On
September 4 2020 while he was visiting
Solihull
near Birmingham, to see how the new HS2 Interchange Station
development is coming along, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson
said to the BBC that
Covid testing at airports may give a "false sense of security",
as testing on arrival would only identify 7% of virus cases.
Three weeks
after such unexpected statement, on September 23 2020, the
same statement was made by Dominic Raab, the British Foreign
Secretary at SKY News.
At that time,
beyond the astonishment for such statements, which seemed to aim at
dismantling the reliability of Covid 19 testing, I couldn't
understand for what reason two main representatives of the British
government had publicly stated that the Covid testing was unreliable,
nor why the world media haven't provided any kind of follow up to
such blatant declaration.
My state of
misunderstanding lasted until friday december 4, when the European
medical journal Eurosurveillance has published this
note with which it announced having started an internal
investigation to review the content of the Corman-Drosten study they
had published on January 23 2020 “Detection
of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time PCR by
Christian Drosten and Victor Corman.
Why
this study is so important?
Christian
Drosten and Victor Corman are the two authors of the Covid-19
diagnostic test which is adopted in the majority of private and state
labs, both in Europe and in the U.S.
The
Corman-Drosten is the theoretical study upon which the official Covid-19 diagnostic methodology is based. It's the diagnostic upon which
all the Covid-19 official data provided by governments and media are
based. Consequently it is also the legal-scientific basis of all the
lockdowns and of our freedom restrictions.
This is an
extraordinary story and in order to understand it we need to start
from the beginning.
Eurosurveillance is a peer-reviewed medical journal covering
epidemiology, surveillance, prevention and control of communicable
diseases. The journal is published by the European
Centre for Disease Prevention and Control which is an independent
agency of the European Union whose mission is to strengthen Europe's
defences against infectious diseases
Usually a
scientific study in order to be published must be peer-reviewed and
this process normally takes several months of work, especially if the
study deals with diagnostic methodology because the processes must be
replicated and validated in the laboratory.
This is
especially true when it's about the testing for a global lethal virus
that hit the whole planet's population.
The Corman-Drosten study was sent from the authors to Eurosurveillance on
January 21 2020, it was approved for publication on the 22nd and on
January 23 was put On-line. Not just this. The Corman Drosten
was immediately accepted as the standard of testing internationally,
by the WHO, which began sending test kits to affected regions.
In the harrowing
months that followed, amid lockdowns, economic collapse, school
closures and widespread panic, few were aware of the immense problems
with the paper, which tragically offered a testing method that would
yield between 80 and 97 percent false positive results, due to a non
existent gold standard which would be the virus itself. The emergency
situation prevailed on the average level of accuracy normally
required to a diagnostic methodology, especially for an epidemic
event of global relevance.
In this
situation of chaos, the turning point took place on November 30 2020
when the Corman-Drosten was challenged by the ICSLS
(International Consortium of Scientists in Life Sciences) a
team of 22
international scientists from USA, Europe and Japan who wrote this
letter demanding the paper’s retraction, along with a Review
Report, which is indeed a real scientific study, attached to the
letter citing 10 errors in the Corman Drosten it deemed “fatal.”
The
Corman-Drosten Review Report is an initiative by Pieter
Borger,
an expert on the molecular biology of gene expression. Several other
esteemed names are associated with the paper including Dr. Michael
Yeadon, former VP of Pfizer and outspoken critic of much of the
so-called science beneath the WHO’s global lockdown, masking, and
school shut-down measures.
Celia
Farber, is an american journalist known for her oustanding
reports on HIV and AIDS back in the 80s. Celia spoke
to Dr.
Kevin Corbett, one of the 22 authors of the Review Report that
dismantled the Corman Drosten:
“When Drosten
developed the test, China hadn’t given them a viral isolate. They
developed the test from a sequence in a gene bank. Do you see? China
gave them a genetic sequence with no corresponding viral isolate.
They had a code, but no body for the code. No viral morphology.”
What
is “viral morphology”?
“In
the fish market,”
he said, “it’s
like giving you a few bones and saying that’s your fish. It could
be any fish. Not even a skeleton. Here’s a few fragments of bones.
That’s your fish. Listen, the Corman/Drosten paper, there’s
nothing from a patient in it. It’s all from gene banks. and the
bits of the virus sequence that weren’t there they made up. They
synthetically created them to fill in the blanks. That’s what
genetics is; it’s a code. So its ABBBCCDDD and you’re missing
some what you think is EEE so you put it in. It’s all synthetic.
You just manufacture the bits that are missing. This is the end
result of the geneticization of virology. This is basically a
computer virus.”
But what are the
implications of such an incompleteness of the primer concerning the
unreliability of the Covid 19 testing?
