Tag: false negatives

Covid Test 100% accurate

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Covid Test 100% accurate

Apparently we now have a Covid test that is 100% accurate.   What a relief no more false positives. No more goats or sheep testing positive for covid. No more dangerous pieces of Covid fruit lying about. I will sleep better tonight.

A Game-Changer

They are all telling us that it is a “Game-Changer” so that must be the approved messaging.  Note that none of them say that they are sorry for promoting a test that was not fit for purpose and making decisions on invalid test results that had consequence for your job, your finances, your mental health and/or you physical health (cancellation of elective surgery).  It is as if it doesn’t matter. Water under the bridge. So what. Who cares? We destroyed the economy and disrupted your life using faulty computer models and invalid test results but we are fighting a war against an invisible enemy (we certainly are). Every war has casualties. Tough luck.  However, even in a war bad generals get sacked. You will be relieved to know that we now have a 100% accurate test.

Porton Down

“We were confident that good quality antibody tests would become available when they were needed,” he said. “Last week, scientific experts at PHE Porton Down carried out an independent evaluation of the new Roche Sars-CoV-2 serology [test] in record time, concluding that it is a highly specific [test] with specificity of 100 per cent.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-latest-antibody-test-uk-roche-public-health-england-a9513361.html

You will be relieved to know that it has been independently tested at Porton Down which is a science park in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of  Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) – known for over 100 years as one of the UK’s most secretive and controversial military research facilities, occupying 7,000 acres and a site of Public Health England.  In the past they experimented with nerve gas on people but they don’t do that anymore.  Porton Down is very close to Salisbury were a military army nurse found the poisoned Skripals but that is a mere coincidence and a different story.  The take away from this is that a Government bio-weapons lab has found the test to to be 100% accurate so that must be true.

What is 100% accurate or 100% specific?

The claim is that it is 100% accurate despite the Independent (above) saying 100% specific.  They are not the same thing.

The phrase 100% accurate immediately peaked my curiosity.  As a scientist (industrial Chemist) I have performed thousands of chemical tests and as a junior chemist performed tests etc at a Phytopathology research lab.  I have never come across a test that is 100% accurate. I have even checked the validity of test methods using statistics. I have never found a 100% accurate test.  Is it just me?  Perhaps the unicorn of the 100% accurate test exists but I have just never encountered it?

Of course, we know nothing of how this test was validated. In order to check for antibodies you need recovered patients but how do you determine that they are recovered if you have no test?   In other words how do you set a baseline or standard?  You need a group that are definitely negative and a group that are definitely positive (recovered).  You need to do double blind randomized tests or even triple blind. You need to know the full medical history of each subject so that you can determine if the outcome can be influenced by other antibodies which are present or absent. No two test subjects are going to be exactly the same with different patient pathologies and different genetic make up.

You need a large sample size otherwise your errors are magnified. You need to calculate confidence intervals and look at sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios etc. Do we know if any of this has been done?   Are we allowed to see the actual results, the test parameters etc. How many tests were conducted? Are they compared with rival tests? Are journalists allowed to interview any of the test subjects?  And how about financial disclosure?  Who besides Roche benefits and by how much?   So many questions but don’t you worry now because the government assures you that it is 100% accurate.

What does Roche say?

Roche has two tests – the first one we shall call the “spit test” or swab up the nose or in the mouth known as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test to diagnose active COVID-19 (cobas SARS-CoV-2 Test) which could take days for a result. 

The test that is being touted as a “game changer” is a blood test (Elecsys anti-Sars-CoV-2 antibody test). It is supposedly very fast (18 minutes) but of course it still needs to be sent to a lab (Hospital etc) that has the Roche analysis equipment. The problem with both tests is that a negative result does not rule out that you still might be a Covid carrier.

Accuracy and Sensitivity are not the same thing

If you are interested in the distinction between accuracy and sensitivity have a quick look at this article which is very clear.  I suggest you make yourself familiar with the science because soon they will be using manipulation and coercion backed up by pseudo science to force change.  The perception is that the test is 1000% accurate and therefore infallible and that is not so.  There are two very good articles with tables from the evaluate website which I recommend reading in full but which I partially quote below. Both articles are about the blood antibody test – Elecsys anti-Sars-CoV-2 antibody test.  The first citation talks about accuracy and specificity:

There are two major questions here. Firstly, are these claims to be trusted without independent verification?....And accuracy needs to be high. The prevalence of Covid-19 is estimated at around 5% in the US, and at this low a level the risk of false positives becomes a major problem. If a serological test has 90% specificity, its positive predictive value will be 32.1% – meaning nearly 70% of positive results will likely be false. At this same disease prevalence, a test with 95% specificity will lead to a 50% chance that a positive result is wrong. Only at 99% specificity does the false positive rate become anywhere near acceptable, and even here the chances are that 16% of positive results would be wrong.
evaluate link

And the next article citation actually gives us some test results and sample sizes:

