Thank you so much for everything you are doing! I have three sons and based upon everything I saw from you, I advised them to NOT get the vaccine, no matter what pressure would be applied by schools and/or employers (they are 19, 22 and 24) they are healthy and in no high risk group (2 have already had it) - without your reporting, it would have been easy to succumb to the public pressure campaign to "do their part" - extremely grateful for everything you do
Gabrielle — good for you and your boys. I have 3 kids going to college (18,18,21) and 2 of the schools are mandating vaccinations (LA and NYC) — have you had to deal with that yet? We are engaging the Deans and Presidents in conversation, but are running out of time. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Something you might want to consider is to ask whether your children can defer enrollment for a year. It's not a solution, of course, but perhaps it could buy you some time. During the intervening year, there might be enough information coming out about the dangers (a gal can dream, right?) or enough lawsuits to make the schools think twice about requiring the vaccines.
There was a nursing student from Yale on Fox last night who successfully got Yale to reverse their requirement that she take the vaccine. LSU isn't requiring it (at least not yet) so I haven't had to deal with it personally. The student had contacted wethepatriotsusa.org to help her in her fight. They look to have articles on their website that might be of help. I also found this article by a lawyer which explains that it would be against the law to make them mandatory - https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/23/federal-law-prohibits-employers-and-others-from-requiring-vaccination-with-a-covid-19-vaccine-distributed-under-an-eua/ - It's from February, so I'm not sure if the language within the EUA has changed. Do they have any exceptions to the policy that you could use? I think it's immoral to mandate a vaccine that hasn't been approved by the FDA.
For the 2 that already had covid, there really is no possible benefit in getting vaccinated with the currently available vaccines. Perhaps if a new vaccine comes out with a better safety profile and perhaps better protection against any future variant that is predominant this might change.
Note that the adverse event risks seem to increase for people that already had COVID. So the risks go up and the rewards are minuscule.
Also make sure you know how to treat people that are infected correctly. The flccc.net has very good protocols, based on risk benefit analysis of the best currently available data.
To summarize, ivermectin on first signs of symptoms and using steroids at exactly the right moment (around day 7/8) appears to completely stop COVID in it's tracks.
Humans have survived multiple pandemics throughout the ages ... mainly due to enough people getting natural immunity via infection so that the disease would die off even if the infection rate wasn't 100%. The big question that always needs to be asked is, should we let it happen naturally or try to suppress it to drag it out? ... most of the push for the later is to minimize impact to medical infrastructure. In the US, the Trump administration mobilized the medical infrastructure to a wartime footing and quickly exceeded the capacity needed to deal with the first large set of infections. Had we continued down that path, there is evidence based on previous pandemics that this would have hastened the infection rate and immunity rate of the US and this pandemic would have been over six months ago.
Alex, great information. Very few know that the 'absolute risk reduction' measure (ARR, the vaccine 'effectiveness') of these shots is less than 2%! The ARR is how much the shots reduce your risk of infection.
The "95% efficacy" touted everywhere, is the 'relative' risk reduction measure (RRR, vaccine 'efficacy.') That is the % reduction in risk of infection between the placebo (unvaccinated) group and the vaccinated group. Guess what? Using Pfizer's clinical trial data, the risk of infection of the placebo group was .761%. The risk of infection of the vaccinated group was .044% (pg. 63, Table 14). So the % reduction from .761% to .044% is 95%, which is Pfizer's RRR. But both groups' risk of infection was less than 1%.
The 'absolute' risk of reduction for Pfizer's vaccine is .761 - .044=.75. So Pfizer's vaccine reduces the risk of infection by a measly .75%. NOT 95%. This is directly from the vaccine manufacturers' clinical trial data they submitted to the FDA for their EUA application and is on the FDA's website. Also, Pfizer, Moderna and J&J failed to disclose their ARR to the public, as well as the FDA, violating the FDA's Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User’s Guide. The vaccine efficacy is being misrepresented as the vaccine effectiveness and that is gross misleading.
