Up to a third of people who tested positive for Covid by PCR test were not contagious and did not need to self-isolate, a new study led by Oxford scientists suggests. The Telegraph has the story.
Up to a third of people who tested positive for coronavirus by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests were not contagious and did not need to self-isolate, a new study suggests.
Research led by academics from the University of Oxford found that many laboratories are setting the positivity bar very low, meaning they are picking up people who are “a danger to no one”.
PCR tests work by cycling swab samples through different temperatures to trigger replication, which releases a chemical showing that the virus is present.
The fewer cycles that are needed to detect the chemical, the greater the viral load and the more likely someone is infected.
There is no definitive cycle threshold level for positivity. However, a review by the University of Oxford found that 30 was a good cut-off, because the virus was unlikely to replicate after that – particularly in asymptomatic people. Other groups have suggested around 32 to 33.
However, Freedom of Information requests made by members of the public and compiled by the University of Oxford show that NHS trusts are using vastly different cut-off thresholds, with little regulation from the Government. Some are as low as 25, while others are as high as 45.
The figures also show that between 23% and 37% of people who were told they were positive had a cycle threshold value above 30. For one in 20, it was higher than 40.
Dr Tom Jefferson, co-author and an epidemiologist at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “We found that about one-third of people who isolated probably didn’t need to.
“PCR positivity means that you can tell people to isolate and ruin their lives basically, even though in a large proportion of these cases, they are not infectious.
“It’s absolute chaos. The whole regulation of these tests seems to be shambolic.” …
Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “It’s deeply worrying. When you have more virus circulating in the community, the potential for contamination is greater. Studies have shown that people can be easily contaminated with a viral fragment.
“The problem is the panic of the pandemic meant that we developed policies at a speed we’ve never seen before and we haven’t looked at them to find out which are evidence-based.
“Accurately knowing who is infectious is incredibly important for people going about their daily lives, the economy, our social lives and our wellbeing. The impact on the economy is now coming home, and it is clear that we cannot afford to keep isolating people.
“It’s also clear that members of the public were worried about this and submitting sensible Freedom of Information requests, but were met with contradictory responses attempting to explain a system which is shambolic in terms of governance and regulation.”
The study will be published on the website of Collateral Global, a charity committed to researching the impact of Covid measures.
Worth reading in full, and find the study here.
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Another press release from Well Crap, We Were Wrong About That Too Inc.
Never isolated anyway. Got a life to lead, y’ see.
“Studies have shown that people can be easily contaminated with a viral fragment.”
Or not contaminated at all, even when you soak the volunteer’s head in the alleged virus. What an embarrassment these esteemed Oxford scientists have only just now highlighted a vital problem that ordinary members of the public figured out almost TWO YEARS AGO.
Let the monkeys out of the cages and put them in charge, you useless lab-coats.
The UK used to have a Cold Research Centre – around 1950 to 1980, I think. You would think that they would have found this sort of thing out? Have we totally forgotten any work they did?
Anything done in the Before Covid Era was obviously rubbish. Come on, get with it, Dodgy.
I was under the impression that the cold research centre was nothing of the sort. That it was based at Porton Down and was researching into the effects of viruses that could be weaponised. However, that could be my Cold War paranoia creeping in.
It was called the Common Cold Unit (CCU) https://salisburyhealthcarehistory.uk/harvard-hospital-common-cold-unit/ (several other sources available), which shut down 1989/90. Incidentally, it was where the name “coronavirus” was invented, when it was discovered under electron microscopy. Before that, it was invisible. It was given the name on account of what it looked like – would probably have a different one if it was found in another country. The concept of it looking like a crown probably had much to do with royalty.
Apart from the various coronaviruses that were found to be causes of the CC, they realised that there were many more rhinoviruses that did the same sort of thing as well, after which the concept of developing vaccines collapsed.
It may be a good idea to actually read the CEBM website and also see the number of interviews that Carl Heneghan, particularly, has undertaken over the past two years.
Which was the organisation that pointed out that you could die in 10 years time and still be defined as dying from COVID, just because you had tested positive, allegedly, once in your life? Yes, the CEBM which is organised by the two men quoted in the article. As a result of this the Government changed the definition of a COVID death, in the process removing over 4,000 people from the roll.
I think you owe them an apology for your intemperate response, as it is singularly lacking in any knowledge of their professional qualifications or the history of their commentary against the Government over the past 24 months.
“ It is clear that the vaccines are fully delivering on the promise of the clinical trials.”