The
implications are easy to understand also from those who haven't a
background in virology. In practice being the initial virus
incomplete, that is, composed only by RNA fragments, the setting of
the machine that does the RT-PCR cannot go beyond the detection of
those fragments that compose the primer in the first place. The
machine cannot invent a biological structure that it hasn't, which
means that the PCR machine will classify as positive also a sample
that instead of possessing the whole RNA fragment has only a fragment
of the said nucleic acid.
The conclusion
made by the ICSLS Review Report is that the Corman-Drosten hasn't
been structured to detect the whole virus but only to detect a
fragment of it, which is the one they had at their disposal. This
means as we'll see later, that the machine cannot distinguish between
a fragment of RNA and the whole virus. This fact also defines the
testing as inadequate as a diagnostic tool for the SARS virus
infections.
In an interview
posted on
his Twitter
account Pieter Borger said: “The virus wasn’t in Europe and
the paper was already finished.” then he added: “Once
I heard a good comparison,” he continued. “If you go to a
junkyard and you find a wheel or a hubcap from a Mercedes, and a
steering wheel of a Mercedes, can you infer that you are in a
Mercedes garage at that moment? If you only see those two parts? No,
you can’t. You don’t know anything about it… you only know you
have a steering wheel, you can find those things everywhere. In every
junkyard you can find them.” He describes the RT-PCR tests as
having “no relevance for the diagnosis whatsoever.”
What is
the RT-PCR testing?
The
RT-PCR (Reverse
Transcriptions - Polymerase Chain Reaction) is
a laboratory technique of molecolar biology allowing reverse
transcription of RNA into DNA and amplification of specific DNA
targets using polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
Normally
the Polymerase
Chain Reaction
works with a DNA filament or a fragment of it that you want being
amplified. The Reverse Transcription instead has an RNA filament or a
part of it as a starting point to obtain the DNA filament, and once
you obtained the DNA you go on with the amplification process.
That's
why
in this context, DNA is called complementary DNA or cDNA
(complimentary DNA), because you obtain DNA from RNA which works as a
“mirror” or better like “a mold” from which you obtain the
complementary shaped object. So before we can do the regular PCR
process we must convert isolated and purified RNA into DNA.
Once you have
the DNA, this is mixed with primers, which are sections of DNA
designed to bind to characteristic parts of the virus DNA. Repeatedly
heating then cooling DNA with these primers and a DNA building enzyme
makes millions of copies of virus DNA. Fluorescent dye molecules bind
to the virus DNA as it is copied. Binding makes them give off more
light, which is used to confirm the presence of the virus in the
sample. The fluorescence increases as more copies of the virus DNA
are produced. If it crosses a certain threshold, the test is
positive. If the virus isn't present, no DNA copies are made and the
threshold isn't reached. In this case the test is negative.
The study made
by Pieter Borger and the other 21 scientists that dismantle the
Corman-Drosten is structured in 10 crucial flaws.
The first
flaw: Drosten developed the diagnostic methodology without having the
virus available.
Regarding
the first point which is also the main one, Borger et al contest to
Corman and Drosten of not
having used the virus SARS-CoV-2 as primer for their test but to have
used only fragments of it and that they eventually completed the
sequence artificially or “in silico”. The
labelling “In silico” means that the reproduction of the virus
was
not biological but they
made it using a software hence it's a computer developed virus.
Indeed it's called “In silico” because silicon is the matter
which computers are made.
The
justification brought by Corman and Drosten regarding the fact of not
having the isolated virus available is that according to them the
Sars-CoV-2 was very similar to the SARS-CoV of 2003 (which was
discovered by Drosten himself on 2003)
In practice for
the development of the Gold Standard (the referring virus to build
the diagnostic test) Drosten thought he could ride on the coattails
of another coronavirus which was also his own discovery and to
complete the rest of the sequence with the computer:
“the
establishment and validation of a diagnostic workflow for 2019-nCoV screening and specific confirmation, designed in
absence of available virus isolates or original patient specimens.
Design and validation were enabled by the close genetic relatedness
to the 2003 SARS-CoV, and aided by the use of synthetic
nucleic acid technology”.
Victor
Corman, co-author of the Corman-Drosten added: “We
aimed to develop and deploy robust diagnostic methodology for use in
public health laboratory settings without
having virus material available.”
According to Dr.
Pieter Borger, the promoter of the Corman-Drosten Review Report:
The
focus here should be placed upon the two stated aims: a) development
and
b) deployment
of a diagnostic test for use in public health laboratory settings.
These aims are not achievable without having any actual virus
material available (e.g. for determining the infectious viral load).
