November 1st, 2020 • 3h 30m

1291: The Election Special

PCR

COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless '' OffGuardian

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 01:01

Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin DemeterLockdowns and hygienic measures around the world are based on numbers of cases and mortality rates created by the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests used to identify ''positive'' patients, whereby ''positive'' is usually equated with ''infected.''

But looking closely at the facts, the conclusion is that these PCR tests are meaningless as a diagnostic tool to determine an alleged infection by a supposedly new virus called SARS-CoV-2.

Unfounded ''Test, test, test,'...'' mantraAt the media briefing on COVID-19 on March 16, 2020, the WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:

We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test.''

The message was spread through headlines around the world, for instance by Reuters and the BBC.

Still on the 3 of May, the moderator of the heute journal '-- one of the most important news magazines on German television'-- was passing the mantra of the corona dogma on to his audience with the admonishing words:

Test, test, test'--that is the credo at the moment, and it is the only way to really understand how much the coronavirus is spreading.''

This indicates that the belief in the validity of the PCR tests is so strong that it equals a religion that tolerates virtually no contradiction.

But it is well known that religions are about faith and not about scientific facts. And as Walter Lippmann, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and perhaps the most influential journalist of the 20th century said: ''Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.''

So to start, it is very remarkable that Kary Mullis himself, the inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology, did not think alike. His invention got him the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1993.

Unfortunately, Mullis passed away last year at the age of 74, but there is no doubt that the biochemist regarded the PCR as inappropriate to detect a viral infection.

The reason is that the intended use of the PCR was, and still is, to apply it as a manufacturing technique, being able to replicate DNA sequences millions and billions of times, and not as a diagnostic tool to detect viruses.

How declaring virus pandemics based on PCR tests can end in disaster was described by Gina Kolata in her 2007 New York Times article Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn't.

Lack of a valid gold standardMoreover, it is worth mentioning that the PCR tests used to identify so-called COVID-19 patients presumably infected by what is called SARS-CoV-2 do not have a valid gold standard to compare them with.

This is a fundamental point. Tests need to be evaluated to determine their preciseness '-- strictly speaking their ''sensitivity''[1] and ''specificity'' '-- by comparison with a ''gold standard,'' meaning the most accurate method available.

As an example, for a pregnancy test the gold standard would be the pregnancy itself. But as Australian infectious diseases specialist Sanjaya Senanayake, for example, stated in an ABC TV interview in an answer to the question ''How accurate is the [COVID-19] testing?'':

If we had a new test for picking up [the bacterium] golden staph in blood, we've already got blood cultures, that's our gold standard we've been using for decades, and we could match this new test against that. But for COVID-19 we don't have a gold standard test.''

Jessica C. Watson from Bristol University confirms this. In her paper ''Interpreting a COVID-19 test result'', published recently in The British Medical Journal, she writes that there is a ''lack of such a clear-cut 'gold-standard' for COVID-19 testing.''

But instead of classifying the tests as unsuitable for SARS-CoV-2 detection and COVID-19 diagnosis, or instead of pointing out that only a virus, proven through isolation and purification, can be a solid gold standard, Watson claims in all seriousness that, ''pragmatically'' COVID-19 diagnosis itself, remarkably including PCR testing itself, ''may be the best available 'gold standard'.'' But this is not scientifically sound.

Apart from the fact that it is downright absurd to take the PCR test itself as part of the gold standard to evaluate the PCR test, there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, as even people such as Thomas L¶scher, former head of the Department of Infection and Tropical Medicine at the University of Munich and member of the Federal Association of German Internists, conceded to us[2].

And if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, COVID-19 diagnosis '-- contrary to Watson's statement '-- cannot be suitable for serving as a valid gold standard.

In addition, ''experts'' such as Watson overlook the fact that only virus isolation, i.e. an unequivocal virus proof, can be the gold standard.

That is why I asked Watson how COVID-19 diagnosis ''may be the best available gold standard,'' if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, and also whether the virus itself, that is virus isolation, wouldn't be the best available/possible gold standard. But she hasn't answered these questions yet '' despite multiple requests. And she has not yet responded to our rapid response post on her article in which we address exactly the same points, either, though she wrote us on June 2nd: ''I will try to post a reply later this week when I have a chance.''

No proof for the RNA being of viral originNow the question is: What is required first for virus isolation/proof? We need to know where the RNA for which the PCR tests are calibrated comes from.

As textbooks (e.g., White/Fenner. Medical Virology, 1986, p. 9) as well as leading virus researchers such as Luc Montagnier or Dominic Dwyer state, particle purification '-- i.e. the separation of an object from everything else that is not that object, as for instance Nobel laureate Marie Curie purified 100 mg of radium chloride in 1898 by extracting it from tons of pitchblende '-- is an essential pre-requisite for proving the existence of a virus, and thus to prove that the RNA from the particle in question comes from a new virus.

The reason for this is that PCR is extremely sensitive, which means it can detect even the smallest pieces of DNA or RNA '-- but it cannot determine where these particles came from. That has to be determined beforehand.

And because the PCR tests are calibrated for gene sequences (in this case RNA sequences because SARS-CoV-2 is believed to be a RNA virus), we have to know that these gene snippets are part of the looked-for virus. And to know that, correct isolation and purification of the presumed virus has to be executed.