So we were already at herd immunity last year when these clinical trials were conducted because their data shows the placebo/unvaccinated group's risk of infection was .761% AND the shots reduce the risk of infection by less than 2%.
Which begs the question, why are we spending billions of $ to vaccinate millions when we were at herd immunity last year (as censored scientists were repeatedly stating) and the shots don't even reduce the risk of infection (nor do they prevent infection or the spread per their own fact sheets).
People need to wake up! When you want to know the truth, follow the $$$$$$$$$$.
In Dr. Brown's video, he also mentions the flu vaccines' ARR is also around 1%. The 50-60% figure we hear is the RRR, not the ARR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkwn5I8tLmE
FDA Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User’s Guide. This guide repeatedly states that the ARR must be reported. https://www.fda.gov/media/81597/download
I do agree that ARR is something that, from a personal perspective, seems quite important. But from a public health perspective, the RRR is probably more important for a highly contagious disease.
I think the problem with focusing so much attention on ARR instead of RRR is that ARR is temporally variable depending on the prevalence of the antigen. So if the study is conducted during a 3 month - low, the ARR is going to be much lower than it would effectively be during a spike thereafter.
The ARR is also going to vary greatly between age groups and populations because their background risks will vary more, again making it a less meaningful statistic as a general figure.
The ARR does become extremely important when the treatment has a risk associated to it. If the vaccine was really completely safe, then the ARR becomes irrelevant and the RRR would be the one to look at, since you just want to know how much it will protect you if you were to be infected.
However we already know that the current COVID vaccines do pose some risks, especially to specific populations. And we also know that more vaccines are in the pipeline that may be safer or more effective against future variants. And in this context the ARR, and specifically the ARR for specific populations become of utmost importance. Unfortunately the ARR from a study won't translate to an ARR in real life, because as I already mentioned it is affected by background risk of the population in general and of the specific population you are looking at in particular.
For instance, to decide whether or not to vaccinate an extremely frail and elderly person in an old-age home with an estimated 6 months left to live. You need to determine their background risk of getting covid over those next 6 months. Then you need to calculate what kind of RRR such a person would get from the vaccine - and since they did not participate in any studies, this becomes impossible. Then you need to calculate the likelihood that the vaccine side effects (the expected ones) might kill this frail person and also the chances of severe adverse events killing them.
Again, none of these calculations are possible even today with the data available, but clearly there is some cut-off point after which vaccination does not make sense.
On the other extreme, we have a strange phenomenon where the risks from COVID infection reduces with a younger population (not that strange) but the risks of certain adverse events increase as the population gets younger. Specifically talking about teenage boys and myocarditis. Again, there must clearly be some cut-off point where the vaccination does not make sense.
The last point I would like to make is the fact that multiple new vaccines are under development. So just because it does not make sense to vaccinate a certain population today with the existing vaccines, does not mean it won't make sense to do so in future with a different vaccine.
Worldwide there is still more demand than supply of vaccines. So while there is any uncertainty of vaccination of specific populations with the existing vaccines, would it not make most sense to focus the deployment of these current vaccines in areas that have populations where the ARR would be high? And be a bit more cautions about those populations where the benefit does not so clearly outweigh the risk?
Alex Berenson delivers truth bombs. So happy you announced this platform on Tucker. Would like a couple of trial days before I commit dollars! Thanks for all you do👍
I don't pay for any journalism today, but for yours, I gladly will. Thanks for giving it to us straight, you are a spring of fresh water to this thirsty soul.
Great glimpse of the data. I’d like to see a discussion of PCR testing. It’s one of the topics that people dance around, but I have yet read a solid explanation of the issues with its ability to accurately detect COVID.
Yes, exactly. In my experience, even most COVID-skeptics do not really understand exactly what the tests are looking for. People cannot seem to understand that the tests are so biased toward positives that a false negative is *super* rare but false positive quite common.