The
objective of the Corman-Drosten study was to develop a diagnostic
tool which was able to detect the presence of the SARS-CoV-2.
Although, how can this objective be achievable if you don't have the
Gold Standard which is the virus?
What
is the Gold Standard?
In
medicine and statistics, a gold standard test is usually the
diagnostic test or benchmark that is the most accurate test available
The
reliability of a diagnostic test is evaluated upon how accurately a
test is able to identify if an individual is healthy or ill.
Indeed
the Gold standard is nothing but the disease itself. In the case of
Covid 19, the Gold Standard is the virus SARS-CoV-2.
Sometimes it can
happen, like in the case of Corman-Drosten paper, that the Gold
Standard, that is to say the disease, in this case the Covid 19
virus, is not available. That is why it is necessary to perform
alternative methods to find it.
That's why the
objection raised by Pieter Borger is more than understandable:
Drosten wanted to create a test that was able to detect Covid-19 but
how could Drosten make a reliable diagnostic Covid test without
having the virus available but only its genomic sequence?
Consequently,
according to Borger, without the real virus but only with its genomic
sequence it wasn't possible for Drosten neither proceeding to the
validation of the diagnostic test.
What is
validation?
A diagnostic
test is defined validated when you have evidence that the test
provides a reliable result on the status of the examined specimen.
The
validation of a diagnostic assay is that evaluation process necessary
and indispensable to verify the validity of the test under the
clinical point of view.
Usually the
validation is being made on test animals and it's a process that is an
integral part of the diagnostic methodoloy, because without the validation phase, the diagnostic methodology has no scientific value.
Obviously having
not the virus available, Corman and Drosten couldn't perform the validation phase, hence the Corman Drosten diagnostic assay not only
is incomplete but totally irrelevant under the scientific point of
view, other than under the clinical one, because the methodology has
not been integrated with the animal experimentation which is the
condicio sine qua non in order for a diagnostic assay to be
defined as such.
Flaw number 3:
The amplification cycles
According to the
retraction demand of the Corman-Drosten study, the fatal flaw number
3 is that the number of amplification cycles should be less than 35
(25-30)
What are
the amplification cycles?
In
the polymerase chain reaction, the Ct (Cycle Threshold) value is the number of
amplification cycles that are necessary to detect the virus (and to
state the subject as positive). In practice Ct is the threshold value
of the cycles which are necessary to detect the virus.
The
higher is the number of amplification cycles and more accurate is the
diagnostic assay. This is one of the main flaws of the Corman-Drosten
diagnostics: the fact of having established a too high number of
cycles for the virus detection. What does it mean?
It means that if
amplification cycles are too numerous they could even detect a flu
that you had months ago and that's why the problem is no more that of
false positive results but of the total unreliability of the
diagnostics.
In
case of virus detection, if the amplification cycles threshold is
higher than 35, the detected signals are not associable to an
infectious virus, like it has been established by the studies on the
cell viral culture, first of all by the study known as Jafaar
et al .
Correlation
Between 3790 Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction–Positives
Samples and Positive Cell Cultures, Including 1941 Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Isolates.
According to
Jafaar et al, if a subject is tested positive with the RT-PCR with a
threshold of 35 cycles or higher, the chances that this subject is
infected by the virus is less than 3% that's why the probability that
this result is a false positive is of 97%.
Hence, the
objections that dismantle the Corman-Drosten are not an exclusive
prerogative of the ICSLS and of Pieter Borger. As a matter of fact
the Borger initiative is just the lastest of a series of studies, mostly
produced by the University of Oxford that had already completely
dismantled the Corman-Drosten but without receiving any attention by
the mainstream media.
We
are talking here mainly of Jafaar et al which has demonstrated that
the diagnostic methodology of the Corman-Drosten produces 97% of
false positives. And the study Jafaar et al is not properly “new”
as it was published on Clinical Infectious Disease on
September
28
2020.
Although
the statements by Boris
Johnson and Dominic Raab were actually made before the publishing of Jafaar et al because the
statement by Dominic Raab is of September 23 and that of Boris
Johnson is of September 4.
If
we read Jafaar et al indeed we find out that Jafaar cites a
prior study always published by
Clinical
Infectious Disease, (a
journal of pathogenesis published by Oxford
University Press)
the
now legendary Bullard
et al, whose
title is:
Predicting
Infectious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 From
Diagnostic Samples
published
on
May
22,
2020.
This
is the paragraph in which Rita
Jafaar cites
Bullard
et al
“However,
in an article published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Bullard et
al reported that patients could not be contagious with Ct >25 as
the virus is not detected in culture above this value“
In
practice Bullard
et al proved
that patients with a Cycle threshold superior to 25 are not contagious
as the virus is not detected in culture above this value.