Hence, we have asked the science teams of the relevant papers which are referred to in the context of SARS-CoV-2 for proof whether the electron-microscopic shots depicted in their in vitro experiments show purified viruses.

But not a single team could answer that question with ''yes'' '-- and NB., nobody said purification was not a necessary step. We only got answers like ''No, we did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification'' (see below).

We asked several study authors ''Do your electron micrographs show the purified virus?'', they gave the following responses:

Study 1: Leo L. M. Poon; Malik Peiris. ''Emergence of a novel human coronavirus threatening human health'' Nature Medicine, March 2020Replying Author: Malik PeirisDate: May 12, 2020Answer: ''The image is the virus budding from an infected cell. It is not purified virus.''

Study 2: Myung-Guk Han et al. ''Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19'', Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives, February 2020Replying Author: Myung-Guk HanDate: May 6, 2020Answer: ''We could not estimate the degree of purification because we do not purify and concentrate the virus cultured in cells.''

Study 3: Wan Beom Park et al. ''Virus Isolation from the First Patient with SARS-CoV-2 in Korea'', Journal of Korean Medical Science, February 24, 2020Replying Author: Wan Beom ParkDate: March 19, 2020Answer: ''We did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification.''

Study 4: Na Zhu et al., ''A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China'', 2019, New England Journal of Medicine, February 20, 2020Replying Author: Wenjie TanDate: March 18, 2020Answer: ''[We show] an image of sedimented virus particles, not purified ones.''

Regarding the mentioned papers it is clear that what is shown in the electron micrographs (EMs) is the end result of the experiment, meaning there is no other result that they could have made EMs from.

That is to say, if the authors of these studies concede that their published EMs do not show purified particles, then they definitely do not possess purified particles claimed to be viral. (In this context, it has to be remarked that some researchers use the term ''isolation'' in their papers, but the procedures described therein do not represent a proper isolation (purification) process. Consequently, in this context the term ''isolation'' is misused).

Thus, the authors of four of the principal, early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus concede they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris, pure or impure, or particles of any kind. In other words, the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith, not fact.

We have also contacted Dr Charles Calisher, who is a seasoned virologist. In 2001, Science published an ''impassioned plea'...to the younger generation'' from several veteran virologists, among them Calisher, saying that:

[modern virus detection methods like] sleek polymerase chain reaction ['...] tell little or nothing about how a virus multiplies, which animals carry it, [or] how it makes people sick. [It is] like trying to say whether somebody has bad breath by looking at his fingerprint.''[3]

And that's why we asked Dr Calisher whether he knows one single paper in which SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and finally really purified. His answer:

I know of no such a publication. I have kept an eye out for one.''[4]

This actually means that one cannot conclude that the RNA gene sequences, which the scientists took from the tissue samples prepared in the mentioned in vitro trials and for which the PCR tests are finally being ''calibrated,'' belong to a specific virus '-- in this case SARS-CoV-2.

In addition, there is no scientific proof that those RNA sequences are the causative agent of what is called COVID-19.

In order to establish a causal connection, one way or the other, i.e. beyond virus isolation and purification, it would have been absolutely necessary to carry out an experiment that satisfies the four Koch's postulates. But there is no such experiment, as Amory Devereux and Rosemary Frei recently revealed for OffGuardian.

The necessity to fulfill these postulates regarding SARS-CoV-2 is demonstrated not least by the fact that attempts have been made to fulfill them. But even researchers claiming they have done it, in reality, did not succeed.

One example is a study published in Nature on May 7. This trial, besides other procedures which render the study invalid, did not meet any of the postulates.

For instance, the alleged ''infected'' laboratory mice did not show any relevant clinical symptoms clearly attributable to pneumonia, which according to the third postulate should actually occur if a dangerous and potentially deadly virus was really at work there. And the slight bristles and weight loss, which were observed temporarily in the animals are negligible, not only because they could have been caused by the procedure itself, but also because the weight went back to normal again.

Also, no animal died except those they killed to perform the autopsies. And let's not forget: These experiments should have been done before developing a test, which is not the case.

Revealingly, none of the leading German representatives of the official theory about SARS-Cov-2/COVID-19 '-- the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI), Alexander S. Kekul(C) (University of Halle), Hartmut Hengel and Ralf Bartenschlager (German Society for Virology), the aforementioned Thomas L¶scher, Ulrich Dirnagl (Charit(C) Berlin) or Georg Bornkamm (virologist and professor emeritus at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Munich) '-- could answer the following question I have sent them:

If the particles that are claimed to be to be SARS-CoV-2 have not been purified, how do you want to be sure that the RNA gene sequences of these particles belong to a specific new virus?

Particularly, if there are studies showing that substances such as antibiotics that are added to the test tubes in the in vitro experiments carried out for virus detection can ''stress'' the cell culture in a way that new gene sequences are being formed that were not previously detectable '-- an aspect that Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock already drew attention to in her Nobel Lecture back in 1983.

It should not go unmentioned that we finally got the Charit(C) '' the employer of Christian Drosten, Germany's most influential virologist in respect of COVID-19, advisor to the German government and co-developer of the PCR test which was the first to be ''accepted'' (not validated!) by the WHO worldwide '' to answer questions on the topic.

But we didn't get answers until June 18, 2020, after months of non-response. In the end, we achieved it only with the help of Berlin lawyer Viviane Fischer.