PCR in a nutshell, as best I can put it without getting super technical. As such I'm going to alternate between normal speak and science speak here a bit. Apologies in advance for that. Also, this will be reasonably long.
(Information, including direct quotes for some definitions, from Concepts of Genetics, Eleventh Ed. Klug, Cummings, Spencer and Palladino 2015).
First I'm going to define a few things here for you.
Polymerases: "Enzymes that catalyze the formation of DNA and RNA from deoxynucleotides and ribonucleotides, respectively."
In other words, a polymerase takes the building blocks of DNA or RNA and assists in those things blocks being chemically linked together to form a chain that encodes genetic information.
Nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA or RNA when they're attached to the phosphate backbone that holds the structure of a nucleic acid together. You see this sometimes in the news or other publications as a string of letters like GACTTACG, or for RNA, the T will be replaced with a U. Each letter represents a nucleotide, the string of letters will come with markers 5' and 3', and is read 5'->3'.
The textbook definition for a nucleotide is as follows: "In nucleic acid chemical nomenclature, a nucleoside covalently linked to one or more phosphate groups. Nucleotides containing a single phosphate linked to the 5' carbon of the ribose or deoxyribose are the building blocks of nucleic acids".
5' and 3' represent the position of a carbon atom in the ribose or deoxyribose ring, these are the positions to which another nucleotide can be attached. The RNA or DNA "message" starts at the 5' position and heads in the 3' direction. You'll sometimes see reference with mRNA to a "5' cap", this is, without getting super technical the "start" of the mRNA message which will be ended with something called a "poly A tail" on the 3' end, which is a string of repeated adenine nucleotides that reads "AAAAA..."
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR): "A method for amplifying DNA segments that depends on repeated cycles of denaturation, primer annealing, and DNA polymerase-directed DNA synthesis."
Reverse Transcriptase: "A polymerase that uses RNA as a template to transcribe a single-stranded DNA molecule as a product."
So, without turning this into a genetics class, PCR is a method of taking a section of genetic code and making copies of it. This process doubles the number of sections each time it's repeated. So if you have 100 copies of a target genetic code to start and you run a cycle you now have 200 copies. Two cycles and you have 400.
This method also works for amplifying RNA sequences if you use the right enzymes and alter the process slightly. This is known as reverse transcriptase PCR testing, rtPCR or RT-PCR.
How does this work?
For PCR, first you need some information about the genetic sequence you're targeted. This allows you to make primers that match it. The DNA is heated to cause the double-helix to unwind and denature (the two sides of the ladder separate). There is now a place for your primers to attach to the DNA where they complement it. This is done by heating the DNA to 92C-95C for about a minute.
The temperature of the solution is then dropped to 45C-65C which allows the primers to attach where they're supposed to.
Primers are a starting point for your polymerase to grab onto and begin copying from the 3' end of the primer and in the '3 direction of the genetic material. This runs 5'->3', but starts at the 3' end of a primer that also runs 5'->3'.
The temperature of the solution is again changed, up this time to 65C-75C which allows your polymerase to begin work and copy from the primer as a starting point
This brings us to RT-PCR, at this point I will simply copy the text book's explanation which is shorter than I would explain it but is more than satisfactory:
"...RNA is isolated from cells or tissues to be studied, and reverse transcriptase is used to generate double-stranded cDNA molecules... this reaction is followed by PCR to amplify the cNDA with a set of primers specific for the gene of interest. Amplified fragments are then separated and visualized on an agarose gel."
In other words what your cells normally do [DNA -> mRNA -> protein] is done in reverse. The RNA is used to go backwards, using reverse transcriptase, and create a DNA version of the RNA message. This DNA message can then be copied using the PCR technique.
================================
So how does this accurately detect CoV-2?
Well that depends on what you mean. Technically, it doesn't detect "CoV-2". It detects the genetic material of CoV-2, which is not a distinction without a difference. Your death would not erase your DNA. CoV-2 being rendered useless or fragmentary doesn't immediately destroy it's RNA either.