Heneghan penned his name to that. I owe him/them no apology.
You are contaminated 24/7/52 by viral particles, but it doesn’t mean you’re infected just exposed. Any viral particles that you inhale get trapped in the nasopharyngeal cavity, the very places that the swabs are taken from. As has been stated innumerable times over the past 2 years the tests by themselves are absolutely meaningless.
Spot on. The temporary existence of something that we came across that way proves nothing as to whether we are infected by whatever it is. We could be immune to it, after all – it would still be there though. We do not sterilise the air we are in before we breath it out again!
“The Mark of Gideon”, original Star Trek, a planet where there is no disease and people who become ill regenerate. Kirk is abducted with the intention of introducing disease into a very overpopulated planet.
There is NO DEFINITIVE data about how respiratory viruses actually spread. There are guesses. Some are slightly informed by experiment, but most ‘expert’ opinions are based on old text books and guesses that sound logical, but have no proof.
There is a recent study showing that people vary widely in their response to being challenged with infective particles. Such variation, for currently unknown reasons, makes it impossible to rely on ANY experiments on the effectiveness of protective measures.
one in three, yet again they are exaggerating the numbers.
This is what Oxford ‘scientists’ do these days? Trawl websites for responses to FOIs? Information put together by (mostly) idiots at local councils and dipsticks at local health trusts that they then make pronouncements on? If my own local council is anything to go by, responses to FOIs aren’t even necessarily true and/or accurate.
I could come up with this stuff, and I’m just a gin-soaked bint.
Bint. That surely is an illegal word. Not heard it in a while. Love it.
It is not true that the PCR delivers false positives. It only delivers falses.
All this talk about ‘ let’s catch the infectious people with tests and lock them up’ is almost completely pointless against such a ‘front loading’ virus. This was quite clear almost full two years ago and yet the fight against the wind was sustained. Covid theatre, whatever the threshold.
They test for the flu since they’ve never isolated Covid-19. Which makes me wonder how they can tell there is a delta variant. They never isolated the virus but they use a test to show the damage of a solution does on monkey kidney cells then show the cellular debris as proof of the virus. So, they can use this method to claim an UNENDING! amount of variants. A lot of cancers and “viruses” are probably just different forms of parasites. Since the tests can’t differentiate between cold and flu and covid then doesn’t that mean ivermectin cures both the cold and the flu? Welcome to “they’ve been lying to us our entire lives about everything”. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
A variant is nothing more than a sequencing error.
No shit Sherlock.
The PCR test did not, as this article asserts, show the presence of any virus, only particles of matter which could be just about anything.
It also proved so inaccurate as to be of little value except for someone interested in fiddling the numbers of “positive” results to manufacture a casedemic rather than a genuine pandemic. Which is of course precisely what we are living through and have been for two year.
You can bet it was only with reluctance, no longer able to deny the damning truth about this “gold standard’ test, that the CDC recently announced it would no longer be approved for emergency (sic) use.
All this apart, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the purpose of this whole wretched shamdemic exercise has been to prep the peasants for life under a nascent biomedical regime, in which millions of perfectly healthy people will either volunteer for or be coerced into getting tested with useless widgets as a precursor to pumping them, compulsorily and at regular intervals, full of Big Pharma’s latest dodgy offering from their seemingly bottomless snake-oil gusher..
Thank goodness for an occasional shaft of common sense to illuminate this otherwise lunatic landscape – in this instance from a middle-aged mum with crooked specs but a brilliantly clear view of the world. Say hello to the sane, sensible and stimulating Alison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdBDebgIjjU
Us without Oxford degrees have known and been saying this basic information since May 2020.
All our requests for the therefore much necessary standardization since then have always been totally ignored.
These people though were and are not as dumb as they now pretend to be.
The chaos, arbitrariness and lack of standardization have been totally deliberate, as they were a very big and much necessary part of the plandemic operation.
The current CYA efforts in that regard could be connected to the expiry of the emergency use approvals for these tests after 2 years of abusing them, as Prof. Hockertz already explained in mid 2020.
The PCR-test was invented as a laboratory tool, and was never intended for use in the field of public health as a test. One simple reason for this is that results can be manipulated by someone setting the number of cycles.
In autumn 2020, as all sceptics knew, this is precisely what happened. PCR-test outcomes were deliberately manipulated to create fear and the appearance of a terrible situation that demanded radical action.
The PCR-test was approved for use because of the Corman-Drosten Paper, which was a travesty that shamed science. It was published in Eurosurveillance in January 2020 within a few days of being received and had the shortest peer review process ever.