Regarding our question ''Has the Charit(C) convinced itself that appropriate particle purification was carried out?,'' the Charit(C) concedes that they didn't use purified particles.

And although they claim ''virologists at the Charit(C) are sure that they are testing for the virus,'' in their paper (Corman et al.) they state:

RNA was extracted from clinical samples with the MagNA Pure 96 system (Roche, Penzberg, Germany) and from cell culture supernatants with the viral RNA mini kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany),''

Which means they just assumed the RNA was viral.

Incidentally, the Corman et al. paper, published on January 23, 2020 didn't even go through a proper peer review process, nor were the procedures outlined therein accompanied by controls '-- although it is only through these two things that scientific work becomes really solid.

Irrational test resultsIt is also certain that we cannot know the false positive rate of the PCR tests without widespread testing of people who certainly do not have the virus, proven by a method which is independent of the test (having a solid gold standard).

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that there are several papers illustrating irrational test results.

For example, already in February the health authority in China's Guangdong province reported that people have fully recovered from illness blamed on COVID-19, started to test ''negative,'' and then tested ''positive'' again.

A month later, a paper published in the Journal of Medical Virology showed that 29 out of 610 patients at a hospital in Wuhan had 3 to 6 test results that flipped between ''negative'', ''positive'' and ''dubious''.

A third example is a study from Singapore in which tests were carried out almost daily on 18 patients and the majority went from ''positive'' to ''negative'' back to ''positive'' at least once, and up to five times in one patient.

Even Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, conceded in February that the PCR tests are ''only 30 to 50 per cent accurate''; while Sin Hang Lee from the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory sent a letter to the WHO's coronavirus response team and to Anthony S. Fauci on March 22, 2020, saying that:

It has been widely reported in the social media that the RT-qPCR [Reverse Transcriptase quantitative PCR] test kits used to detect SARSCoV-2 RNA in human specimens are generating many false positive results and are not sensitive enough to detect some real positive cases.''

In other words, even if we theoretically assume that these PCR tests can really detect a viral infection, the tests would be practically worthless, and would only cause an unfounded scare among the ''positive'' people tested.

This becomes also evident considering the positive predictive value (PPV).

The PPV indicates the probability that a person with a positive test result is truly ''positive'' (ie. has the supposed virus), and it depends on two factors: the prevalence of the virus in the general population and the specificity of the test, that is the percentage of people without disease in whom the test is correctly ''negative'' (a test with a specificity of 95% incorrectly gives a positive result in 5 out of 100 non-infected people).

With the same specificity, the higher the prevalence, the higher the PPV.

In this context, on June 12 2020, the journal Deutsches rzteblatt published an article in which the PPV has been calculated with three different prevalence scenarios.

The results must, of course, be viewed very critically, first because it is not possible to calculate the specificity without a solid gold standard, as outlined, and second because the calculations in the article are based on the specificity determined in the study by Jessica Watson, which is potentially worthless, as also mentioned.

But if you abstract from it, assuming that the underlying specificity of 95% is correct and that we know the prevalence, even the mainstream medical journal Deutsches rzteblatt reports that the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests may have ''a shockingly low'' PPV.

In one of the three scenarios, figuring with an assumed prevalence of 3%, the PPV was only 30 percent, which means that 70 percent of the people tested ''positive'' are not ''positive'' at all. Yet ''they are prescribed quarantine,'' as even the rzteblatt notes critically.

In a second scenario of the journal's article, a prevalence of rate of 20 percent is assumed. In this case they generate a PPV of 78 percent, meaning that 22 percent of the ''positive'' tests are false ''positives.''

That would mean: If we take the around 9 million people who are currently considered ''positive'' worldwide '-- supposing that the true ''positives'' really have a viral infection '-- we would get almost 2 million false ''positives.''

All this fits with the fact that the CDC and the FDA, for instance, concede in their files that the so-called ''SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests'' are not suitable for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.

In the ''CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel'' file from March 30, 2020, for example, it says:

Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms''

And:

This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.''

And the FDA admits that:

positive results ['...] do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease.''

Remarkably, in the instruction manuals of PCR tests we can also read that they are not intended as a diagnostic test, as for instance in those by Altona Diagnostics and Creative Diagnostics[5].

To quote another one, in the product announcement of the LightMix Modular Assays produced by TIB Molbiol '-- which were developed using the Corman et al. protocol '-- and distributed by Roche we can read:

These assays are not intended for use as an aid in the diagnosis of coronavirus infection''

And:

For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.''

Where is the evidence that the tests can measure the ''viral load''?There is also reason to conclude that the PCR test from Roche and others cannot even detect the targeted genes.

Moreover, in the product descriptions of the RT-qPCR tests for SARS-COV-2 it says they are ''qualitative'' tests, contrary to the fact that the ''q'' in ''qPCR'' stands for ''quantitative.'' And if these tests are not ''quantitative'' tests, they don't show how many viral particles are in the body.

That is crucial because, in order to even begin talking about actual illness in the real world not only in a laboratory, the patient would need to have millions and millions of viral particles actively replicating in their body.

That is to say, the CDC, the WHO, the FDA or the RKI may assert that the tests can measure the so-called ''viral load,'' i.e. how many viral particles are in the body. ''But this has never been proven. That is an enormous scandal,'' as the journalist Jon Rappoport points out.