So, generally, what you're trying to do with PCR here is test for a known section of CoV-2's genetic sequence which is unique to CoV-2. You do this by controlling the primers that you use in the reaction. Done right this process should only amplify copies of CoV-2 RNA, telling you that you do in fact have some amount of CoV-2 RNA present in the sample.
Now, what does that mean in the real world and why did Mullis say not to use this diagnostically? Well, remember a few things here. First, how many copies you end up with is based on how many cycles you run. Secondly, it's not like you actually count the copies. You work out a basic idea of how many you have via mass just like you do with any chemistry work.
So, there's a huge difference in what you'll get based on the number of cycles you run. Each cycle doubles the amount of material so going back to my original example of 100 as a starting point, 100 cycles one cycle will give you 200, five cycles will give you 3200 and ten cycles will give you 102,400. 20 cycles will give you 104,857,600 and 25 cycles will give you 3,355,443,200. You can probably see where this is going when you start talking about the difference between 28 and 35 cycles or 40+.
Remember also, the final count isn't going to be exact in a lab. This means that working backwards, dividing by 2 for each cycle gives an approximate starting value.
So how much did you really have to start with? You don't REALLY know.
And this matters because, what's the infective dose of CoV-2? No one really knows how many virions it takes to make someone ill and really, this probably varies quite a bit from person to person. And on top of that we just have a general idea of how many copies of genetic material we started with... so how many virions were there? It's a guess.
But on top of that are those really virions? They could be viral debris inhaled from the environment OR already defeated by the person's immune system. They could be a mix of "live" virus, debris created by the immune system and debris inhaled from the environment. PCR cannot tell us the difference between these sources. It just gives us a rough idea of the amount of material present.
As such, it's a VERY imprecise diagnostic tool. This is why Mullis cautioned against its use in this regard.
So why was this done? Well, simply put, the downsides of false positives were well known. But at the beginning of all of this it was determined that this test was 1) fast, 2) accurate and 3) most importantly, what was available for rapid deployment. It was assumed that ramping up such a test to a lot of cycles would have two effects: It would create false positives and it would catch pre-symptomatic cases.
The latter was deemed more important than the former and so the test was widely deployed for diagnostic purposes, warts and all. They just didn't tell the public about the warts because it was thought that the lay public couldn't understand the details and might argue the test results because, honestly, this is a pretty poor diagnostic testing method. Keep in mind that at the time this decision was made what was known about CoV-2 was 1) it kills some people 2) it appears to be highly contagious and 3) the Chinese dataset is garbage that has to be scrapped and tested against newly gathered data that, at the time, didn't exist. IOW, the decision was made to err very strongly on the side of caution in case CoV-2 was some very, very dangerous new pathogen.
After that... well, it got political and that, dear reader, is open to interpretation as to the hows and whys.
Excellent! Great post and I appreciate the work. A note on the virions - I thought they determined it was as low as 300 to cause illness? Can’t recall where I read this (been reading so many things since the outbreak) but it was during some inquiry I made about mask effectiveness. Anyway, 300 was the number referenced. But I agree with you that it stands to reason that this number varies depending on the individual. Again, thanks for this explanation.
I haven't seen anything that nails down the infectious dose for CoV-2 in humans.
The most recent paper I've seen on this topic is linked below. It offers a rather wide range because it's a review (meta study of other studies) covering animal models, other diseases etc. The truth is, I don't think anyone really knows. This paper gives a range from 100 to millions of virions required but notes that millions is what flu requires and that CoV-2's higher R0 means that it likely takes less.
I heard a pathologist state that these experimental injections can have negative effects on the naturally immune. There is no testing for natural immunity, so it is also possible these "vaccines" given to people who were naturally immune actually reduced their immunity. But with no prior testing, no decent data collection/verification, who knows?
Thank you for doing the work that other journalists have refused to do. Every newspaper in the country should be reporting this. People have the right to know the risks.
