes AIDS, believes in astrology, and once saw a fluorescent talking raccoon. Clearly a brilliant guy, but not someone whose advice should directly determine clinical practice. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-history/man-who-photocopied-dna-and-also-saw-talking-fluorescent-raccoon https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/technology-history/man-who... See my other comment here for the reasons why I believe almost all SARS-CoV-2 PCR positives are true positives (as to whether the patient is or was very recently infected; the kernel of truth is that they don't necessarily indicate that the patient could infect others right now).
- silicon2401 5y ago
  That's an ad-hominem argument. You might as well say Isaac Newton also believed in astrology, so we should throw out all his work on math and physics. As a non-religious person, astrology and religion are no different to me, so then you might as well throw out any knowledge innovated by like 99% of people who have ever lived. I have no stake or attachment to Kary Mullis, whether he's wrong or right is irrelevant to me. I just find it interesting that the creator of PCR, which has a lot of attention these days, had opinions that don't get a lot of attention these days. I'll give your comment a look, but am also curious if anybody else has a counter to Mullis' claims.
  - tripletao 5y ago
    > That's an ad-hominem argument. And yours was an argument from authority. You gave no explanation of or support for Mullis's arguments, and you gave no reason to believe his conclusion except a positive aspect of his reputation (i.e., his discovery of PCR in the first place). In that case, negative aspects of his reputation (i.e., the fluorescent raccoon; or, closer to the domain in question, his belief on HIV and AIDS) are surely also relevant. They don't mean what he's saying is false, but they'd cause a reasonable person to approach his unsupported statements with more care. For convenience, I'm linking my other comment below. This is a detailed explanation of why I believe almost all patients who test positive by PCR are (or were very recently) infected with SARS-CoV-2, fully referenced. It has so far received zero interaction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26984429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26984429 If you think I'm wrong, please explain why, and I'll reply. If you think I'm right, then I'd also appreciate a reply. The belief that coronavirus cases are grossly over-diagnosed is a common element of claims that no precautions against it are necessary, which cause real harm; so I hope you don't want to falsely spread that belief. ETA: And for completeness, here's a paper discussing the ability to culture virus from PCR-positive samples. I believe that's the real point Mullis was alluding to in his comments, that people who test PCR positive aren't necessarily shedding replication-competent virus; but that's a separate question from whether they are (or very recently were) infected. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1491/5912603 https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...

tripletao 5y ago

The test positivity in lightly-affected areas is very small, for example <0.1% in much of Australia. This includes both true and false positives, so it bounds the specificity of the test. https://covidlive.com.au/report/positive-test-rate https://covidlive.com.au/report/positive-test-rate A Lancet article cited below references a paper that estimates much worse specificity of PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 based on the specificity of tests for other RNA viruses (original SARS, MERS, influenza, etc.): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v... But why would anyone do that, when we have direct experience with the actual test for the actual virus? Of course the false positive rate in heavily-affected areas may be higher, due to sample contamination--with more true positive patients, there's more opportunity for one true-positive patient to contaminate multiple samples. But such cross-contamination can occur frequently only if there are actually lots of true positive patients. For another sanity check, the sensitivity of antibody tests is established on a sample of patients who tested positive by PCR, who are assumed to all be true-positive. So any PCR false-positive among those patients will show up as an antibody false-negative, so that bounds the apparent sensitivity of those antibody tests. But antibody tests show sensitivity around 85%: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237548 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... So even if the antibody tests were perfect, at most 15% of their positive sample was false-positive. (Note that this is a different quantity from the PCR specificity, and can't be translated into such without knowing the true prevalence in the population that the sample was drawn from.) Of course the antibody tests also aren't perfect, and I'd guess that 15% is almost entirely antibody false-negatives rather than PCR false-positives. You can also compare reported COVID deaths (which are generally established by PCR) with year-over-year excess mortality. The agreement isn't perfect, but it's pretty close. The vast majority of patients who test positive by PCR are or were infected by the virus. That's a different question from whether a positive test indicates the presence of replication-competent virus (i.e., whether the patient could infect others right now), since RNA from dead virus can trigger the positive too; but that dead virus had to come from somewhere.

deleted 5y ago
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g3e0 5y ago

I believe the source of that quote comes from this Q&A session with Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3IqZjT_9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3IqZjT_9A The relevant quotes from Kary are: "With PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything, in anybody" "If you can amplify one single molecule up to something that you can really measure - which PCR can do - then there's just.. very few molecules that you don't have at least one single one of them in your body" "It doesn't tell you that you're sick" My interpretation is that Kary Mullis did believe it was at least possible to "misinterpret" the results of a PCR test. It doesn't seem such a stretch to believe that you could be sick with the flu, while also having a single molecule of a coronavirus gene present in your nasal cavity (triggering a positive coronavirus test). Note: I know this is an inflammatory topic. The views of Kary Mullis are not necessarily my own. I am posting this here because I think it is interesting.

markus92 5y ago
That's why there's digital qPCR now, testing has come a long way since 1993. Larger targets etc.

jedberg 5y ago

Every COVID test I took included a separate influenza test. Not sure if that was the case everywhere though. But at least in my case flu would get labeled flu.