This is not only because the term ''viral load'' is deception. If you put the question ''what is viral load?'' at a dinner party, people take it to mean viruses circulating in the bloodstream. They're surprised to learn it's actually RNA molecules.

Also, to prove beyond any doubt that the PCR can measure how much a person is ''burdened'' with a disease-causing virus, the following experiment would have had to be carried out (which has not yet happened):

You take, let's say, a few hundred or even thousand people and remove tissue samples from them. Make sure the people who take the samples do not perform the test.The testers will never know who the patients are and what condition they're in. The testers run their PCR on the tissue samples. In each case, they say which virus they found and how much of it they found. Then, for example, in patients 29, 86, 199, 272, and 293 they found a great deal of what they claim is a virus. Now we un-blind those patients. They should all be sick, because they have so much virus replicating in their bodies. But are they really sick '-- or are they fit as a fiddle?

With the help of the aforementioned lawyer Viviane Fischer, I finally got the Charit(C) to also answer the question of whether the test developed by Corman et al. '-- the so-called ''Drosten PCR test'' '-- is a quantitative test.

But the Charit(C) was not willing to answer this question ''yes''. Instead, the Charit(C) wrote:

If real-time RT-PCR is involved, to the knowledge of the Charit(C) in most cases these are ['...] limited to qualitative detection.''

Furthermore, the ''Drosten PCR test'' uses the unspecific E-gene assay as preliminary assay, while the Institut Pasteur uses the same assay as confirmatory assay.

According to Corman et al., the E-gene assay is likely to detect all Asian viruses, while the other assays in both tests are supposed to be more specific for sequences labelled ''SARS-CoV-2''.

Besides the questionable purpose of having either a preliminary or a confirmatory test that is likely to detect all Asian viruses, at the beginning of April the WHO changed the algorithm, recommending that from then on a test can be regarded as ''positive'' even if just the E-gene assay (which is likely to detect all Asian viruses!) gives a ''positive'' result.

This means that a confirmed unspecific test result is officially sold as specific.

That change of algorithm increased the ''case'' numbers. Tests using the E-gene assay are produced for example by Roche, TIB Molbiol and R-Biopharm.

High Cq values make the test results even more meaninglessAnother essential problem is that many PCR tests have a ''cycle quantification'' (Cq) value of over 35, and some, including the ''Drosten PCR test'', even have a Cq of 45.

The Cq value specifies how many cycles of DNA replication are required to detect a real signal from biological samples.

''Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported,'' as it says in the MIQE guidelines.

MIQE stands for ''Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments'', a set of guidelines that describe the minimum information necessary for evaluating publications on Real-Time PCR, also called quantitative PCR, or qPCR.

The inventor himself, Kary Mullis, agreed, when he stated:

If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR.''

The MIQE guidelines have been developed under the aegis of Stephen A. Bustin, Professor of Molecular Medicine, a world-renowned expert on quantitative PCR and author of the book A-Z of Quantitative PCR which has been called ''the bible of qPCR.''

In a recent podcast interview Bustin points out that ''the use of such arbitrary Cq cut-offs is not ideal, because they may be either too low (eliminating valid results) or too high (increasing false ''positive'' results).''

And, according to him, a Cq in the 20s to 30s should be aimed at and there is concern regarding the reliability of the results for any Cq over 35.

If the Cq value gets too high, it becomes difficult to distinguish real signal from background, for example due to reactions of primers and fluorescent probes, and hence there is a higher probability of false positives.

Moreover, among other factors that can alter the result, before starting with the actual PCR, in case you are looking for presumed RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, the RNA must be converted to complementary DNA (cDNA) with the enzyme Reverse Transcriptase'--hence the ''RT'' at the beginning of ''PCR'' or ''qPCR.''

But this transformation process is ''widely recognized as inefficient and variable,'' as Jessica Schwaber from the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Toronto and two research colleagues pointed out in a 2019 paper.

Stephen A. Bustin acknowledges problems with PCR in a comparable way.

For example, he pointed to the problem that in the course of the conversion process (RNA to cDNA) the amount of DNA obtained with the same RNA base material can vary widely, even by a factor of 10 (see above interview).

Considering that the DNA sequences get doubled at every cycle, even a slight variation becomes magnified and can thus alter the result, annihilating the test's reliable informative value.

So how can it be that those who claim the PCR tests are highly meaningful for so-called COVID-19 diagnosis blind out the fundamental inadequacies of these tests'--even if they are confronted with questions regarding their validity?

Certainly, the apologists of the novel coronavirus hypothesis should have dealt with these questions before throwing the tests on the market and putting basically the whole world under lockdown, not least because these are questions that come to mind immediately for anyone with even a spark of scientific understanding.

Thus, the thought inevitably emerges that financial and political interests play a decisive role for this ignorance about scientific obligations. NB, the WHO, for example has financial ties with drug companies, as the British Medical Journal showed in 2010.

And experts criticize ''that the notorious corruption and conflicts of interest at WHO have continued, even grown'' since then. The CDC as well, to take another big player, is obviously no better off.

Finally, the reasons and possible motives remain speculative, and many involved surely act in good faith; but the science is clear: The numbers generated by these RT-PCR tests do not in the least justify frightening people who have been tested ''positive'' and imposing lockdown measures that plunge countless people into poverty and despair or even drive them to suicide.