I appreciate, respect, and support your work, so thank you again.
Don't call it "Vaccine Hesitancy", Call it what it is: "Vaccine Rejection": And don't assume people who are unwilling to take these concoctions are necessarily stupid and crazy. I took the flu vaccine as a condition of employment in 2017, my left arm hasn't been the same since. It's numb, it's weak, the coordination is off, there's a persistent ache at the injection site. Meanwhile after what I've learned about the pharmaceutical industry in general and vaccines in particular as a result of this abominable fraud I will never take a vaccine again.
Thank you so much for everything you are doing! I have three sons and based upon everything I saw from you, I advised them to NOT get the vaccine, no matter what pressure would be applied by schools and/or employers (they are 19, 22 and 24) they are healthy and in no high risk group (2 have already had it) - without your reporting, it would have been easy to succumb to the public pressure campaign to "do their part" - extremely grateful for everything you do
Gabrielle — good for you and your boys. I have 3 kids going to college (18,18,21) and 2 of the schools are mandating vaccinations (LA and NYC) — have you had to deal with that yet? We are engaging the Deans and Presidents in conversation, but are running out of time. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Something you might want to consider is to ask whether your children can defer enrollment for a year. It's not a solution, of course, but perhaps it could buy you some time. During the intervening year, there might be enough information coming out about the dangers (a gal can dream, right?) or enough lawsuits to make the schools think twice about requiring the vaccines.
There was a nursing student from Yale on Fox last night who successfully got Yale to reverse their requirement that she take the vaccine. LSU isn't requiring it (at least not yet) so I haven't had to deal with it personally. The student had contacted wethepatriotsusa.org to help her in her fight. They look to have articles on their website that might be of help. I also found this article by a lawyer which explains that it would be against the law to make them mandatory - https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/23/federal-law-prohibits-employers-and-others-from-requiring-vaccination-with-a-covid-19-vaccine-distributed-under-an-eua/ - It's from February, so I'm not sure if the language within the EUA has changed. Do they have any exceptions to the policy that you could use? I think it's immoral to mandate a vaccine that hasn't been approved by the FDA.
For the 2 that already had covid, there really is no possible benefit in getting vaccinated with the currently available vaccines. Perhaps if a new vaccine comes out with a better safety profile and perhaps better protection against any future variant that is predominant this might change.
Note that the adverse event risks seem to increase for people that already had COVID. So the risks go up and the rewards are minuscule.
Also make sure you know how to treat people that are infected correctly. The flccc.net has very good protocols, based on risk benefit analysis of the best currently available data.
To summarize, ivermectin on first signs of symptoms and using steroids at exactly the right moment (around day 7/8) appears to completely stop COVID in it's tracks.
Thank you for being on Tucker and sharing this important info with the public
Alex, I appreciate what you do and gladly support you in my own limited way. I hope this project becomes the success it deserves to be.
heard about this site on tucker; now I have a lot of reading to do! thanks for the info, it does not hurt to ask questions
Humans have survived multiple pandemics throughout the ages ... mainly due to enough people getting natural immunity via infection so that the disease would die off even if the infection rate wasn't 100%. The big question that always needs to be asked is, should we let it happen naturally or try to suppress it to drag it out? ... most of the push for the later is to minimize impact to medical infrastructure. In the US, the Trump administration mobilized the medical infrastructure to a wartime footing and quickly exceeded the capacity needed to deal with the first large set of infections. Had we continued down that path, there is evidence based on previous pandemics that this would have hastened the infection rate and immunity rate of the US and this pandemic would have been over six months ago.
Alex, great information. Very few know that the 'absolute risk reduction' measure (ARR, the vaccine 'effectiveness') of these shots is less than 2%! The ARR is how much the shots reduce your risk of infection.
