Jan. 14, 2021 - Jim Fetzer
14:58
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| What is it about humanity that wants to go to all the details and stuff and listen? | |
| You know, these guys like Fauci get up there and start talking. | |
| You know, he doesn't know anything, really, about anything. | |
| And I'd say that to his face. | |
| Nothing. | |
| The man thinks he can take a blood sample and stick it in an electron microscope and if it's got a virus in there, you'll know it. | |
| Those guys have got an agenda, which is not what we would like them to have, being that we pay for them to take care of our health in some way. | |
| Reports are streaming in, declaring a dark winter for the world due to COVID-19. | |
| The media rushes to tell the public that case numbers are on the rise again. | |
| In response, case numbers are used to support calls for lockdowns, travel and dining restrictions, and the push for compulsory vaccines. | |
| However, in recent months, an abundance of evidence has shown that the gold standard procedure for detecting COVID-19 is unreliable and could be producing untold numbers of false positives. | |
| If this is the case, why are health officials around the world calling for more tests? | |
| This report is a brief look into the history of the Polymerase Chain Reaction Procedure, or PCR, and the evidence that PCR is unreliable and should not be used as a determinant for the number of COVID-19 cases or as a factor in political decisions. | |
| Please share with friends and family to keep them informed. | |
| And if someone shared this with you, please watch with an open mind. | |
| In the months since the COVID-19 panic began, health authorities around the world have | |
| encouraged the public to get tested to help track the spread of SARS-CoV-2, | |
| the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19. | |
| However, as fear and hysteria subside, the scientific community and the public at large are calling into question the efficacy of the test used to determine a patient's status. | |
| The main test that is used to determine an individual's status involves the polymerase chain reaction method. | |
| This incredibly sensitive technique was developed by Berkeley scientist Kerry Mollis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993. | |
| The PCR method amplifies a small segment of DNA hundreds of times to make it easier to analyze. | |
| For COVID-19, a process known as Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction, or RT-PCR, is used to detect SARS-CoV-2 by amplifying the virus' genetic material so it can be detected by scientists. | |
| PCR is sometimes described as a technique or a process, but for simplicity, we will refer to it as a test. | |
| PCR is viewed as the gold standard, however it is not without problems. | |
| PCR amplifies a virus' genetic material and then each sample goes through a number of cycles until a virus is recovered. | |
| This is known as the cycle threshold and has become a key component in the debate around the efficacy of the PCR test. | |
| In late August 2020, I attended a press conference in Houston, Texas to ask Houston Health Authority Dr. David Peirce about the concerns of PCR. | |
| Dr. Peirce says that when the labs report numbers of COVID-19 cases to the City of Houston, they only offer a binary option of yes for positive or no for negative. | |
| But in reality, it comes in what are called cycle thresholds. | |
| And it's an inverse relationship, so the higher the number, the less virus there was in the initial sample. | |
| And so, some labs will report out to 40 cycle thresholds, and if they get a positive at 40, which means there's a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of virus in there, that gets reported to us as positive, and we don't know any different. | |
| Hearst noted that the key question is, at what value is someone still considered infectious? | |
| The question is, is at what value, at what number, what threshold is somebody still, because if I've got a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of, you test me, I've got a tiny, tiny amount of virus, well, does that mean I'm contagious, I'm infectious to somebody else? | |
| You just got infected, you're just starting? | |
| Or are you on the downside, and whatever, and when you were infectious, you're no longer infectious anymore? | |
| He believes the answer is for the scientific community to set a national standard for cycle threshold. | |
| Unfortunately, a national standard would not solve the problems expressed by Dr. Peirce. | |
| In the first weeks of September 2020, a number of important revelations regarding PCR came to light. | |
| First, new research from the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and the University of the West of England found that the PCR test poses the potential for false positives when testing for COVID-19. | |
| Professor Carl Hennigan, one of the authors of the study, said there was a risk that an increase in testing in the UK will lead to an increase in the risk of sample contamination and thus an increase in COVID-19 cases. | |
| The team reviewed evidence from 25 studies where virus specimens had positive PCR tests. | |