And a ''positive'' result may have serious consequences for the patients as well, because then all non-viral factors are excluded from the diagnosis and the patients are treated with highly toxic drugs and invasive intubations. Especially for elderly people and patients with pre-existing conditions such a treatment can be fatal, as we have outlined in the article ''Fatal Therapie.''

Without doubt eventual excess mortality rates are caused by the therapy and by the lockdown measures, while the ''COVID-19'' death statistics comprise also patients who died of a variety of diseases, redefined as COVID-19 only because of a ''positive'' test result whose value could not be more doubtful.

NOTES:-

[1] Sensitivity is defined as the proportion of patients with disease in whom the test is positive; and specificity is defined as the proportion of patients without disease in whom the test is negative.

[2] E-mail from Prof.'Thomas L¶scher from March 6, 2020

[3] Martin Enserink. Virology. Old guard urges virologists to go back to basics, Science, July 6, 2001, p. 24

[4] E-mail from Charles Calisher from May 10, 2020

[5] Creative Diagnostics, SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus Multiplex RT-qPCR Kit

Torsten Engelbrecht is an award-winning journalist and author from Hamburg, Germany. In 2006 he co-authored Virus-Mania with Dr Klaus Kohnlein, and in 2009 he won the German Alternate Media Award. He has also written for Rubikon, S¼ddeutsche Zeitung, Financial Times Deutschland and many others.Konstantin Demeter is a freelance photographer and an independent researcher. Together with the journalist Torsten Engelbrecht he has published articles on the ''COVID-19'' crisis in the online magazine Rubikon, as well as contributions on the monetary system, geopolitics, and the media in Swiss Italian newspapers.

PCR inventor '' who died in 2019 '' did not say his test won't work for COVID-19 infections '' Australian Associated Press

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Fri, 30 Oct 2020 14:02

The StatementA video on Facebook includes a claim that the inventor of the PCR test '' one of the main tests used to detect COVID-19 '' said the tests do not work to properly diagnose COVID-19 infections.

The video, posted to a Facebook page called ''NO CONSENT : For We Are Young and Free'', features a man criticising a July 18 article in The Australian newspaper about COVID-19 conspiracy theorists.

The speaker reads a number of quotes and attributes them to the inventor of the PCR test, the late US biochemist Kary B Mullis. Among the attributed quotes is the following: ''PCR basically takes a sample of your cells and amplifies any DNA to look for viral sequences, i.e. bits of non-human DNA that seem to match parts of a known viral genome. The problem is the test is known not to work''.

Another attributed quote is: ''the idea these kits can isolate a specific virus like COVID-19 is nonsense''.

The video has been viewed more than 3,100 times and attracted more than 120 comments since it was posted on July 18, 2020.

Similar claims about PCR testing have appeared online including here, here and here.

A Facebook video claims the PCR test inventor said the tests do not effectively diagnose COVID-19. The AnalysisThe quotes attributed to PCR test inventor Dr Kary B. Mullis are not from the Nobel Prize-winning American biochemist. The quotes have appeared online with various attributions online since March, 2020. Dr Mullis died in August, 2019, before the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The earliest example of the quoted lines found by AAP FactCheck is an entry published between March 13 and March 18, according to internet archive Wayback Machine, on a website that claims terrorist attacks such as 9/11 were staged. The lines on the website, copied below, are identical to the purported quotes read out in the video except for one omitted paragraph, shown in bold. They are not attributed to Dr Mullis but to an online commenter called ''VirusGuy'':

''PCR basically takes a sample of your cells and amplifies any DNA to look for 'viral sequences', i.e. bits of non-human DNA that seem to match parts of a known viral genome.

The problem is the test is known not to work.

It uses 'amplification' which means taking a very very tiny amount of DNA and growing it exponentially until it can be analysed. Obviously any minute contaminations in the sample will also be amplified leading to potentially gross errors of discovery.

Additionally, it's only looking for partial viral sequences, not whole genomes, so identifying a single pathogen is next to impossible even if you ignore the other issues.

(Omitted: The Mickey Mouse test kits being sent out to hospitals, at best, tell analysts you have some viral DNA in your cells. Which most of us do, most of the time. It may tell you the viral sequence is related to a specific type of virus '' say the huge family of coronavirus. But that's all.)

The idea these kits can isolate a specific virus like COVID-19 is nonsense.''

The page contents also appear, copied and pasted, in this Facebook post dated March 17, 2020.

In addition to the original comments coming from an anonymous online commenter, Dr Mullis died, aged 74, in August 2019, four months before the first signs of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China and six months before the World Health Organisation named the disease COVID-19, making it impossible for the late doctor to have spoken about COVID-19.

The same ''quotes'' have appeared elsewhere online, including on this site, presented as being from ''a widely respected professional scientist in the US'' on a medical forum.

Dr Mullis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 for his invention of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), a laboratory method used to make a large number of copies of short sections of DNA from a very small sample of genetic material, enabling specific genes of interest to be detected or measured.

PCR testing is one of the two main tests used to detect a COVID-19 infection in Australia and has been approved by the government's Therapeutic Goods Administration.

Dr Ian Mackay, a virologist and adjunct associate professor with the University of Queensland, told AAP FactCheck the claims read out about PCR testing in the video show ''an extreme lack of understanding of PCR, PCR test design and use''.

