Read on Twitter
The pandemic will soon be over. The fix is in. If under updated WHO guidance, the pcr tests only consider cycles of 20 or less, official test positives will plummet, the count of deaths with/from covid will plummet, and life can return.
Gotta add here that the WHO guidance as I read it remains (perhaps necessarily) vague with regard to the cycle threshold. They have not said 20 cycles. That's why I write "if." But the new guidance urges caution in clear language.
This isn't some crazy conspiracy. What was crazy was using pcr testing at crazy high levels of specificity to determine public policy. Using these tests more in line with their actual limited utility is just rational.
We could argue about what the threshold should be, but this (interestingly timed!) guidance encourages a balanced appraisal. If someone has no symptoms but a positive test at 40 cycles, are they sick? Should they have to quarantine? Important questions!
As you can see here from the released Rhode Island pcr cycle data, early in the pandemic positives were mostly <30. 25-30 may be a more reasonable range. And those people may also have been more frequently symptomatic. It's more complex than pos/neg test. https://twitter.com/RebuildNH/status/1347596176468693000?s=19
* I definitely should have originally tweeted 30 cycles but I don't want to tear down this thread now.
Here is the very smart version: https://twitter.com/Kevin_McKernan/status/1352117272198991877?s=19