Roche claims sensitivity of 100% and specificity of more than 99.8% when an individual is tested two weeks after a PCR test has diagnosed an active Covid-19 infection.....Roche assessed its test’s sensitivity on 204 samples from 69 symptomatic patients with a PCR-confirmed Covid-19 infection. But only 29 samples were from the 14-day time point, a smallish dataset, though to be fair the assay correctly flagged them all....Still, specificity is the crucial point, and here the Elecsys test acquitted itself well, and in a much larger cohort. It was used to test 5,272 blood samples taken from routine diagnostic testing, blood donors, a common cold panel, and a coronavirus panel comprising 40 potentially cross-reactive samples from individuals with past infection with non-Covid-19 coronaviruses. All of these samples were obtained before December 2019 and thus could not carry the Covid-19 virus. [My emphasis] 10 of the samples came back positive, giving a specificity of 99.81%.
 Evaluate link

So, I did the calculation for the specificity:

10/5,272*100= 0.19%
100-0.19%= 99.81%

Some weird findings

I decided to do a search  on the term 99.81% specificity and found some strange stuff.  What I mean by that is that I found a number of other PCR tests that all had the same result with different sample sizes.   Have a look at my search results:

  • Evaluation of the Elecsys syphilis immunoassay for routine screening of serum samples in China: The specificity of the Elecsys immunoassay was 99.81% https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5572731/
  • KIT FOR DETECTION OF ANTI-HAV IgM IN SERUM/PLASMA BY ENZYME IMMUNOASSAY
    Specificity on 525 random blood donors was found to be 99.81% https://www.bio-rad.com/webroot/web/pdf/inserts/CDG/en/883673_2014_02_EN.pdf
  • Validation according to OIE criteria of a monoclonal, recombinant p26–based,
    serologic competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as screening method
    in surveillance programs for the detection of Equine infectious anemia virus antibodies
    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1040638715625092
    The adoption of the cELISA as a screening test in routine testing, generated 182 sera (0.19%) with nonspecific reactions, as confirmed by AGID and immunoblot, out of a total of 96,468 samples examined.13 For this, the screening method has an apparent DSp of 99.81%, higher than that estimated in its validation.  My calculation: 182/96,468 *100= 0.19% and 100-0.19 = 99.81% specificity.
  • A screenshot  2016: Abstracts 2697-5293
    By American Association for Cancer Research (AACR):

Now, I don’t know about you but I find this extremely strange. What is the chance of these different tests one on sexual diseases in the Chinese and the other on horse diseases, anti-HAV Igm and cancer all having different sample sizes all giving 98.91% specificity?  What is the probability of that occurring?   The only common factor is that they are all PCR  tests.  This suggests a methodological error or bias built into the test.  However, what would I know I am only a “bucket chemist” not a PhD genetics professor.   Perhaps I am over looking something obvious. Surely all these big pharma companies with their computer software and fancy equipment cannot be making basic methodological errors?  I would laugh my socks off if they were.  My gut feeling (for what it is worth) is that there is something basically very wrong with the PCR test. Is this a systematic error?

It was stated before that making mistakes in analytical work is unavoidable. This is the reason why a complex system of precautions to prevent errors and traps to detect them has to be set up. An important aspect of the quality control is the detection of both random and systematic errors. This can be done by critically looking at the performance of the analysis as a whole and also of the instruments and operators involved in the job. For the detection itself as well as for the quantification of the errors, statistical treatment of data is indispensable. 
http://www.fao.org/3/W7295E/w7295e08.htm

And here is the other thing I find suspicious…..it says of the samples…“All of these samples were obtained before December 2019 and thus could not carry the Covid-19 virus”.

How does anybody know that?  There are reports online that the disease was circulating in France and in Northern Italy (and the USA for that matter) undetected before the Chinese outbreak.  If that is the case then the test is compromised because you have no true baseline to use as a standard.How do we know that these samples (presumbly from other blood banks) have been handled correctly? How do we know whether they have degraded or not over time? You are making an assumption that before a certain date your samples are covid free.  I still come back to the point that covid has never been isolated using Koch’s principles.

It’s complicated

It turns out that the answers to these questions don’t just hinge on the accuracy of the test. “Mathematically, the way that works out, that actually depends on how many people in your area have Covid,” Eleanor Murray, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health, said.

A serological test looks for antibodies, which play a crucial role in the body’s immune response to Covid-19. It can take several days for an infected person to develop antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. So a negative result doesn’t necessarily mean that the virus isn’t present. On the other hand, a positive antibody test doesn’t always mean you are immune, nor does it mean that the virus has been defeated.
Vox

Trust me I am from the Government and I am here to help

I freely admit that I am not a geneticist or epidemiologist but this very brief investigation makes me very squeamish.  If you want to trust big pharma that stands to make gazillions out of this and a military government poison lab then go ahead but it raises red flags. The emphasis on 100% accurate is deliberate.  This imbues the test with godlike authority to decide who has a life and who doesn’t.    You can protest as much as you want that you have no symptoms and feel perfectly OK as they drag you off to quarantine or forcibly vaccinate you. No arguing with a test that is 100% accurate. Believe the science it is never wrong.  Such a test in the wrong hands becomes a tool of oppression. The reason they needed a new test was because everyone knew the old test was not fit for purpose.

This is why they need a test that is 100% accurate

 

 

 

Contact Tracing, Immunity Cards and Mass Testing: Are We on The Fast Track to a National ID?

Medical Experts Say A Second Wave of COVID-19 Is Coming Fall 2020 — And Could Be Worse Mixed with Fall Flu Season. Mp3 Audio Interview with Prof. Jay Couey, Ph.D., Cellular Neurobiologist, Univ. of Pittsburgh.

 

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