In
addition Bullard et al says literally already in the Background
section that the RT-PCR can only and esclusively detect RNA and not
the infectious virus:
RT-PCR detects RNA, not infectious virus; thus, its ability to determine duration of infectivity of patients is limited. Infectivity is a critical determinant in informing public health guidelines/ interventions.
I
repeat it once again, just in case: the
RT-PCR diagnostics can only and exclusively detect the RNA and NOT
the infectious virus. Consequently
its ability to establish the duration of infectiousness of a patient
is extremely limited.
Although
the sentence that put the word end on the reliability of the RT-PCR
is in the Results section of Bullard
et al and
it's the following:
There
was no growth in samples with a Ct > 24 or STT > 8 days
There is no
viral growth in samples with a Ct higher than 24 or when the time
range between the symptoms onset and the test is greater than 8 days.
Probably
the British Prime Minister had been informed of this discovery and
that's the reason why on September 4 2020 he publicly stated that
tests produced more than 90% of false positives.
Boris Johnson
did not wake up the morning of September 4 and decided to dismantle
the credibility of Covid-19 testing because he felt to do so. He was
forced to do it because the fact of publicly stating it would legally
exempt him from possible legal troubles in the moment in which it
would have been discovered what thanks to Bullard et al and Borger et
al we know today, that means that the Corman-Drosten is a diagnostic
methodology which is clinically unreliable and that as we'll see now
a total disaster.
As a matter of
fact the fatal blow to the Corman-Drosten and more generally to the
RT-PCR as virus detection diagnostic method was not provided neither
by Bullard et al nor by Jafaar et al but by a third study, always
published by the University of Oxford:
Viral
cultures for COVID-19 infectious potential assessment – a
systematic review
This
study, known as Jefferson
et al
was
published first on August 4 2020 on the
Nuffield
Department of Primary Care website,
then
on
September 29
on
the
open
source medical
journal
medRxiv
then
on Clinical
Infectious Disease
on
December
3
2020.
Despite
the study is called Jefferson
et al
it
is important to notice that one of the authors is Carl
Heneghan,
director
of the
Evidence-Based Medicine at
the University
of
Oxford which
just by chance on September 5 2020, the day after Boris Johnson
released his statement on the false positives, was interviewed by
Rachel
Schraer, BBC Health correspondant.
On
September 5 2020, BBC published
this
article titled: “Tests could be picking up dead virus”.
In
the mentioned article, Schraer invterviewed Carl Heneghan who had
published his study more than a month before.
Why
Henegan' study is so important?
Because
it's not a simple study but it's a study that reviews the most
relevant scientific studies regarding the culture of SARS-CoV-2 and
it put them into relation with the RT-PCR test results and with other
variables that could affect the interpretation of the test, like
foreinstance the time range since the symptoms onset.
The
main points of Jefferson et al that in practice have dismantled the
Corman-Drosten well before Pieter Borger and the ICSLS are the
following:
1)
According to Jefferson
et al,
two
studies
reported the odds of live virus culture reduced by approximately 33%
for every one unit increase in Ct.
2)
Six
of eight studies reported detectable
RNA for longer than 14 days but infectious potential declined after
day 8 even among cases with ongoing high viral loads.
According
to Young
et al (always
cited in Jefferson
et al)
which
is one of the most famous studies on SARS-CoV-2,
the
SARS-CoV-2 was detectable from nasopharyngeal swabs by PCR up to 48
days after symptom onset
3)
Over 90% of the virus isolates were obtained from specimens with a Ct
value below 23 (Jefferson
et al page
5)
RT-PCR
detects presence of viral genetic material in a sample but is not
able to distinguish whether an infectious virus is present.
4)
Presence
of viral genome on its own is not sufficient proof of infectivity as
you need proof that the isolate is capable of replicating.
The
inability of PCR to distinguish between the shedding of live virus or
of viral debris, means that it cannot measure a person’s viral load
(or quantity of virus present in a person’s excreta) that means
that the diagnostics is clinically unreliable.
This
objection which is based upon Jefferson et al lab test results, it is
also shared by England Public Health and it is published on the UK
government guide for health workers Understanding
cycle threshold (Ct) in SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR A guide for health
protection teams
pag 6.
5)
The
RT-PCR by
itself is not able to tell us if a specimen positive to the Covid-19
test is also able to transmit the infection and as confirmed by the
other two main studies Bullard et al and Jafaar et al the specimens >
30 Ct have 0 probability of being infective. (The authors noted that
a cut-off RT-PCR Ct > 30 was associated with non-infectious
specimens).
