So lets hear YOUR view.

On this thread you have been consistently disingenuous, misleading and insulting. If you look back through the thread you will see that I have referenced my statements to highly qualified scientists. Where are the references to your statements? You are simply echoing the Government stance, in which case, what are you doing on here?

the Key Points here are all referenced earlier and stand as such.

OK - a generalised answer. But do you take issue with what Mike Yeadon says in this particular situation? For example, is there nothing shared from Drosten's paper across millions of PCR tests directed at the same problem?

Not specifically. A lot of his criticism over PCR is fair and accurate but he's getting slightly too carried away with some lately and quoting things which available research simply contradicts.

We know its not a great tool but its not useless. We know it can detect exposure to a virus by sniffing RNA - there really is no doubt about this.
Numerous papers (rightly) criticise primer designs using single primers but no test i can find authorised actually uses 1 primer.

We know its being misused and the data misinterpreted - that much is fairly obvious to most people.

He is now seemingly doubling down and has lost the objectivity he's displayed up to this point (claims such as cases arent rising which is easily disproven and his latest one about cross reacting to Syncitin when a 5 minute search yields only about 8-10bp overlap for example. Things he's clearly well placed to know isnt true).

He's being slightly disingenuous saying the entire protocol and everything based off it comes from Drosten. The reality is its all pre-established techniques, all of which have their own peer review and are well established and understood. Each test also works in slightly different ways so they're all *based* on a generic idea but that doesnt mean they're all the same or have never been checked.
"which contains a PCR test protocol that has been used to run hundreds of millions of PCR tests across the world," is not technically correct for above.

FWIW Korea developed its own PCR test within 10 days of the sequences being published and was running these tests in January *before* this paper he's saying is the basis of all tests was published (23rd jan).

There's nothing novel or particularly controversial about the testing methodology. It works. Its finding RNA. Possibly it works too well but thats a different matter.

Again its a strange claim to make, especially this late on and detracts from a lot of the rest of his PCR case which is very strong and logical.

He's credible, has some good, accurate criticisms but seems to be drifting more from an objective approach to a "100% of everything is bad" and that unfortunately discredits the argument in general.

My personal view is we're misusing PCR (its supposed to be a confirmatory diagnostic so combined with a clinical diagnosis, ie symptoms NOT as a single point test and not for mass testing).
The fact that nobody appears to have calibrated the various tests used globally against actual live cultures to provide sensible cutoff values is i feel the biggest failing of the entire thing.
I cant work out why anyone, anywhere would run any sort of diagnostic test with no calibration against what you're actually looking to detect.

On this thread you have been consistently disingenuous, misleading and insulting.

Lets have specifics then. Which bits exactly are disingenuous and misleading and where is your data to show this.
A copy/paste of something you dont understand doesnt count.
Lets hear specifics then we can discus.
If you look back through the thread you will see that I have referenced my statements to highly qualified scientists.

Ive looked and you haven't. You've referenced a small number (basically 2) scientists whose view (i) differs from other highly qualified scientists and (ii) agrees with what you want to hear.
Nowhere have you provided any personal input, comment, understanding or debate at all.
Its just unthinking copy/paste.

Ive TWICE provided detail on why your copy/pastes dont stand up to scrutiny and yet again you've failed to come up with any counter-arguments other than pasting the same thing again and again.
So the simple conclusion there is you have no understanding of the subject matter, have already decided what you want to hear and will only accept that. You dont have any understanding of the subject matter OR desire to listen to any counter-viewpoints.

So, if you want to claim you DO understand, why not answer the 2 very specific questions i asked you in my previous post ?
How do you explain the increase in the percentage of positive tests along with the increase in overall positive tests that rises ahead of any changes in test capacity with NO other variables changed ?

Why do you insist on carping on about false positives when you fail to realise you need symptoms to get a standard test so its a confirmatory diagnostic.

Just in case you forgot. Lets have some input rather than repeated copy/paste of something you don't understand or cant explain.

Ive looked and you haven't.

This is clearly false. At the end of every post I link to the reference. Anyone can go back and check. Again you are being disingenuous and misleading. Your mission here appears solely to sow discontent with personal opinion and statements which are not referenced. Again you tow the government line. What is the point of you?

the Key Points (referenced at end of post).

I’m against wider rollout and am resolutely against coerced vaccination of any kind. It’s illegal and there isn’t a public health emergency justification.
Dr Mike Yeadon responds to the following NYT article.

Is ‘Natural Immunity’ From Covid Better Than a Vaccine?
And if you’ve already had Covid-19, do you still need a vaccine? Experts tackle questions about vaccine immunity.
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-natural-immunity.html

“But what do we know about how the immunity from a prior infection compares with the protection given by the new vaccines? And what if you have already had Covid — is it safe to be vaccinated? We asked experts to weigh in on the latest evidence. The short answer: We don’t know. But Covid-19 vaccines have predictably prevented illness, and they are a far safer bet, experts said”.

