Virus nearly done virusing in Japan

To whatever extent masks actually slow the rate of transmission that translates into slowing down the race to herd immunity.

You ‘want’ as many people as possible to get infected because infection confers immunity.

Well, I guess you, a random GOP useful idiot, knows more than the virologists at the CDC.
 
'Possibility' does not belong in any scientific study that has been concluded. That's part of the theory phase of the study.

Part of their conclusion was that HI couldn’t be ruled out.

Seriously, why is this such a big problem with herd immunity? HI is an actual thing—an exceedingly *scientific* thing. When a community level epidemic burns itself out the default explanation is HI until proven otherwise.

Why do they burn out if it’s not due to HI? Viruses get tired of virusing? I’m still waiting for an explanation for why the Sun Belt epidemic subsided.
 
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Growing research indicates many COVID-19 cases might not be infectious at all
Elevated 'cycle thresholds' may be detecting virus long after it is past the point of infecti

A growing body of research suggests that a significant number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the U.S. — perhaps as many as 9 out of every 10 — may not be infectious at all, with much of the country's testing equipment possibly picking up mere fragments of the disease rather than full-blown infections.

Confirmed cases of the disease have been the focal point of public health authorities and governments worldwide for many months, with countries across the globe working frantically to shore up their testing infrastructure and ensure that most citizens who want a COVID-19 test can obtain one with relative ease.

Many politicians, meanwhile — including most state governors in the U.S. — have tied reopening policies to the number of cases detected in the local community, with regions and localities often being permitted to reopen in staggered "phases" only when they have reached successively lower benchmarks of average new daily cases in the area.

Numerous institutions, meanwhile, have adopted testing protocols in an attempt to preempt the spread of the virus. American colleges and universities, for instance, have turned to mass testing in order to closely monitor incidences of the disease among students, particularly residential students living on campus.

Yet a burgeoning line of scientific inquiry suggests that many confirmed infections of COVID-19 may actually be just residual traces of the virus itself, a contention that — if true — may suggest both that current high levels of positive viruses are clinically insignificant and that the mitigation measures used to suppress them may be excessive.

'Cycle threshold' set very high for many tests

At issue is the method by which many COVID-19 tests detect a patient's viral load within a given sample. Polymerase chain reaction tests, which have been widely deployed to determine if individuals are infected with the disease, function by amplifying DNA samples to the point that an antigen can be detected and classified.

The "cycle threshold" is the number of amplification cycles a PCR test goes through before a target pathogen is detected. A lower cycle threshold means that a higher amount of the virus was present in the sample; a higher threshold means the machine had to work harder to detect the virus in the sample, indicating a lower viral load and more likely a non-infectious patient.

According to a rundown of PCR tests compiled by the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, many manufacturers of PCR tests set the cycle threshold cutoff for a positive sample at up to around 40 cycles, a level numerous public health officials believe is guaranteed to return what are effectively false positive results that have detected fragments of the virus.

"I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," Juliet Morrison, a virology professor at the University of California, Riverside, told the New York Times in August.

Health authorities elsewhere have indicated similar skepticism of high-threshold tests. A spokeswoman for Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Center said in June that the agency only assigns positive cases to samples with Cts of 35 or less, with authorities there believing that any samples with Cts of more than 32 are likely (though not definitely) non-infectious.

A team of researchers at Oxford, meanwhile, wrote in a preprint paper last week that, based on a review of various sample collections, swabs requiring more than 30 cycles were "associated with non-infectious samples."

Binary positive-negative test results — in which cycle thresholds are not considered — will "result in false positives with segregation of large numbers of people who are no longer infectious and hence not a threat to public health," they wrote.

Preprint papers have not yet been through the peer review process, so their results and conclusions can be changed prior to full publication. Yet several other research projects have indicated similar results. One, published in April by public health authorities out of France, found that "patients with Ct values equal or above 34 do not excrete infectious viral particles."

Similarly, a study out of Ireland seeking to determine "the duration of infectivity" of COVID-19 patients found that, of numerous samples subject to PCR testing, scientists were unable to achieve positive culture growth in any that required more than 34.3 cycles.

