"I am not a biologist, but have been discussing this article with a university student who is studying the field. He is questioning whether a PCR test can distinguish two viruses which differ in segments that have a few different base pairs but are of the same length"
-puts aside
I love the quality of expert who comes to comment on my blog.
"There are several millions of different viruses, but we only have a little more than 10.000 full genomes..."
-I know some head just exploded
"One of the codes is completely identical to a human chromosome and "
-must convert that threat to a short blog
"Mechanistically, are you essentially of the opinion that false positives for RT-qPCR COVID tests are coming from contamination"
-keep it simple, big words don't make you sound smarter if smaller ones make things clearer
"Sorry It seems at least worldwide that people are testing voluntarily and are not sick,"
-yep, yep, I hear you, all these work experience ICU patients and so on
"If Covid 19 exists as you say, then why does the CDC not have it? "
-😒
"I am not a PCR denialist. Clearly it is a massive advacment for science"
-should I even read on?
"Hello, I’ve read you article very consciously, I’ve read a lot about of these PCR tests, saw videos, saw they were performed"
-get this guy a lab job, stat!
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If there's a link provided, it points to an Emergency Use Only instruction document for the CDC's SARS-CoV-2 PCR (July here, may be other versions) in which there's a comment: testing had to use a viral sequence made in the lab because didn't have *quantified* virus isolates
This whole misunderstanding (I'm being generous) hinges on the word "quantified". CDC researchers *had* cultured virus (see 👇) in January & March, but they didn't have a preparation of virus in which they knew number of infectious particles present. That's the quantified bit.
When you know how many infectious particles present, you can determine the limit of the sensitivity of the RT-PCR, in those same terms. Which is nice but not essential.
You can also do this using the same viral sequence target, prepared & quantified in the lab as RNA. They did 👇
1580-1350 BC
An Egyptian stele portrays a priest with a withered leg, suggesting highly infectious polio has existed for thousands of years.
1916 AD
A polio epidemic on New York, USA.
The 1900s saw epidemics of polio worldwide
2020
After extensive global vaccination programs, only a handful of wild cases can be found. Africa is declared free of wild poliovirus transmission.
Regions that include 90% of the world's population are now free of wild polio.
Victoria records a zero case day!!
This is after reporting a 725 case day in the peak of Wave 2, ~80 days ago. #donutday
It can be done.
Who else has brought so many community #COVID19 cases to zero?
❓Taiwan? Never got that high
❓Vietnam? As above👆
❓New Zealand? 👆
❓Thailand? 👆
❓Singapore (almost-9 its minimum so far)
❓Switzerland (almost)
❓Israel (almost)
❓China✔
This isn't the end of Victoria's story - of course.
Vigilance will need to remain as restrictions loosen further, but this *can* be done even in an urban setting, if there is willingness to go for it - from both leadership and community.
A new version with colour & division inspiration from @UQ_News and strict mouse design oversight by @kat_arden (ver3.0).
It reorganises slices into personal & shared responsibilities (think of this in terms of all the slices rather than any single layer being most important)
This adds stay home if sick, cough etiquette and air filtration and limit time spent in crowds (thx @cwjohannsen )
Also adds the misinformation mouse (thx to @DamianTheAussie
& @jurreysi), which may become a rat in future versions
Constructive feedback welcome.
To make it clear - @tibmolbiol, the company, did not "heavily cooperate" with me to write a 2002 review of real-time PCR. Katherine Arden and Andreas Nitsche leveraged their skillsets to create that lit review with me. Dr Nitsche was & is a scientist in his own right.
The question of whether Dr Nitsche is still affiliated with TiB is strange but it's not one I can answer. I see nothing nefarious with him being, or not being, affiliated. TiB is a huge provider of fee-for-service oligos * kits around the world