| The researchers state that the genetic photocopying technique used to magnify the sample of genetic material collected is so sensitive it could be picking up fragments of dead viruses from previous infections. | |
| The researchers reached a similar conclusion as Dr. David Peirce, specifically stating, quote, A binary yes-no approach to the interpretation of RT-PCR, unvalidated against viral culture, 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. | |
| Hennigan, who is also the editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, told the BBC that the binary approach is a problem and that tests should have a cut-off point so small amounts of virus do not lead to a positive result. | |
| This is because of the cycle threshold mentioned by Dr. Peirce. | |
| A person who is shedding an active virus and someone who has leftover infection could both receive the same positive test result. | |
| Now you can put in a threshold level, which says you are infectious, which is a cycle threshold of about 25. | |
| And if you do that, you can pick up the people who are infectious. | |
| threshold would eliminate the quarantining and contact tracing of people who are healthy | |
| and help the public better understand the true nature of COVID-19. Now you can put in a threshold | |
| level which says you are infectious which is a cycle threshold of about 25 and if you do that | |
| you can pick up the people who are infectious but the way we're deploying the test at the moment | |
| is in a sort of ragbag way that says whatever amount of RNA you've got on board you are | |
| positive. | |
| Shortly after Hennigan's criticisms, the UK's leading health agency, Public Health England, released an update on the testing methods used to detect COVID-19 and appeared to agree with Professor Hennigan regarding the concerns on the cycle threshold. | |
| On September 9, 2020, Public Health England released an update which concluded, quote, all laboratories should determine the threshold for positive results at the limit of detection. | |
| This is not the first time Hennigan's work has directly impacted the UK's COVID-19 policies. | |
| In July 2020, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock called for an urgent review of the daily COVID-19 numbers produced by Public Health England after it was revealed that the stats included people who had died from other causes. | |
| The Guardian reported that Professor Hennigan and a fellow scientist released a paper showing that if someone dies after having tested positive for COVID-19, their death is recorded in the COVID-19 death statistics. | |
| A source in the Department of Health and Social Care told The Guardian, quote, | |
| you could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then hit by a bus in July, | |
| and you'd be recorded as a COVID death. Hennigan also recently told the BMJ, quote, | |
| one issue in trying to interpret numbers of detected cases is that there is no set definition | |
| of a case. At the moment, it seems that a PCR positive result is the only criterion required | |
| for a case to be recognized. In any other disease, we would have a clearly defined specification | |
| that would usually involve signs, symptoms, and a test result. | |
| We are moving into a biotech world where the norms of clinical reasoning are going out the window. | |
| A PCR test does not equal COVID-19. | |
| It should not. | |
| But in some definitions, it does. | |
| Hannigan says he is concerned that as soon as there is the appearance of an outbreak, there is panic and overreacting. | |
| Quote, this is a huge problem because politicians are operating in a non-evidence based way when it comes to non-drug interventions. | |
| Hennigan is correct that the scientific authorities ought to take false positives seriously, especially when a person can be sent to isolate or quarantine for weeks due to a positive test result. | |
| Even the U.S. | |
| FDA's own fact sheet on testing acknowledges the dangers posed by false positives. | |
| A CDC fact sheet also acknowledges the possibility of false positives with the PCR test. | |
| to patients could include the following, a recommendation for isolation of the patient, | |
| unnecessary prescription of a treatment or therapy, or other unintended adverse effects. | |
| A CDC fact sheet also acknowledges the possibility of false positives with the PCR test. | |
| Professor Hennigan believes the confusion around COVID-19 has come as a result of a | |
| shift away from evidence-based medicine. | |
| In a recent opinion piece published at The Spectator, Hennigan wrote that patients have become a, quote, prisoner of a system labeling him or her as positive when we are not sure what that label means. | |
| He warns, quote, governments are producing a series of contradictory and confusing policies which have a brief shelf life as the next crisis emerges. | |
| It is increasingly clear the evidence is often ignored. | |
| Keeping up to date is a full-time occupation. | |
| Even more evidence for the unreliability of PCR came on November 11, 2020, when the Lisbon Court of Appeal ruled that PCR, quote, and view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. | |
| This decision relates to an appeal by the Regional Health Administration of the Azores, Portugal, which forced four German citizens to comply with a 14-day quarantine in a hotel room. | |