One of the claims is that the process of DNA amplification, which grows a tiny amount of DNA exponentially, can also amplify contaminants leading to ''potentially gross errors of discovery''.

Dr Mackay said laboratories have processes in place to account for and prevent PCR contamination, including having controls to alert them if contamination has occurred.

In response to the claim ''the tests do not work'', Prof Mackay said the tests are ''extremely effective at very sensitively and specifically detecting SARS-CoV-2''.

''The leading tests have also been tested on SARS-CoV-2 RNA from infected patients, isolated and grown in cells in the lab '' so we know it is this virus that we're detecting,'' he said.

''The tests detect the viral sequences we expect them to and not other viruses.''

Regarding the claim in the video that it is ''next to impossible'' for PCR testing to identify a single pathogen because it only looks for partial viral sequences and not the whole COVID-19 sequence, Professor Mackay said PCR tests are in fact designed to look at partial viral sequences.

''That is by design, not an error or an oversight. We have only been able to quickly and relatively easily (compared to even a decade ago) detect entire viral genomes '' the science of genomics '' in very recent times. It is still costly, less sensitive and slower to determine the entire sequence of a virus compared to detecting its presence using a PCR test. And for cluster, outbreak, epidemic and pandemic control and for patient management '' detection the virus (which real-time PCRs do) is all that is needed,'' he said.

A claim that the inventor of PCR tests said the tests don't work in detecting COVID-19 is false. The VerdictBased on the evidence, AAP FactCheck found the Facebook post to be false. The quotes in the video are not from PCR test inventor Kary B. Mullis, who died in August 2019, before the discovery of COVID-19. The claims instead appear to have originated from an anonymous online commenter.

Claims about the effectiveness of PCR tests are incorrect. Virology expert Professor Ian Mackay said the claims show ''an extreme lack of understanding of PCR, PCR test design and use'' and that PCR tests are ''extremely effective at very sensitively and specifically detecting SARS-CoV-2''.

False '' The primary claims of the content are factually inaccurate.

* AAP FactCheck is accredited by the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network, which promotes best practice through a stringent and transparent Code of Principles. https://www.aap.com.au/

Britain records 23,012 more Covid cases - up 2,482 from yesterday | Daily Mail Online

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Fri, 30 Oct 2020 15:05

Britain has recorded 23,012 more Covid-19 cases, up 2,482 from yesterday, as Professor Neil Ferguson warns people 'will catch the virus and die' if they are allowed to mix on Christmas Day.

There were 174 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, down from 224 on Friday, including 33 deaths in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and 141 fatalities in England.

Meanwhile Professor Ferguson, whose modelling led to the original lockdown in March, said earlier today that schools may have to be closed to older pupils if restrictions on households mixing fail to stem the rise of infections, and that it will be a 'political judgement' as to whether regulations are relaxed over the festive season.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: 'It risks some transmission and there will be consequences of that. Some people will die because of getting infected on that day.

'But if it is only one or two days the impact is likely to be limited. So that is really a political judgment about the cost versus the benefits.'

It follows the prospects for a family Christmas descending into further confusion yesterday, as Downing Street insisted that relatives should be able to gather - but a minister warned it will not be 'normal'.

Professor Ferguson added: 'That (banning households mixing) should have a significant effect but as yet we have been unable to see it definitively.

'If we go beyond that there is a limit to what we can do in terms of reducing contacts, short of starting to target, for instance, the older years in schools and sixth form colleges where we know older teenagers are able to transmit as adults.

'Of course nobody wants to start moving to virtual education and closing schools even partially. The challenge may be that we are not able to get on top of the transmission otherwise.'

Yesterday the UK announced 20,530 infections and the deaths of 224 people. Last Saturday the Department of Health recorded 150 coronavirus victims, with another 16,171 cases.

Figures tend to be lower over the weekend due to a delay in processing the tests at laboratories.

In coronavirus news today:

Professor Neil Ferguson warned loved ones will 'catch Covid and die' if households mix at Christmas, but said the impact will be 'likely limited' if it is only for one or two days;The scientist said schools may have to be closed to older pupils if banning households from mixing doesn't have a 'significant effect' on the number of infections; He also predicts the NHS will be unable to cope if cases continue to increase at the present rate, saying that while infections among 18 to 21-year-olds were falling, they were continuing to rise in other age groups; Coronavirus restrictions in Scotland which saw the closure of pubs and restaurants in the central belt and a 6pm indoor hospitality curfew elsewhere are to be extended until November 2; One in 20 people with Covid-19 are still suffering symptoms eight weeks later, while one in 50 are struggling after three months, according to a study from King's College London; Gyms in Merseyside can reopen after a U-turn over their inclusion in the Liverpool City Region's Tier 3 restrictions; Dr Nick Scriven, former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, warned last night that cancellations would be 'inevitable' across large areas of the health service; P olice revealed plans to patrol the Anglo-Welsh border to stop families from crossing over for a half-term holiday as Wales is plunged into a two-week 'firebreak' lockdown; Scientific advisers have been warned the coronavirus is mutating and could become more infectious, according to SAGE papers; Only one in ten stay at home for two weeks after being told to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace, Sage documents reveal; Warrington will move into a Tier Three lockdown two days early as infection rate remains 'stubbornly high'. Military personnel are being drafted in to help enforce coronavirus restrictions in Tier 3 areas as f ive Army and Navy environmental health officers trained in 'outbreak management' were deployed in Liverpool on Friday. Meanwhile Dr Nick Scriven, former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, warned last night that cancellations would be 'inevitable' across large areas of the health service.

