I have never been persuaded by the false positive argument.

Firstly, our overarching argument should be that we can live with this disease and suppression is futile globally and inhibitively costly for the UK. We therefore should favour a low fatality to case ratio.

That a second wave is coming, and unavoidable should give ammunition to the futility of lockdowns. Back in July several journalists commented that a second wave would imply the failure of lockdown policy.

What is not controversial is that the ratio of positives per test is doubling. People will know this will lead to more deaths and we can see that France and Spain have experienced a second wave of deaths, albeit smaller.

Secondly, people are better persuaded with qualitative arguments rather than disputed quantitative statistics. Although there has been little praise that I can see here, Hitchens DM articles for example. More recently there have been useful comments made by less likely corners such as Giles Frasers Thought for the Day https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08syd69

I have also considered - and continue to consider - the actual total death rate as the most significant measure of this virus. The powers that be have not done this. Instead they are relying on a grossly-inflated imaginary covid death rate in the future. To promote this argument, they have increased the test program and emphasised the so-called 'cases' from tests as indicators of deaths to come. It is for this reason that discrediting the tests was important - and false positives was the way to go. This was certainly the case for July and August. If the argument had been successful, or even listened to, many of the punitive measures would not have been implemented.

Now, as you say, whatever the false positives may be, the so-called 'cases' are rising. This aspect of the argument has become less significant. Instead, we began to look at hospital admissions. Now too, these are rising. And these too are being used to support the fallacious argument for more deaths to come.

Our next focus should be on deaths in a two-fold manner. Firstly - and this has always been the most important statistic - is the total weekly deaths. It gives much-needed perspective. Secondly, it is the attribution - or misattribution - of deaths.

Deaths always increase this time of year. Deaths due to causes other than covid-19 should not rise. But, as the government know from their own reports, they will rise due to their anti-covid measures. This needs to be emphasised more strongly. We must argue real deaths occurring now and imminently against ridiculously exaggerated and unreal future deaths in the future.

Deaths with covid-19 mentioned on the certificate must be checked for comorbidities and not conveniently used to bolster their argument that covid-19 is the most significant player. It is quite probably that these deaths may have been 'due' anyway. The unfortunate term sometimes used is 'dry tinder'.

Apart from this two-part approach on deaths, there are the economic hardships, the impact on education, the frivolous waste of money and the looming threat of vaccination with unlicensed vaccines. These are all sound arguments to pursue, but total deaths is the central issue.

I think one has to be very careful There undoubtedly is a false positives problem (clear examples are in the literature see letter to BMJ by Healy https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1808/rr-22 ) and there is a profound lack of clarity on just what the Lighthouse labs are calling a positive in terms of (1) Ct values required, (2) whether they require more than one PCR target to be amplified and (3) whether any confirmatory tests are done for weak positive Pillar 2 tests (as PHE guidance says they should be). On the other hand (1) false positives seem unlikely to account for a rising proportions of positives (as is occurring) unless the groups tested or the quality of testing is changing and (2) there clearly are regions with very low rates---if false positives were the majority of positives this'd be implausible.

What is critical, though, is the question of when someone, or there contacts, are asked to self-isolate under penalty of stiff fines. What is the evidence that the instruction is valid. And, if it not valid, what redress do they have.

Since the government is using the number of "positive" results to drive its policy of local restrictions, I think the issue of false positives is the one of the most immediate concern to citizens in general.

It's such a blunt instrument. When Rhondda Cynon Taf was locked down, I calculated that 240,000 people were being put under restrictions because of approx. 200 "positive" test results. That is absurd enough in itself, but if half or maybe even more were false positives, it becomes even harder to justify.

Apparently where I live will get locked down if the rate rises about 25 "cases" per 100,000 people. That would mean around 35 people in an area covering 2000 square miles. Again, utterly ridiculous if a significant number of these "positive" results are false ones.

Plus, of course, if you're track 'n' tracing the contact of false positives, and the numbers are high, all you're doing is creating a self-perpetuating trail of false positives, making more and more people isolate for no reason at all.

The fact that the government is NOT taking the issue of false positives seriously is what makes me think there's a hidden agenda. Even if there were literally no genuine cases anywhere in the country, the nature of the PCR test would ensure sufficient false positives would be reported on a daily basis to keep this thing going indefinitely.

The government has been boasting about being "on target" for 500,000 tests per day in the near future - so we can be sure to see even higher levels of "positive" results, leading to more restrictions, more economic damage, more human misery, etc. etc.

The central point to hammer away at is that all the efforts to centrally dictate and police personal behaviour are pointless, wasteful, inhuman and destructive, regardless of how the epidemic evolves.

Within this framework it does no harm to raise the false positive issue, which illustrates just how delusional the government's reliance on magic technical solutions is (see also: tracing app; vaccine) to get us out of the current impasse they have led us into.

What is a bad idea, though, is to use false positives to claim that cases are not currently rising. That is an argument we are likely to lose.

Let's leave the crystal ball gazing up to the Court Astrologers and stick to established facts.