The SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Riddle - Part 6

The PCR wonderland (revised February 2024)

This is the sixth post of a re-run of our Transmission Riddle series, which was originally posted in 2022. Each post has been updated and reworked with what new evidence we could find. The serial numbers of the original posts may not correspond as we expand, merge, edit and add, like a concertina. 

The sixth post has been extensively revised on the basis of new data and a lot of work that went into the extraction. The extractions sheet (which took many days to complete) is behind a paywall.

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In our Transmission Riddle 4, we discussed the importance of proper interpretation of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests used as diagnostics. 

We pointed out the misleading nature of a single test and the misleading nature of qualitative PCR: a binary test result that is positive/negative without information on the patient, sampling, and the type of PCR test used.