6)
Zhou
and colleagues reported on samples taken from seven areas of a large
London hospital (218
surface samples; 31
air samples) Despite
apparent extensive air and surface contamination of the hospital
environment, no infectious samples were grown.
7) In one study
by Andersson et al, 20 RT-PCR positive serum specimens from 12
individual patients were selected at random from a Covid-19 specimen
bank at 3 to 20 days following onset of symptoms. None of the 20
serum specimens produced a viral culture
8)
The
live viral culture time window was much shorter than for viral RNA
identification, ranging from less than 8 days from symptom onset to
test [w23]
and Ct < 24 [w7]. Median
duration of viral RNA identification in culture was 4
days
(InterQuartile Range: 1 to 8) [w21].
What does
this mean? It means that while the virus RNA can be detected in a
specimen even after 40 days since the symptoms onset, the live viral
culture can be detected in a specimen not beyond 8 days since the
symptoms onset.
9) Jefferson
et al concluded that the median duration
of viral RNA identification in culture was 4 days.
10) Five studies
reported no growth in specimens based on a Ct cut-off value ranging
from CT > 24 to 35.The estimated probability of recovery of virus
from specimens with Ct > 35 was 8.3%.
11) The last
point of this list I would like to dedicate it to a less known study
named Wolfel et al,
Virological assessment of
hospitalized patients with COVID-2019
which states as follows: “To
understand infectivity, we attempted live virus isolation on multiple
occasions from clinical samples (Fig. 1d). Whereas the virus was
readily isolated during the first week of symptoms from a
considerable fraction of samples (16.66% of swabs and 83.33% of
sputum samples), no isolates were obtained from samples
taken after day 8 in spite of ongoing high viral loads.
I
have cited this study that doesn't stand out for peculiar virtues
compared to the others but confirms those that preceded it (mainly
Bullard et al) for a single reason: one
of its authors is Victor Corman, the co-author of the Corman-Drosten.
Indeed with this citation we reached the scientific paradox through
which an author of a study that supports a diagnostic methodology
affirms that a virus has a high infectious rate except claiming the
contrary in another study.
We
have however to notice that Wolfel et al was
published on Nature on April 1st
2020 and we cannot exclude the fact that Victor
Corman being one of the author is an April fool.
At the point
number three of the retraction letter of the Corman Drosten it is
affirmed as it follows:
"It should
be noted that there is no mention anywhere in the Corman-Drosten
paper of a test being positive or negative, or indeed what defines a
positive or negative result. These types of virological diagnostic
tests must be based on a SOP, including a validated and fixed number
of PCR cycles (Ct value) after which a sample is deemed positive or
negative. The maximum reasonably reliable Ct value is 30 cycles.
Above a Ct of 35 cycles, rapidly increasing numbers of false
positives must be expected .
According to
Jaafar
et al Above a
Ct of 35 , it is
not possible to obtain an isolate virus but only non-infective loads.
We want to remind
you here for the record that both the Corman-Drosten than the WHO
recommend a cycle threshold of 45 cycles.
As
a matter of fact the situation is even less dangerous than what
Pieter Borger claims because the Bullard et al team had 90 specimen
which resulted positive with the RT-PCR diagnostic and the viral
culture tests on those specimens demonstrated that no growth happened
with Ct>24 or with symptom onset >8 days.
The
conclusion of Bullard
et al is
that the probability
to obtain a positive viral culture reaches its peak on the third day
since the symptoms onset, then decreases.
Bullard
et al also
showed that
for
every 1-unit increase in Ct, the odds of a positive culture decreased
by 32%. Hence in practice passing from 25 to 26 Ct the probability to
have a positive SARS-CoV-2 result decreases of 32%.
The Centre for
Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) at
Oxford University
page
dedicated to the monitoring of COVID
19 (Oxford COVID-19 Evidence Service) recommends
as follows: “PCR
detection of viruses is helpful so long as its accuracy can be
understood: it offers the capacity to detect RNA in minute
quantities, but whether
that RNA represents infectious virus may not be clear.”
That
means that the polimerasis testing can detect a fragment of the virus
RNA and identify the specimen as positive but is this a live viral
load? Is it infective? We have seen that the RT-PCR testing by
itself cannot answer to this question but the protocols put in place
by governments to limit our liberties are based exclusively on this
blind system.
Dr.
Kevin Corbett added: “There
are 10 fatal errors in the Drosten test paper. Public Health
England is a co-author on it. All the public health authorities
across the EU have co-authored this paper. But here is the bottom
line: There was no viral isolate to validate what they were doing.
The PCR products of the amplification didn’t correspond to any
viral isolate at that time. I call it "donut ring science". There
is nothing at the center of it. It’s all about code, genetics,
nothing to do with reality, or the actual person, the patient.”
