Further: PCR tests are non-specific even when you keep the cycle count down - they show positive for BOTH Covid and Flu which is why flu "disappeared" in 2020: PCR tests were positive flu and was judged as Covid.
Link here, just the first non-technical one I found: https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/pcr-test-recall-can-the-te...
Please be careful about what information you consume, and be even more careful about what information you convey to others.
it makes it super easy for social media to misunderstand and spread in the form of FUD, I've seen a lot of it in the last month or so.
You are blaming the experts in epidemiology for not being able to overcome political agendas, cable news propaganda, ignorant people, and a lack of trust in “the establishment” (which includes the FDA and CDC) caused by all of the above. The PR article was for medical professionals.
Americans on social media have become far too gullible. They can’t be bothered to fact check and they sure aren’t going to the source material. This is not a problem the CDC’s comma team could have prevented.
Know your audience, there is little point in speaking Russian to Hindu native speakers.
There is also little to be gained in only communicating in overly complicated language to your average Citizen. The CDC could, quite easily and simply communicate really very important announcements in a way that your average "man on the street" could read, consume and truly understand with very little effort or time.
The audience is different. They have tuned themselves to short videos, short blurts of text and meme images. I agree this is not good, but they need to communicate in the same language or risk this sort of misinformation spreading.
I had an argument on another site with someone making a similar claim about why I think the flu results started turning up mostly negative and why flu death attributions are basically non-existent this year, but I think it just muddies the point. The COVID PCR tests that have been used over the past 12+ months are accurate and do not conflate COVID with Influenza.
Also interesting to note: “ Every PCR test must be validated, meaning checked for its sensitivity and specificity.”
How is this tested? Against which gold standard?
So many questions are left open still…
No there aren’t. You have done exactly zero legwork. These have all been answered if you look at they FDA website instead of social media.
See Table 9 on page 45 for specificity results of 2019-nCoVRT-PCR diagnostic panel: https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download
False.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210730/Claims-that-CDCe2...