Covidium
New element discovered that is denser than Osmium.
This week I had the pleasure of interacting with a Youtube “Debunker” known as Debunk the Funk or Dan Wilson, PhD.
He has been claiming COViD qPCR has no False Positives and folks like myself who point out these risks are anti-vaxxers, drop-outs, greedy businessmen, and conspiracy theorists.
Mat Crawford raised an interesting question about qPCR validation being performed on Unvaxxed people but was curious if it was ever validated on vaccinated people?
Ie.. could the mRNA trigger the tests? Could the mRNA induce endogenous viral expression that could trigger the test?
All fair questions. I’m a bit skeptical the PCR primers would still amplify a codon optimized vax molecule that is only ~75% identical to the virus and if it did, then 98% identical RatG13 and other HCoVs would light up as well.
Many of the EUA screen the HCOVs and see non detects but they can’t screen them all or any recombinants that might emerge in coinfections.
We do in fact see rare cases of C19 tests triggering (Late CT~38-40) on influenza in Australia ring tests so Mats question is a valid concern. Can the vax status alter the validity of test and has this ever been tested in a controlled study?
While I can’t think of a mechanisms that might cause this with such diverged sequences, it should be tested not assumed.
My lack of a mechanism is irrelevant to the question if vax and unvaxxed samples were in the inclusions and exclusion testing of the EUAs for the tests.
So Mat being more polite than me, offered to have Dan in his podcast for a discussion as Twitter seems to promote disagreements.
Mathew Crawford and Debunk dissected by JJ and Mat
Mat quickly discovers, Dan is not versed on Bayes theorem and doesn’t know the definition of sensitivity and specificity.
He defaulted to claiming all the sequencing data in the world backed his argument. When I challenged him on Twitter on his understanding of Sequencing, his argument devolved into calling me a drop out and a long list of other names.
“Drop out” is factually true but this drop out has intimate experience with Sanger sequencing.
JJ Couey and I decided to have a Sanger sequencing seminar to show people the nature of the squid ink and obfuscation going on in this field.
Benjamin Taylor also pointed out that Debunks employer is a well respected lab known as Eurofins who has a substantial C19 testing business.
Benjamin points out several videos on Eurofins website where their CSO is pointing out the same problems with PCR FPs Debunk the funk (Dan Wilson, PhD) refuses to accept exist.
He then shape-shifted into claiming food testing is different than virus testing before he bothered to check his employers stance on that topic?
So you can see, we don’t have a viral pandemic. We have a “I can’t admit I’m wrong” pandemic.
Science is the process of continually being wrong and celebrating the rare times you are accidentally not (sometimes in the form of a few papers).
The tribe casting these Anti-Science dispersions, ironically hasn’t learned these lessons. For them, Science is not about discovery and reproduction. It’s about authority figures that declare what or who is The ScienceTM.
Ego this impenetrable leaves Osmium radioactive with jealousy.
I had a discussion on Twitter with Mr Debunk as well where he called Kary Mullis a lunatic every time I quoted him. Like you, I’ve also questioned if the mRNA can result in positive PCR tests. It don’t take a GED to see the correlation.
Fabulous read. Always enjoy your posts!