Apologies for the late reply. I've been having a very similar conversation via email with an old friend of mine and it's been a little too intense to have it in parallel here. Broadly speaking, I think you and I are on the same page (can't say the same about my old mate and me). Not everything is a conspiracy theory and when the unfolding of key events don't match one's experience it may become necessary to ask questions, regardless of the resistance and ridicule.
I had a real problem with the COVID-19 narrative very early on, around 20th January this year when The Guardian newspaper (among others) began publishing images of masked dead people lying prostrate on the streets of Wuhan. Shortly thereafter, our own infamous Professor, Neal "Shagger" Ferguson released his apocalyptic figures for the number of deaths we could expect here in the UK. And the rest is history.
Appalled by the media reporting I started to look for independent, non-edited voices who I felt were qualified to counter the narrative that very quickly ramped up to what I can only describe as a 24/7 propaganda drive. The people I looked for were virologists, epidemiologists, consultant pathologists, academics (in various fields), award-winning journalists, lawyers and barristers; you know, the type of "shit for brains" that hang out on social media. One subject that came up time and again was PCR, and more particularly it's use, some were saying, "misuse" as a diagnostic tool for COVID-19.
As you know, PCR has been at the heart of identifying "cases" of the disease against which practically the entire world is now being asked to vaccinate (Bill Gates sure has had a busy year). Although PCR can be a highly valuable tool, we've seen eyebrows raised for months now about the cycle threshold (Ct) being employed when it is used to generate COVID-19 "cases", which are to my understanding different from a clinical diagnosis of COVID-19. There have been enough experts; Yeadon, Heneghan, even Fauci (if he is an expert) to have stated that anything above circa Ct 25 is practically useless as a diagnostic tool for COVID-19. Nevertheless, our own government documents in the UK state that a "typical" test for SARS-CoV-2 will cycle a maximum of 40 times. The fact that labs are not required to routinely report back on these figures and that there is also a lack of standardisation raises serious questions, especially when one factors in the testing of asymptomatic people and all that can potentially do to "case" figures.
In my opinion this is a scandal. At one end of the narrative we see people dropping dead like flies on the streets of Wuhan, and at the other end nine months later we are told to inject a vaccine. The test driving the metrics upon which the entire thing hangs together is, predominantly PCR. I've been as concerned about the anomalies surrounding this as you have, and incidentally, the question for me has never been one of pro-vax vs. anti-vax. It's a question of this vaccine for COVID-19, a novel disease that brings with it a serious number of points that need addressing at the government and judicial level.
I've never been one for groupthink. If I'm a conspiracy theorist for having enough of a concern that I've ended up digging around online for further information then so be it. I'll happily join the growing line of conspiracy theorists like Dr. Reiner Fuellmich who has now served legal, cease and desist, papers on Germany's "Mr. PCR", Professor Christian Drosten over his misuse of the PCR test. I understand that a bunch of solicitors and barristers here in the UK are preparing similar.
The issue is not going to go away, but hopefully 2021 will shed a little more light on it.
Until then, as I stated before, I won't get this vaccine.
Your post is well thought out and written, and I agree we should question everything, even if it goes against the herd. There is nothing wrong with going against the common opinion, history has proven this many times over. I have also spoken out about the censorship I have witnessed as it's something I'm strongly opposed to. All opinions should be in the public domain, but unfortunately, some of the channels that people are using, such as Facebook and YouTube, are private entities and they can moderate them as they wish.
When it comes to the PCR test, however, it has always been known since day one that it's not 100% accurate. I think this infographic describes the process well.
A high Ct indicates a low concentration of viral genetic material, so if one has a low viral load, more cycles may be required to detect the RNA. The binary nature of the results is misleading to the general public because most will assume that positive means positive and negative means negative and that's that. The grey area in the results is well understood by the scientific community and would be accounted for when analysing masses of data.
Usually, if you're positive, the chance that the test is wrong is very small (around 2%). This assumes that the lab technician did not cross-contaminate the samples whilst obtaining the results. The rate of false negatives is much higher, which means there are more who actually have the virus who are slipping through the net. This is a bigger problem as they could potentially infect others, especially if they were presymptomatic when the test was done.
By the time people get to the hospital, they will be clinically diagnosed based upon their symptoms, and other test results, such as chest X-rays and/or scans.
Associate Medical Director at MIT, Shawn Ferullo, had this to say:
For one thing, Ct values are not absolute. Different machines can produce different Ct values for the same sample, and the same machine can give different Ct values for different samples from the same person. "While it may be useful to know if an individual's Ct value is on the high or low end of the scale," Ferullo says, "based on our current knowledge, it would not change quarantine or self-isolation recommendations."
At this point, Ct value is not included in the test results MIT Medical receives, and we have no way of obtaining that information. "While we can't know the Ct value associated with your test or any other," Ferullo says, "we can be pretty sure that your test result is a true positive. But it may be a subclinical case, meaning that your viral load is so low that you are not infectious and cannot spread the virus to other people, including those in your immediate household — which is a good thing!"
At the same time, Ferullo understands the frustration at being asked to put your life, and the lives of your family members, on hold. "Unfortunately, retesting is not an option," he explains. "The Massachusetts Department of Public Health will not accept subsequent negatives to clear a previous positive test. The rules are very clear that people should not be retested once they have a positive result."
Given our community's experience with Covid Passtesting so far, Ferullo doesn't believe subclinical positives are prevalent. "In proof of this, as of the end of October, we have done more than 156,000 tests on asymptomatic individuals through COVID Pass and have had fewer than 90 positives," he notes. "If this was a pervasive problem, I'd expect to see many more than that."
There isn't a more accurate test right now, so it is what it is. I stop paying attention when people include falsehoods, such as the those who proclaim that the inventor said it wouldn't work for COVID-19, etc.