In practice this
test with which they are determining who is positive and who's not
and upon which the world governments have adopted restrictive
measures of the freedom of millions of people is based upon nothing.
Celia Farber,
journalist of Uncover DC replied to Dr. Corbett by reading him a few
statements in which the covid virus has been isolated in a few labs
around the world.
“Yes, there
have since been papers saying they’ve produced viral isolates. But
there are no controls for them. The CDC produced a paper in July, I
think it was, where they said: "Here’s the viral isolate". "Do
you know what they did? They swabbed one person. One person, who’d
been to China and had cold symptoms. One person. And they assumed he
had it to begin with. So it’s all full of holes, the whole thing.”
What has been
claimed by Dr. Corbett over the fact that Covid 19 virus still hadn't
been isolated at the moment of the Corman-Drosten publication has
been confirmed both by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention) the US agency that monitors the Covid-19 and by the EDC
(European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) which is the
european correspondant of the CDC.
In this document
the EDC which is the european agency whose mission is to enforce the
European defense against infectious diseases, the EDC states that at
the date of april 16 2020 no virus isolate is available.
All this
helps to understand the reason of the statements made by prime
minister Boris Johnson and the foreign secretary Dominic Raab. In
practice Johnson and Raab have felt the need to protect themselves
under the legal point of view because with their statements they can
claim to have informed the English audience regarding the
unreliability of the Covid testing.
The
EDC states “Since
no quantified virus isolate of the SARS-Cov2
is
available…”
and
the
date
of
the
document is
16 April
2020
While the
CDC states “Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are
currently available and the date of
this document is 13 July 2020.
In practice
from these two statements from the two main health institutions of
the world which are committed to the study and the monitoring of
Covid 19, for the US government and for the European Uunion we
understand that nor in Europe nor in the US the Covid-19 virus has
ever been isolated. “Isolated” means separated from the dead
material contained in the examined specimen, like the patient's cells
or possible bacterias. Although in both these statements the most
important element is not the fact that the virus hasn't still been
isolated but the following adjective: “quantified”. It is not
necessary to have a degree in virology to understand that if a virus
has not been quantified, it means that you don't even know the
percentage that quantifies the virus respect to the leftover
material . Nor if the european labs or the american ones are able
to know in what percentage the virus is present in the examined
specimens, which means that the CDC and the EDC staff members weren't
able to distinguish the virus from the leftover material nor were
they able to identify it.
The
crucial element of these two documents is the confirmation of the fact that at the date of
april 16 2020 the EDC had not isolated the virus of Covid 19 while
Eurosurveillance had already approved the Corman-Drosten two months
before and the WHO had already shipped the testing kits to the
regions hit by the epidemic.
Dr.
Corbett insists on the fact that Eurosurveillance approved the
Corman-Drosten Study 24 hours after being submitted:
“That never
happens. It takes months to get a review done. They turned this
around in 24 hours. It was waved through, it was not peer-reviewed.
There’s no standard operational procedure for this test. There’s
major and minor concerns about this paper and we go through it all
here. it should be retracted. If they retract it, it means the whole
thing falls to bits. The whole edifice collapses. It’s a house of
cards built on sand and we’ve just moved the sand.”.
The retraction
request of the Corman-Drosten is focusing on the fact that their
methodology is too much based upon RT-PCR.
“Clinicians
need to recognize the enhanced accuracy and speed of the molecular
diagnostic techniques for the diagnosis of infections, but also to
understand their limitations. Laboratory results should always be
interpreted in the context of the clinical presentation of the
patient, and appropriate site, quality, and timing of specimen
collection are required for reliable test results”. (Kurkela,
Satu, and David WG Brown. Molecular-diagnostic techniques Medicine
38.10 (2009): 535-540.)
On July 1994
Newyorker journalist
Celia Farber
interviewed
Kary Mullis for
SPIN magazine
(pag.
63) Kary
Mullis was
the inventor of the polimerasis chain reaction for which he received
the Nobel prize for Chemistry.
Mullis repeated
over and over that RT-PCR
wasn't
conceived for the virus diagnostic,
so that
in the interview with
Celia Farber he stated:“PCR
can
detect HIV
in people
who tested negative to the antibody test"
The ECDC
(European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) makes
two recomendations:
That
a hig Ct value (RNA amplification threshold) greater than 35 could
be due to contamination by reagents and as a general recommendation
at the point number 7
the
ECDC
clearly
states that specimens positive to the SARS
Cov-2 must
always carry a high viral load,
which
excludes all the so called “asymptomatic” from the category of
individuals who can carry the infection.