Both of those thresholds are notably smaller than the maximum number of cycles instituted by many test manufacturers, suggesting that there may be many nominally positive COVID-19 cases that are innocuous far as infectiousness and illness are concerned.

Echoing those concerns, researchers at Harvard in May argued that "the Ct value from positive test results, when interpreted in context, can help to refine clinical decision making," and that a cycle threshold of around 34 may be a useful tool for determining when a patient is truly infectious and when he or she is merely carrying remnants of the virus.

Such a policy, if implemented, could have momentous implications for public health policy in the U.S. and elsewhere. Presently, in many industries and at many institutions, a single positive COVID-19 case can result in a complete shutdown of the affected company or university or elementary school, followed by a rush to have everyone tested out of concern that the virus may have spread.

A greater emphasis on the cycle threshold of positive tests may preempt such disruptive policies by signaling which positive test results are truly infectious and which are detecting low viral loads at much less threat of infectivity.

Early indications suggest the number of clinically trivial positive cases in the U.S. might be startlingly high. The New York Times said last month that a review of the cycle thresholds of positive cases in Nevada, New York and Massachusetts indicated that "up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus."

Those numbers, if extrapolated nationwide, could suggest that a significant proportion of the mitigation and preparation measures currently in place across the U.S. might be excessive relative to the actual level of infectious cases around the country.

Ultimately it can be difficult to determine the cycle thresholds used at laboratories across the country, making that kind of extrapolation difficult. A spokeswoman for LabCorp — one of the largest clinical laboratory groups in the world — said the company "does not include the CT value in result reporting."

"Our CT cutoff is based on extensive validation," she said, "and is within the accepted range to accurately identify individuals currently infected with SARS-CoV-2." The company on its website says it has performed 13.5 million COVID-19 tests, about 15% of the country's total number of tests.

At the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, researchers stressed last month that "PCR detection of viruses is helpful so long as its limitations are understood; while it detects RNA in minute quantities, caution needs to be applied to the results as it often does not detect infectious virus."

"If this is not understood, PCR results may lead to restrictions for large groups of people who do not present an infection risk," they wrote.

https://justthenews.com/accountabil...poses-rogues-gallery-shady-foreign-associates
 
^ the NYT broke that story about 6 weeks ago.

Instead of standing the COVID world on its head, it just came and went. Nothing Burger. In spite of the fact *it calls into serious question* the very data used to enforce the most restrictive public policies ever put into place.
 
It's the conclusions that have you confused. They proved that herd immunity does not exist with Covid. It will take a vaccine.

incorrect. antibodies are antibodies, whether they come from self created or injected for creation.
Herd immunity comes from both
 
Part of their conclusion was that HI couldn’t be ruled out.

Seriously, why is this such a big problem with herd immunity? HI is an actual thing—an exceedingly *scientific* thing. When a community level epidemic burns itself out the default explanation is HI until proven otherwise.

Why do they burn out if it’s not due to HI? Viruses get tired of virusing? I’m still waiting for an explanation for why the Sun Belt epidemic subsided.
Herd immunity cannot exist naturally when the body doesn't retain antibodies.

The Memorial Day super spreader events created a panic in the states that originally followed trump's deceptive claims. Once their hospitals were full to capacity, they quickly shut down and started using logic instead of politics.
 
They have been big into masks for a long time because Japan is close to China.

Could you please explain how a mask makes one seropositive? Thanks.
If not then what you've just inadvertently admitted is that masks do nothing to stop the infection.
 
Read Woodward's book

So you don't know. :palm:

You don't have to list all the scientific data you claim the pres. hid, ... just list 3. That shouldn't be too difficult, even for a brainwashed, indoctrinated cultist like you.
 
News flash: not all virologists agree with the CDC virologists.

Well, the CDC is tasked with fighting diseases. These men and women dedicate their lives to protecting the public from viruses and diseases.

The one crackpot with a PhD who claims that aliens built the pyramids or that Donald Trump is correct don't matter when 99.9% of scientists say otherwise.
 
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