The US health industry alphabet soup once again exposed as either corrupt or incompetent or both – there was a better Stanford test in the Autumn of 2020

From here:

Researchers Had a Simple Test for Determining if an Asymptomatic Person Who Tested Positive for COVID Was Infectious — But CDC, Fauci Ignored It • Children's Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)

There is a link to this paper published in  Emerging Infectious Diseases in February 2021, that identified a test for infectiousness in May 2020.

Strand-Specific Reverse Transcription PCR for Detection of Replicating SARS-CoV-2 - Volume 27, Number 2—February 2021 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC

Which said this:

“Real-time reverse transcription PCR (rRT-PCR) is the standard diagnostic method for coronavirus disease 2019, but it cannot differentiate between actively replicating and inactive virus. Active replication is a critical factor for infectiousness”; .. “We developed and validated a 2-step strand-specific rRT-PCR for the detection of actively replicating SARS-CoV-2 and assessed its clinical performance.”

“We retrospectively collected a convenience set of upper respiratory specimens with a broad range of Ct values. These samples had been collected and frozen from 93 inpatients and outpatients who were treated at Stanford Health Care and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during March 12–April 9, 2020.”

“For the prospective phase of the study, we collected upper respiratory samples from 53 consecutive patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection by standard rRT-PCR during July 31–September 4, 2020”

I will leave the academics/medics to figure out when the end date of the study was. Seems to me it was after 4 September 2020, so the delay before publication in February 2021 is probably around 4 months

So, Stanford developed a test that could check whether asymptomatic people could infect others.

Check the article out for the “push-me, pull-you” around asymptomatic spread and ignoring the maxim “if you feel sick or have flu symptoms – just stay home”

Also read the full article and the reporting of it by David Zweig on his twitter feed.

(19) David Zweig on Twitter: "The Most Important Test You’ve Never Heard Of In May 2020, Stanford scientists developed a test that could have altered the course of the pandemic response. It was never rolled out. My latest: https://t.co/NooGSptreF https://t.co/rXlAZaJ9uB" / Twitter

Rather than get into how useless the RT-PCR test are/were, or whether Stanford is stating “I told you so” or why Zweig is publishing this now, let’s check out the “cui bono” aspects.

From here: COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer (worldometers.info) the US has administered 1.18 billion tests – the vast majority RT-PCR tests or RAT’s confirmed by RT-PCR tests.

How much for each RT-PCR test?

From here:

How Much Should It Cost to Get Tested for COVID-19? - Consumer Reports

“When Congress passed the more than $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March 2020, it required health insurance companies to pay whatever price labs advertise on their websites for medically appropriate testing.”

So, there are the politicians creating the problem by spending other people’s money on useless policy – no surprises there, it’s what they pay themselves to do, right?

“On average, COVID-19 tests cost $130 within an insurance company’s network, and $185 out of network, according to a July 2021 study by America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group. Seven percent of labs charged more than $390 for a test.”

“A Peterson Center on Healthcare and Kaiser Family Foundation study of prices at 93 hospitals in April 2021 found COVID-testing prices ranging from $20 to $1,419, not including additional fees such as those for specimen collection, which ranged from $18 to $240.”

Let’s stick with the $130 bucks – all reimbursed to whoever charged for it, because the Government said that tax-payers will pay for it – nothing from the Government is “free” – it comes from tax-payers or has to be borrowed on the tax-payers behalf.

Let’s say that a billion of the 1.18 billion tests completed in the last three years were RT-PCR tests.

130 bucks times a billion = 130 billion dollars on a useless test when an alternative existed – with the tests used as the reason to shut down the entire economy. The tests would also have to be manufactured, packaged, transported, administered, logged and analysed. Maybe that 130 bucks per test covered all those costs, maybe some of these costs were/are billed separately.

130 billion dollars – though it is probably closer to almost double that - a quarter trillion dollars. That works out at around 400 bucks for every man, woman and child.

I wonder how much the Stanford test costs and how much money would have been saved by allowing the country to proceed as normal. Would the tests have shown that the C19 pandemic was no worse than an average ‘flu season in terms of infections and deaths?

One thing is for sure, it would not have been necessary to repeatedly test people. Maybe only 250 million tests over the period from September 2020 to date, had the regulatory agencies moved “at the speed of science”?

Onwards!

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