By AnonyMaker
This is in response to the story Every Action and Reaction to COVID-19 Is Based on Totally Flawed Data Because We Are Testing People for Any Strain of a Coronavirus, Not Specifically COVID-19
Fact-check turns up, first, that this is being spammed without attribution from another source:
which has apparently in turn gotten it from other unattributed sources:
This in turn apparently ties somehow to David Icke – the reptilian alien shape shifter conspiracy guy:
“ER Editor: David Icke picked up on this very topic of the test being used to determine the virus a couple of days ago and did a video discussion of it, which we’re including below. How can we know who has a PARTICULAR VIRUS when the test is picking up ANY STRAIN of coronavirus, and there are indeed many of them in our bodies at any given time!”
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And, not surprisingly for something attributed to anonymous sources and spreading in dubious ways, it appears to be false – COVID-19 tests do actually test for specific genes, not those common to all coronaviruses:
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Coronavirus and the race to distribute reliable diagnostics
“Rather than develop bespoke PCR tests, IDbyDNA is one of a handful of companies employing metagenomic nucleic acid analysis as a routine diagnostic and surveillance tool. Its existing Explify Respiratory test, which is a laboratory-developed (or ‘home brew’) test, can identify over 900 respiratory pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites, by comparing unbiased metagenomic data obtained from patient samples with a large repository of sequence data. It can already detect the SARS-CoV-2 strain. ”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41587-020-00002-2
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Coronavirus Detectable With IDbyDNA Explify Respiratory Test
“Since the publication of the 2019-nCoV genome, IDbyDNA’s team has analyzed in-silico generated samples and computationally validated the capability to detect 2019-nCoV and differentiate it from other human coronaviruses.”
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Coronavirus testing: How does it work?
“A PCR test can confirm a diagnosis of COVID-19 if it identifies two specific SARS-CoV-2 genes.”
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-testing#how-does-it-work
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SARS-CoV-2 Testing: Trials and Tribulations
‘the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) designed a nucleic acid amplification test that targeted three independent regions of the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid gene (N1, N2, N3), in addition to the human ribonuclease P (RNase P) gene, which serves both as an internal amplification control and indicator of specimen adequacy. Importantly, detection of each target required a separate polymerase chain reaction (PCR), ie, four reactions were required for each specimen tested. ‘
https://academic.oup.com/ajcp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcp/aqaa052/5813763
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That leads to the question, who is concocting false but convincing-sounding narratives like this, and spreading them around? And why are they being published without at least some journalistic vetting?