Despite
the positive results can be indicative regarding the presence of
Covid RNA in the patient a
clinical correlation with the patient history
and other diagnostic
informations are crucial to determine the infective status of the
subject.
The fact
that the
Corman-Drosten is
unreliable is clearly expressed in the UK government guide for
health professionals:
Understanding
cycle threshold (Ct) in SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR A guide for health
protection teams
which has been
published on October 2020 which on page 6 says clearly:
RT-PCR detects presence
of viral genetic material in a sample but is not able to distinguish
whether infectious virus is present. The quantity of intact virus in
upper respiratory swabs will be affected by factors that are
endogenous and exogenous to laboratory methods.
According
to the ICSLS
in the RT-PCR testing
literature it is widely known that there are many risks like the
functional false positives, that can lead to misinterpretation of
test results. For this reason it is recommended for example by
Kurkela et al
that
the RT-PCR
is always used in tandem
with a clinical diagnosis of the infection based upon symptoms.
There are documented
evidences of misinterpretation that created ghost pandemics like the
2004-2006 in which a respiratory disease was exchanged for an
epidemic of pertussis thanks to the RT-PCR testing.
To summarise,
the fatal flaws of the Corman-Drosten are the following:
is
non-specific, due to erroneous primer design
is
enormously variable
The
test cannot discriminate between the whole virus and viral
fragments.
has
no positive or negative controls
has
no standard operating procedure
It
was not peer-reviewed
After the
retraction letter sent by Pieter Borger and the other 21 scientists,
Eurosurveillance published this statement:
We have
recently received correspondence regarding a paper published this
year, questioning both the content and the editorial procedures used
to evaluate the article prior to publication. We can assure our
readers and authors that we take comments relating to scientific
content, the processing of articles and editorial transparency
seriously. All articles published by the journal are peer-reviewed by
at least two independent experts in the field (or at least one in the
case of rapid communications). The article in question was also
peer-reviewed by two experts on whose recommendation the decision to
publish was made. Eurosurveillance is seeking further expert advice
and discussing the current correspondence in detail. We will,
according to our existing procedures, evaluate the claims and make a
decision as soon as we have investigated in full. In the meantime, it
would be unfair to all concerned to comment or discuss further until
we have looked at all the issues.
According
to Irish science writer Peter
Andrews
"All
PCR testing based on the Corman-Drosten protocol should be stopped
with immediate effect.
All those who are so-called current ‘Covid cases’, diagnosed
based on that protocol, should be told they no longer have to
isolate. All present and previous Covid deaths, cases, and ‘infection
rates’ should be subject to a massive retroactive inquiry. And
lockdowns, shutdowns, and other restrictions should be urgently
reviewed and relaxed”.
RNA Test
devices not validated
There are 78
CE-marked RNA tests in the market. Nevertheless it is difficult to
link scientific publications to specific CE-marked devices as said
devices do
not disclose the RNA sequences detected by the test. However what
matters for us is that none of these tests has been controlled,
inspected nor validated (the CE Mark label does not imply validation)
and it's the European Commission that states this in the document:
Current
performance of COVID-19 test
methods and devices and proposed performance criteria.
As
a matter of fact, validation is not legally obligatory for testing
devices and this is the heart of this whole story. Since the European
legislation doesn't require the testing devices to undergo validation
in order to be CE marked, therefore it shouldn't surprise that the
Corman Drosten has not been validated.
The
Centre
for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM)
at the
University
of Oxford
is a centre for the
divulgation of scientific evidences whose director is Carl
Henegan who
is the co-author
of
Jefferson et al,
one of the most relevant
studies made until now on the Covid 19.
Since the Covid
19 emergency started, the Centre continuosly updates their website
Covid 19 Evidence Service.
We have to
acknowledge that CEBM has always been publishing updates that were
excerpts from the studies we have been citing here: Jefferson et
al, Bullard et al, Jafaar et al, Young et al etc. This means that
the official British science always knew the real reach of this
epidemic and always published the studies results and we have to
acknowledge this merit to the University of Oxford without which
today we would know nothing of this virus and we would be wandering among the darkness of ignorance and the panic created by our governments.
Unfortunately
for our governors the University of Oxford does exist and works unspeakably well and very
soon when such publications will enter the mainstream media our
governments will have to take them into account.
The following
notice on the status of COVID-19 is published on the
UK government website
and it says
literally: As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered
to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.
The 4 nations
public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January
2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration
of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with
information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now
that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK
have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against
the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have
now changed; in particular, more information is available about
mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical
awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the
availability of which continues to increase.
The Advisory
Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that
COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.
