The published RT-qPCR protocol for detection and diagnostics of 2019-nCoV and the manuscript suffer from numerous technical and scientific errors, including insufficient primer design, a problematic and insufficient RT-qPCR protocol, and the absence of an accurate test validation. Neither the presented test nor the manuscript itself fulfils the requirements for an acceptable scientific publication. Further,…
Day: December 24, 2020
Lifesite News reports “Minnesota lawmakers claim 40-percent inflation in state COVID death numbers”
State senator Scott Jensen, a practicing physician who is calling for an audit, noted that ‘doctors and hospitals have an incentive to, if you will, massage the numbers.’ Two Minnesota lawmakers have called for an investigation of the state’s COVID-19 mortality data after finding that hundreds of recent deaths may have been misattributed to the…
Lifesite News reports “Former Pfizer VP: ‘No need for vaccines,’ ‘the pandemic is effectively over’”
Dr. Mike Yeadon, Pfizer’s former Vice President and Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory, states that the drive for a universal vaccine has ‘the whiff of evil’ which he ‘will oppose … vigorously.’ While Pfizer pharmaceutical made headlines announcing the imminent release of their COVID-19 vaccine, to much fanfare, a former Vice President and Chief Scientist for the…
Public Health Ontario reports “An Overview of Cycle Threshold Values and their Role in SARS-CoV-2 Real-Time PCR Test Interpretation”
This document provides an overview of Ct values with a focus on how they are determined, their relationship to viral load, and how Ct values may contribute to the interpretation of positive rRT-PCR results among patients with low pretest probability. Key factors that contribute to test performance are also discussed, and guidance on investigating a…
NPR reports “I Felt Fine, But Tested Positive For The Coronavirus. What’s That Really Mean?”
When they called to tell me my COVID-19 test was positive, I thought there must have been a mistake. I felt perfectly fine, and in the long months of the pandemic my husband, Jeff, and I had been behaving the way much of the United States had: hyper-vigilant about where we went and who we…
Business Today reports “‘Not certain’: Pfizer CEO on whether COVID vaccine stops transmission”
As US-based pharma major Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech SE get two back-to-back emergency approvals from the UK and Bahrain health regulatory bodies, the vaccine frontrunner seems to be clueless about one major question — can their coronavirus vaccine prevent the virus’ transmission after vaccination? During a recent interview with NBC’s Lestor Holt,…