He said: 'I feel it is unrealistic to expect trusts across the country to meet the set elective targets in the current climate.'

The scientist (above), whose modelling led to the original lockdown in March, said of regulations being relaxed: 'Some people will die because of getting infected on that day'

NHS trusts in Chesterfield, Northampton, Newcastle and Nottingham confirmed yesterday that they were postponing at least some non-urgent activity, while Rotherham, Liverpool, Bradford and Plymouth have announced similar actions in the last week.

Dr Rob Harwood, the chair of the British Medical Association's (BMA) hospital consultants committee, said trusts will have 'no choice' but to limit planned treatments for patients.

He told The Guardian: 'As we approach winter, it's likely that many trusts will have no choice but to continue to restrict their elective care services, which is incredibly worrying for both staff and patients, as backlogs increase and health conditions potentially worsen.'

Speaking on operations being cancelled, Dr Nick Scriven, the former president of the Society for Acute Medicine and a consultant physician, added: 'I think this is going to be inevitable across large areas of the health service as the pandemic and winter coincide.

'We know bed numbers are low compared with other countries and with the necessary infection control processes the 'functioning' of what we have is slowed down across the board.'

Emily Robertshaw spoke about the difficulties her 14-year-old son will have to face after his life-changing cochlear implant surgery was delayed.

The mother told Channel 4 News: 'I have yet to actually to break the news to him and he's back later, and it's going to be really difficult. He's had to have a lot of support building up to the operation.

'He's got significant learning disabilities so the preparation has been huge.'

Emily Robertshaw pictured with her 14-year-old son, whose life-changing cochlear implant surgery was delayed. The mother earlier said: 'I have yet to actually to break the news to him and he's back later, and it's going to be really difficult'

Professor Neil Ferguson said it will be a 'political judgement' as to whether regulations on households mixing are relaxed over the festive season. Pictured: a shopper in Wrexham last night as the 6pm 'fire break' lockdown approached

Doctors have warned that the mass cancellation of routine operations is 'inevitable'. The BMA's Dr Rob Harwood said NHS trusts will have 'no choice' but to limit planned treatments for patients as they approach winter

Professor Ferguson said schools may have to be closed to older pupils if restrictions on households mixing fail to stem the rise of coronavirus infections (pictured: an empty classroom at Manor Park School and Nursery in Cheshire)

Normal Christmas is 'wishful thinking', says SAGE adviser The idea that 'we can carry on as we are' and have a normal Christmas 'is wishful thinking in the extreme', a Government scientific adviser has said.

Professor John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said 'radical action' would be needed to stem the rise in coronavirus cases, particularly in regions with high incidence of the virus.

Prof Edmunds, who told MPs on Wednesday that tens of thousands of deaths could occur during this wave of the pandemic, said further measures are needed to bring cases down.

He said that a circuit-breaker is needed across the whole country or at least in areas where incidence is high.

'The only way that we can have a relatively safe and normal Christmas is if we take radical action now to reduce incidence '' at the very least in high incidence areas '' and keep the incidence low across the country by implementing a package of measures to reduce social contacts,' he said.

'The notion that we can carry on as we are and have a Christmas that we can celebrate normally with friends and family is wishful thinking in the extreme.'

Professor Ferguson also warned that the NHS will be unable to cope if coronavirus cases continue to increase at the present rate, saying that while infections among 18 to 21-year-olds were falling, they were continuing to rise in other age groups.

He explained: 'Unfortunately, in every other age group case numbers continue to rise at about the same rate they were.

'There are little hints of slowing, for instance in the North East of England, but we are not seeing the sort of slowing that we really need to to get on top of this.

'It is a worrying situation. We now have 8,000 people in hospital with Covid. That is about a third of the level we were at the peak of the pandemic in March.

'If the rate of growth continues as it is, it means that in a month's time we will above that peak level in March and that is probably unsustainable.

'We are in a critical time right now. The health system will not be able to cope with this rate of growth for much longer.'

Professor John Edmunds, a member of the Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has said his own group was looking at how interventions might work over the winter, but these had not been requested by the Government.

Of Sage, he said: 'We haven't specifically been asked to look at different policies quite honestly, so nobody's asking us to say 'well what should we do here?'

'So these are things that we've really taken on ourselves and decided to look at ourselves.'

Sage documents revealed yesterday that only one in ten of people stay at home for two weeks when they are told to self-isolate.

Out of those who were told they had been in close contact with a confirmed Covid-19 case, just 10.9 per cent isolated for the following 14 days.

Government scientists claimed the crucial R rate has dropped slightly and an array of statistics revealed cases are no longer growing as quickly as they once were, although the epidemic is still growing (pictured: Boris Johnson in London yesterday)

Britain's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, Mr Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak take part in a coronavirus briefing on Thursday. The UK yesterday announced 20,530 more coronavirus cases

Christmas chaos as No10 says families CAN gather this year but minister warns it won't be 'normal' The prospects for a family Christmas descended further into confusion yesterday as Downing Street insisted families should be able to gather - but a minister warned it will not be 'normal'.

