Well, here's why the #coronavirus diagnostics seem to be all over the place... one day a patient tests negative, the next day positive. If the RT-PCR methods described in this peer-reviewed JAMA paper are considered up to par, this is hopeless. jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…
There appears to be no non-viral control target for the RT-PCR & no normalization or even quantification of the sample RNA. It's just whatever comes off of a throat swab. An aggressive swabber will have more positive results. Weak swabbers will produce false negatives.
Is there something I'm missing here? I'm fluent in qRT-PCR but not in clinical settings... but I'd be shocked if it's considered acceptable to not normalize sample loads in this context.