Really? Where’s the evidence that these vaccines “have predictably prevented illness”. I’ve seen only reduction in mild non-specific symptoms.

“Natural immunity...is fortunately quite strong. A vast majority of people infected produce at least some antibodies and immune cells that can fight off the infection. And the evidence so far suggests that this protection will persist for years, preventing serious illness... But there is a “massive dynamic range” in that immune response, with a 200-fold difference in antibody levels”.

This is disingenuous. Protection against viruses is mostly mediated via T-cells. Antibodies do play a role but not a central one.

“In people who are only mildly ill, the immune protection that can prevent a second infection may wane within a few months. “Those people might benefit more from the vaccine than others would,” said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist ...”

The evidence doesn’t bear this out.

Those who’ve been infected are then immune. Of the 750 million people WHO estimated had been infected, virtually no one has been reinfected. 0.0001% is 750 people. I don’t think there’s been that many. So 99.9999% didn’t get reinfected, so far.

“The experts were unanimous in their answer: Covid-19 is by far the more dangerous option”.

I disagree. The vast majority of people under 60y (possibly older) are at lower risk of severe outcomes including death than they are from ‘flu in an un-vaccinated state. We don’t yet know what the safety profile of any vaccine will be long term (short term safety is surely acceptable as MHRA approved it, though data isn’t yet available). No data exists about long term safety and this is new technology. Might be fine but we just don’t yet know.

“In a study of more than 3,000 people, ages 18 to 34, who were hospitalized for Covid, 20 percent required intensive care and 3 percent died”.

This stat isn’t informative because we’re not told from how many infections these 3000 arose. It might be millions.

“Covid vaccines, in contrast, carry little known risk. They have been tested in tens of thousands of people with no serious side effects — at least so far. “Once you start vaccinating millions, you might find very, very rare events,” Dr. Hanage said. “But we have to know that they are very, very rare and much more rare than the adverse events associated with natural infection.”

Again, this isn’t correct. It might be his belief, but it’s not evidence-based because there’s no data on long term safety profile. I’ve no evidence either of any long-term safety issues. The point is, no one does. Until we do, categorical statements like this do us all a disservice.

“Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, said up to 10 percent of participants in clinical trials for the vaccines had been infected with the virus without knowing it. Their immune responses to the vaccine are being analyzed, he said”.

This is interesting. Presumably he meant “before the trial began”? I wonder how he knows it’s 10%. Perhaps by measuring antibodies using high sensitivity methods? Note, this means over 4,000 people had been infected (either during the trial or before it, or a mix). That is context for the just over 100 *symptomatic **infections.

*those used were so non-specific that they can result from infection by a scores of viruses and other conditions. My point being such symptoms aren’t = covid19.

**The measure was simply PCR positivity. Alone, that statement doesn’t prove infection. Confirmation using full length sequencing, PCR retest with different primers, use of other tests or infection of cells in culture would each independently confirm infection but AFAIK none were used.

“If you’ve already had Covid-19, you can afford to wait awhile for the vaccine. Studies from Dr. Pepper’s team and others have shown that the immune response evolves over the first few months after infection, but everyone who has had Covid has some level of protection during that time”.

That’s consistent with human immunology.

““We didn’t see anybody who didn’t develop some sort of an immune response,” she said. “I don’t think those people need to rush out and go get the vaccine in the same way that people who are highly susceptible really do.””

Again, as expected and reassuring information.

“The A.C.I.P., which makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about vaccine distribution, said at a meeting on Wednesday that people who had not been infected should get priority over those who contracted the virus in the past 90 days. “At some point we’ll need to figure out whether 90 days is the right number,” Dr. Maldonado said. But for now, “people who have evidence of infection recently should probably not be vaccinated at first in line because there’s so little vaccine available.””

This makes sense to me. I’d go further, based on the robust and durable immunity from infection by SARS in 2003-4, and recommend not vaccinating those we’re sure have been infected.

I put up these extracts because there’s useful basic information about immunity and immunology that’s not necessarily everyday knowledge. My hope is it’ll stimulate thought and discussion and enables better decision making about vaccination. Asked what I’d do, I’d say I favour offering it to those vulnerable to severe outcomes if infected, unless they’re confident they’ve previously been infected.

We’re used to vaccines, and we can get blasé about them. But these have been developed at extreme speed and at least 2 use novel technology.

Given the level of risk to the younger cohort from the virus and my belief that the majority are now immune, I’m against wider rollout and am resolutely against coerced vaccination of any kind. It’s illegal and there isn’t a public health emergency justification.

Yardley Yeadon
https://twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1335513619933638660