The mixed messages came as politicians desperately try to get a grip on a surge in coronavirus cases - with lockdowns tightening in many areas.

There are tough restrictions on people meeting indoors across much of the UK, but asked whether families should abandon hope of meeting up, a No10 spokesman said: 'The PM has been clear previously that he is hopeful that in many ways we could be able to get some aspects of our lives back to normal by Christmas.

'As I say, we've been clear about the ambition to ensure that people may celebrate Christmas as a family this year.'

The comments contrasted with the stance taken by Treasury Chief Secretary Steve Barclay in a round of interviews yesterday morning.

He said: 'I think few people expect it to be exactly as it would normally because we will be living with this virus for some time.'

The study, carried out by King's College London, was discussed at their meeting in September.

Researchers collected data from a sample of 31,000 people between March 2 and August 5.

Based on answers to an online questionnaire, the team found that only one in ten said they had isolated for two weeks when told to by the Test and Trace scheme.

This is much lower than the 65 per cent who said they intended to quarantine if they received the alert.

There are tough restrictions on people meeting indoors across much of the UK, but asked whether families should abandon hope of meeting up, a No10 spokesman previously said: 'The PM has been clear previously that he is hopeful that in many ways we could be able to get some aspects of our lives back to normal by Christmas.

'As I say, we've been clear about the ambition to ensure that people may celebrate Christmas as a family this year.'

The comments contrasted with the stance taken by Treasury Chief Secretary Steve Barclay in a round of interviews on Friday morning.

He said: 'I think few people expect it to be exactly as it would normally because we will be living with this virus for some time.

'And the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser have been very clear on that.

'But, your point really was about the ability of families to spend Christmas together '' that is something we all hope to be in a position to do.'

A Government scientific adviser has said the idea that 'we can carry on as we are' and have a normal Christmas 'is wishful thinking in the extreme'.

Data reveals hospitalised Covid-19 patients are dying quicker than they were before - in a week, rather than two. Pictured is a timescale of when men aged between 40-49 (top) 50-59 (middle) and 60-69 (bottom) die after symptoms start (bottom axis is days since symptoms started). The orange is the first wave, and the blue is the second wave

PHE data shows the number of cases per 100,000 people in the worst hit regions appeared to turn and start falling in the week up to October 11 after at least five weeks of continuous increases. London has had considerably lower infection rates

Second Tory MP stokes free school meals furyTwo Tory MPs have landed themselves in hot water after controversial remarks about free school meals.

Selaine Saxby hinted in a Facebook post hospitality firms dishing out food should not get government help despite being battered by the pandemic.

Meanwhile Ben Bradley was accused of a 'stigmatisation of working class families' in an incendiary tweet that suggested cash went to 'crack dens and brothels'.

Both MPs have been roundly criticised, with Mr Bradley called to apologise while some said Ms Saxby should resign.

It comes as civil society minister Baroness Barran defended the decision not to extend free school meals through the school holidays.

In a show of unity, hospitality businesses and councils turned their backs on the government and said they will provide free meal vouchers through the break.

The move followed a high-profile campaign by Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford, who was made an MBE for his efforts earlier this month.

Prof Edmunds, who told MPs on Wednesday that tens of thousands of deaths could occur during this wave of the pandemic, said further measures are needed to bring cases down.

He said that a circuit-breaker is needed across the whole country or at least in areas where incidence is high.

'The notion that we can carry on as we are and have a Christmas that we can celebrate normally with friends and family is wishful thinking in the extreme.'

Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds has said the only way to save the festive season was to impose a 'circuit breaker' lockdown now - something Labour has been demanding.

She told BBC Breakfast: 'The tier system so far has not worked to reduce infections.

'What we are looking at unfortunately '' given the Government doesn't seem to be willing to shift on this when half-term holidays are coming up '' what we are looking up to Christmas is an increasingly difficult situation in lots of parts of the country.'

Meanwhile, two Tory MPs have landed themselves in hot water after controversial remarks about free school meals.

Selaine Saxby hinted in a Facebook post hospitality firms dishing out food should not get government help despite being battered by the pandemic.

Ben Bradley was accused of a 'stigmatisation of working class families' in an incendiary tweet that suggested cash went to 'crack dens and brothels'.

Selaine Saxby (left) hinted in a Facebook post hospitality firms dishing out food should not get government help despite being battered by the pandemic. Ben Bradley (right) was accused of a 'stigmatisation of working class families' in an incendiary tweet that suggested cash went to 'crack dens and brothels'

Cafes, pubs and restaurants are offering free school meals for local children during half term after MPs rejected Marcus Rashford's campaign (pictured at FareShare in Manchester)

Only one in ten stay at home for two weeks when told to self isolate, Sage documents revealOnly one in ten stay at home for two weeks after being told to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace, Sage documents have revealed.

Of those who were told they had been in close contact with a confirmed Covid-19 case, just 10.9 per cent isolated for the following 14 days.

The alarming figures undermine the premise of the Test and Trace system, which aims to prevent the spread of the virus.

The main reasons people gave for not properly quarantining were not developing symptoms, not thinking it was necessary to stay away from those outside the household, or popping to the shops for food.

The figures were revealed in documents by Sage '' the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.