Search: “pcr”

Remember (probably not) when I made a big fuss about PCR tests being unreliable? Many back then, even amongst friends and such, told me: “you are conspiracy guy — do you know better than doctors?”.

Well, it turns out I was right (every person of sane mind knew that, anyway): CDC to withdraw current tests, which are to be replaced with new ones able to tell Covid from Flu.

I’ve written already on why there is abundant reason not to trust PCRs for diagnosis of the pandemic status of SARS-CoV-2. I’ve added that over-reliance on these methods can easily lead to psuedo-epidemics.

This time I want to present you with other factual sources on PCR.

First, the picture above shows you part of a data sheet of a PCR kit for SARS-CoV-2. Notice the highlights:

• the test can suffer interference from a host of other common seasonal viruses
• the test should not be used as a sole evidence for clinical diagnosis and treatment

Second, article in the British Medical Journal clearly states:

RT-PCR tests can detect viral SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the upper respiratory tract for a mean of 17 days; however, detection of viral RNA does not necessarily equate to infectiousness, and viral culture from PCR positive upper respiratory tract samples has been rarely positive beyond nine days of illness.

Third, the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine’s article clearly explains that testing positive to PCR does not equate to infection:

A PCR test might find the virus it was looking for. This results in a PCR positive, but a crucial question remains: is this virus active, i.e. infectious, or virulent? The PCR alone cannot answer this question. The CEBM explains why culturing the virus is needed to answer this question:

“In viral culture, viruses are injected in the laboratory cell lines to see if they cause cell damage and death, thus releasing a whole set of new viruses that can go on to infect other cells.”

there is no guidance providing details on the specific RNA sequences required by testing, a threshold for the test result and the need for confirmatory testing. It is therefore not clear to us what constitutes a positive result
— Read on www.cebm.net/covid-19/when-is-covid-covid/

PCR tests are picking up rubbish. Literally. They are picking up “dead virus” so to speak, that is, incomplete viral genome that doesn’t make anybody sick.

Some links about this:

• Clinical, immunological and virological characterization of COVID-19 patients that test re-positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR. Among 619 discharged COVID-19 cases, 87 re-tested as SARS-CoV-2 positive in circumstances of social isolation. […] No infectious strain could be obtained by culture and no full-length viral genomes could be sequenced from re-positive cases.
• Coronavirus cases are mounting but deaths remain stable. Why? Evidence is mounting that a good proportion of ‘new’ mild cases and people re-testing positives after quarantine or discharge from hospital are not infectious, but are simply clearing harmless virus particles which their immune system has efficiently dealt with.
• Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be. In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found. […] In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. “I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one,” he said.
• Warum alle falsch lagen (English translation: Why everyone was wrong). Even if the infectious viruses are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected]. That’s exactly what happened, when there was the global news, even shared by the WHO, that 200 Koreans who already went through Covid-19 were infected a second time and that there was therefore probably no immunity against this virus. The explanation of what really happened and an apology came only later, when it was clear that the immune Koreans were perfectly healthy and only had a short battle with the virus. The crux was that the virus debris registered with the overly sensitive test and therefore came back as “positive”. It is likely that a large number of the daily reported infection numbers are purely due to viral debris. The PCR test with its extreme sensitivity was initially perfect to find out where the virus could be. But this test can not identify whether the virus is still alive, i.e. still infectous.

Introduction

Healthcare workers (HCWs) are vulnerable to getting infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Preventing HCWs from getting infected is a priority to maintain healthcare services. The therapeutic and preventive role of ivermectin in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is being investigated. Based on promising results of in vitro studies of oral ivermectin, this study was conducted with the aim to demonstrate the prophylactic role of oral ivermectin in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection among HCWs at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhubaneswar.

Methods

A prospective cohort study was conducted at AIIMS Bhubaneswar, which has been providing both COVID and non-COVID care since March 2020. All employees and students of the institute who provided written informed consent participated in the study. The uptake of two doses of oral ivermectin (300 μg/kg/dose at a gap of 72 hours) was considered as exposure. The primary outcome of the study was COVID-19 infection in the following month of ivermectin consumption, diagnosed as per Government of India testing criteria (real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction [RT-PCR]) guidelines. The log-binomial model was used to estimate adjusted relative risk (ARR), and the Kaplan-Meier failure plot was used to estimate the probability of COVID-19 infection with follow-up time.

Results

Of 3892 employees, 3532 (90.8%) participated in the study. The ivermectin uptake was 62.5% and 5.3% for two doses and single dose, respectively. Participants who took ivermectin prophylaxis had a lower risk of getting symptoms suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 infection (6% vs 15%). HCWs who had taken two doses of oral ivermectin had a significantly lower risk of contracting COVID-19 infection during the following month (ARR 0.17; 95% CI, 0.12-0.23). Females had a lower risk of contracting COVID-19 than males (ARR 0.70; 95% CI, 0.52-0.93). The absolute risk reduction of SARS-CoV-2 infection was 9.7%. Only 1.8% of the participants reported adverse events, which were mild and self-limiting.

Conclusion

Two doses of oral ivermectin (300 μg/kg/dose given 72 hours apart) as chemoprophylaxis among HCWs reduced the risk of COVID-19 infection by 83% in the following month. Safe, effective, and low-cost chemoprophylaxis has relevance in the containment of pandemic alongside vaccine.

— Read on www.cureus.com/articles/64807-prophylactic-role-of-ivermectin-in-severe-acute-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-2-infection-among-healthcare-workers