A PCR-test costs about $80 – what’s $80 x 293m?
In autumn 2020, a team of honest scientists took the paper apart and proved that its basic tenets were completely shoddy.
The paper was worked by a number of scientists from various countries – UK supplied two members, both PHE staff: Maria Zambon and Joanna Ellis……the former being a heavy-hitter on SAGE.
This PCR-test played a big role in shaping the British response to C-19. Any public enquiry must examine the role played by these two women, and of course, PHE.
There are three questions:
> why was PHE involved in the determined quest to get PCR-tests in use in the field of public health?
> why did Zambon and Ellis put their names to such a flawed paper? Their competence must be doubted.
> if their competence is not questioned, what were there motives? Personal corruption, or government instruction?
Talking of Drosten, remember this comment he made about the sensitivity of PCR and how easy it was to become a “case” if a fragment of virus had wafted over your nasal mucosa? This was in relation to Swine Flu.
As I understand it, the Drosten test was rolled out in advance of any paper alleging virus isolation!
All the criticism of the Corman-Drosten paper by these so-called “life scientists” were sent to Eurosurveillance who showed them to 5 independent experts who totally dismissed the criticisms.
Drosten PCR test = total Fraud fro t every outset.
( See Reiner Fuellmich)
PCR Scamdemic!
The CEBM have done excellent work and must have been under enormous pressure which they have resisted.
However I found this interesting:
“Dr Tom Jefferson, co-author and an epidemiologist at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “We found that about one-third of people who isolated probably didn’t need to.”
Clearly he means they didn’t need to because they were not infectious, but the implication is that two-thirds did need to. That may be his view, or it may be that’s not really what he is saying. Ok, so let’s say tw-thirds were infectious. Should they have been forced by law to isolate? If not that, is it desirable for society that they isolate? What are the implications for public health and immune systems if people isolate themselves when they are infectious with a respiratory virus, and how is any benefit balanced against downsides, such as not exposing healthy people’s immune systems to challenge which possibly helps them in the long run.
I think these are important questions that need to be considered carefully – we’re in uncharted territory here, and I don’t think we want to be stuck in thinking now that self-testing and hiding at home for this kind of disease is somehow orthodox.
What – there is such a thing as evidence based medicine? Crikey, next revelation will be that there’s evidence based practice going on. I’m shocked to the core.
Should that be infectious rather than contagious, given that it is an airborne pathogen.
Is it an air borne pathogen?
When was this proven and how?
My wife had all the symptoms of covid19 in Nov 2019, (she had the most awful relentless cough for two weeks solid) before the illness had a name.
My son and I were daily exposed and suffered no ill health at all.
Elderly relatives visited and experienced no ill health.
How would this be possible with an air borne pathogen that is highly infectious, my home must have been ram packed with the stuff for weeks.
Just because it is airborne doesn’t mean it affects everybody equally (individual immune systems and previous exposure to similar viruses being just two of the factors), and the point I am making is that it is not generally acknowledged to be spread by touch, hence not contagious.
Yes – but try finding a journalist who understands the difference!
Numerous hospital, existing commerical and university labs had the expertise and ability to conduct this testing but the Tories chose not to use them.
Instead they chose to dish out contracts to their spiv chums who threw up ‘labs’ in industrial units and got inexperienced staff to run them.
Obviously this allowerd the Tory thieves to loot massive amounts of money from the taxpayer and it also guaranteed lots and lots of false positives as those running these operations were bound to cross contaminate samples as a matter of course.
This has been known for a very long time.
Back in August 2020 there was an article in the New York Times about a study in the US which suggested that 85% to 90% of positive cases are not infectious. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html
Rephrase…
“which suggested that 85% to 90% of positive cases are not infectious.”
becomes
“which suggested that 85% to 90% of positive cases are not ‘cases’. Or sick.”
Only the dumb or the dead with a mask might believe that the Gov didn’t know about this but hey ….. malfeasance is a rewarding political activity these days
All those in power knew the test was a fraud.
Only one in three? I should have thought much nearer three in three!
The DS headline is: “One in Three who Isolated Were Never Contagious, Study on PCR Threshold Data Suggests”. However, the study says “The answers indicate that up to a third of those tested were a danger to no one and were presumably isolated for no reason”. (and that is what the DT reports. This is a significant difference as the study is all about lack of data (and therefore lack of control). The sentence could be rephrased “more than two thirds of those tested were infectious”.