| After the four citizens appealed the decision, the panel of judges concluded that, quote, the number of cycles of such amplification results in a greater or lesser reliability of such tests, and the problem is that the reliability shows itself, in terms of scientific evidence, as more than debatable. | |
| The ruling was criticized by some scientists in Portugal and has been completely ignored by the United States media and politicians. | |
| More recently, on December 3rd, 2020, the Florida Department of Health announced a new update requiring all laboratories conducting COVID-19 tests to record new details for the PCR test. | |
| The update notes that all Florida labs are subject to mandatory reporting to the Florida Department of Health, including for PCR, other RNA, antigen, and antibody results. | |
| The update adds new requirements for the PCR test, asking labs to record the cycle threshold values for the process. | |
| The Florida Department of Health document states, cycle threshold values and their reference ranges, as applicable, must be reported by labs to the Florida Department of Health. | |
| On December 14th, the World Health Organization posted a notice on their website warning that PCR may not be entirely accurate for detecting SARS-CoV-2. | |
| The World Health Organization memo admits that using too high of a cycle threshold will likely result in false positives. | |
| Quote, users of RT-PCR regions should read the instructions for use carefully to determine | |
| if manual adjustment of the PCR positivity threshold is necessary to account for any | |
| background noise which may lead to a specimen with a high cycle threshold value result being | |
| interpreted as a positive result. | |
| The design principle of RT-PCR means that for patients with high levels of circulating | |
| virus, viral load, relatively few cycles will be needed to detect virus and so the CT value | |
| will be low. | |
| Conversely, when specimens return a high CT value, it means that many cycles were required | |
| to detect virus. | |
| In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain. | |
| The fact that the Florida Department of Health and the World Health Organization is taking this step is another sign that an increasing number of health professionals and regulators are questioning the accuracy of PCR. | |
| Unfortunately, both of these stories have been ignored. | |
| As noted earlier, this incredibly sensitive technique was developed by Berkeley scientist Kerry Mullis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993. | |
| By the mid-1990s, Mullis had become skeptical that PCR was able to detect HIV, and made several statements toward the end of his life indicating that he believed the technique was being improperly used by researchers. | |
| How do they misuse PCR to estimate all these supposed three viral RNAs that may or may not be there? | |
| I think misuse PCR is not quite... I don't think you can misuse PCR. | |
| No, the results, the interpretation of it. | |
| See, if you can say, if they could find this virus in you at all, and with PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody, it starts making you believe in the sort of Buddhist notion that everything is contained in everything else, right? | |
| I mean, because if you can amplify one single molecule up to something that you can really measure, Which BCR can do, then there's just very few molecules that you don't have at least one single one of them in your body, okay? | |
| So that could be thought of as a misuse of it just to claim that it's meaningful. | |
| It is. | |
| There's very little of what they call HIV and what's been brought out here by Philpott and Esai already. | |
| The measurement for it is not exact at all. | |
| It's not as good as our measurement for things like apples. | |
| An apple is an apple. | |
| You know, you can get something that's kind of like, if you've got enough things that look kind of like an apple, and you stick them all together, you might think of it as an apple. | |
| But, and HIV is like that. | |
| Those tests are all based on things that are invisible, and they are, the results are inferred, in a sense. | |
| PCR is separate from that, it's just a process that's used to make a whole lot of something out of something. | |
| That's what it is. | |
| But it's not, it doesn't tell you that you're sick, and it doesn't tell you that the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you or anything like that. | |
| As we approach 2021, the public is being told that a dark winter is waiting, with governments and media predicting a rise in cases and deaths. | |
| However, it's important that we pause to acknowledge the many concerns surrounding the PCR test before international health authorities crash the economy, send millions into poverty, and threaten civil liberties. | |
| We must help the public understand the limitations of the PCR test and the dangers of resting public health policy on such a flawed process. | |
| Finally, we must also hold accountable those who continue to promote PCR and refuse to answer these questions or even acknowledge these concerns. | |
| We cannot ignore the disastrous results produced by policymakers who failed to heed the warnings about PCR. | |
| Thank you for watching. |
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