The notice above is published on the UK government guidance on Covid 19
which you can find here
but the page is not reachable through the www.uk.gov
website. At least the undersigned wasn't able to find a direct link
from the Covid 19 monitoring page. If the British government would
like to explain us from what link on the website homepage is it possible
to reach this page we would appreciate it very much. However the page
does exist and this is the official statement of the British
Government regarding Covid 19 and that IS NOT A HIGH
CONSEQUENCES DISEASE.
As you can
read yourselves, the labelling of Covid 19 not as a HCD from the
British government, dates back to March 2020 and it is the stance
recommended to the British government from the Advisory
Committee on Dangerous Pathogens.
Such position is officially
documented by a letter sent from the president of the Advisory
Committee Prof. Tom Evans to
Public Health England on March 13 2020 when the Committee expressed
itself unanimously.
The problem is
that despite the recommendation of the Advisory
Committee on Dangerous Pathogens which is a government outlet
and despite the scientific papers published by the University of
Oxford, the British government keep implementing restrictive measures
which are in total contradiction to what is being affirmed by the
major scientific institutions of the planet.
We have to
acknowledge that even on the CDC website (the U.S. agency for the
monitoring of diseases) both Bullard
et al an Young et al are cited and in general it
is acknowledged the non infectivity of Covid 19 after 10 days since
the symptoms Onset but despite this the government institutions are
implementing restrictive measures of our freedom of movement while
forcing people wearing masks as if they are living into a parallel
reality.
The question
is: until when governments will ignore the medical scientific
institutions?
Political
consequences of the Borger et al initiative
At
european level, the only administrative provision enacted until now
that takes into account the above mentioned studies is a
decision taken by the appeal court of Lisbon which ended a
quarantine ordered by the local health department of the Azzorre
islands to four german citizens.
According to the
Court decision:“The
PCR test is unable to determine, beyond reasonable doubt, that a
positive result corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by
the SARS-CoV-2 virus” The judges cited Jafaar
et al and
Surkova et al
published on the Lancet: False-positive
COVID-19 results: hidden problems and costs.
Following
a notice published on December 14, the World Health Organization on
January 13 published this
notice
whose
recipients are the IVD users (In Vitro Diagnostic Users) who adopt
the
Corman-Drosten diagnostics.
In
the notice the WHO requests users to follow the instructions for use
(IFU) when interpreting results for specimens tested using PCR
methodology.
“Users
of RT-PCR reagents should read the IFU [Information 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 (Ct) value result
being interpreted as a positive result.”
In
practice the WHO in this paragraph states that adopting a high Ct
(cycle treshold) can lead to false positive results.
“In
some cases, the IFU will state that the cut-off should be manually
adjusted to ensure that specimens with high Ct values are not
incorrectly assigned SARS-CoV-2 detected due to background noise.”
Performing
the test with a high Cycle Treshold yields “background noise”
that is false positive results. In practice the patient is told that
he's positive while he's not.
“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.”
When
the test is performed by adopting a high Cycle treshold is not
possible to establish a difference between “irrelevant” and
“meaningful”
As
science never stops in the past few months scientific research went
on and another study on Covid-19 was published on Nature: Van Kampen
et al, whose title is Duration
and key determinants of infectious virus shedding in hospitalized
patients with coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). The
study not only confirms what Borger et al already found out
regarding the false positive results produced by the RT-PCR but from
the lab tests it seems the quantity of false positive goes well
beyond 90% of results.
However
the Corman-Drosten upon which the Covid diagnostic is based and all
the data produced and divulgated by governments and media worldwide
is practically crumbled on itself and in the scientific world it has
now lost all its credibility.
Now
the ball is in the hands of those who have to bring this information
to the public, which means publishers and journalists.
The
objective of this article was just to provide an overview and for
what it was possible for a non-scientific piece the fallacy of the
diagnostic methodology known as Corman-Drosten.
However it is
not possible not to notice an abysmal discrepancy between scientific
awareness regarding the scarce infectious potential of Covid 19 and
the restrictive measures put in place by governments. We must
conclude that the restrictive measures put in place to stop the
spreading of Covid 19 have no scientific basis and they should cease
immediately or the governments that implemented them they have the a
duty to tell us why such measures have been put in place because
covid 19 is not the real reason.
Gianluca D'Agostino worked for CNN in Washington DC and for Associated Press in Rome. D'Agostino has a Ph.D in Theory of Communication and Information at the University of Macerata. Former researcher at the Center for the study of the Novel at Stanford University, Visiting Scholar at the Film Studies Program at University of California Berkeley and Visiting Scholar at the Media and Communication Department of Fordham University NY.
https://unimc.academia.edu/GianlucaDAgostino
https://www.oltre.tv/author/gianluca-d-agostino/