The "95% efficacy" touted everywhere, is the 'relative' risk reduction measure (RRR, vaccine 'efficacy.') That is the % reduction in risk of infection between the placebo (unvaccinated) group and the vaccinated group. Guess what? Using Pfizer's clinical trial data, the risk of infection of the placebo group was .761%. The risk of infection of the vaccinated group was .044% (pg. 63, Table 14). So the % reduction from .761% to .044% is 95%, which is Pfizer's RRR. But both groups' risk of infection was less than 1%.
The 'absolute' risk of reduction for Pfizer's vaccine is .761 - .044=.75. So Pfizer's vaccine reduces the risk of infection by a measly .75%. NOT 95%. This is directly from the vaccine manufacturers' clinical trial data they submitted to the FDA for their EUA application and is on the FDA's website. Also, Pfizer, Moderna and J&J failed to disclose their ARR to the public, as well as the FDA, violating the FDA's Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User’s Guide. The vaccine efficacy is being misrepresented as the vaccine effectiveness and that is gross misleading.
So we were already at herd immunity last year when these clinical trials were conducted because their data shows the placebo/unvaccinated group's risk of infection was .761% AND the shots reduce the risk of infection by less than 2%.
Which begs the question, why are we spending billions of $ to vaccinate millions when we were at herd immunity last year (as censored scientists were repeatedly stating) and the shots don't even reduce the risk of infection (nor do they prevent infection or the spread per their own fact sheets).
People need to wake up! When you want to know the truth, follow the $$$$$$$$$$.
Steve Kirsch (MIT engineer, medical philanthropist and Silcon Valley entrepreneur) article on the vaccines' data. https://www.skirsch.com/covid/vaccineRequirementResponse.pdf
Dr. Ronald Brown's article also confirms that Pfizer's and Modern's ARR is less than 2%. https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/57/3/199/htm#B11-medicina-57-00199
In Dr. Brown's video, he also mentions the flu vaccines' ARR is also around 1%. The 50-60% figure we hear is the RRR, not the ARR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkwn5I8tLmE
An article published in The Lancet also confirms the ARR of the Covid19 shots are less than 2%. "COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not) in the room" https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00069-0/fulltext
This article explains why you should always use the ARR. https://www.healthnewsreview.org/toolkit/tips-for-understanding-studies/absolute-vs-relative-risk/
FDA Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User’s Guide. This guide repeatedly states that the ARR must be reported. https://www.fda.gov/media/81597/download
I do agree that ARR is something that, from a personal perspective, seems quite important. But from a public health perspective, the RRR is probably more important for a highly contagious disease.
I think the problem with focusing so much attention on ARR instead of RRR is that ARR is temporally variable depending on the prevalence of the antigen. So if the study is conducted during a 3 month - low, the ARR is going to be much lower than it would effectively be during a spike thereafter.
The ARR is also going to vary greatly between age groups and populations because their background risks will vary more, again making it a less meaningful statistic as a general figure.
The ARR does become extremely important when the treatment has a risk associated to it. If the vaccine was really completely safe, then the ARR becomes irrelevant and the RRR would be the one to look at, since you just want to know how much it will protect you if you were to be infected.
However we already know that the current COVID vaccines do pose some risks, especially to specific populations. And we also know that more vaccines are in the pipeline that may be safer or more effective against future variants. And in this context the ARR, and specifically the ARR for specific populations become of utmost importance. Unfortunately the ARR from a study won't translate to an ARR in real life, because as I already mentioned it is affected by background risk of the population in general and of the specific population you are looking at in particular.
For instance, to decide whether or not to vaccinate an extremely frail and elderly person in an old-age home with an estimated 6 months left to live. You need to determine their background risk of getting covid over those next 6 months. Then you need to calculate what kind of RRR such a person would get from the vaccine - and since they did not participate in any studies, this becomes impossible. Then you need to calculate the likelihood that the vaccine side effects (the expected ones) might kill this frail person and also the chances of severe adverse events killing them.
Again, none of these calculations are possible even today with the data available, but clearly there is some cut-off point after which vaccination does not make sense.
On the other extreme, we have a strange phenomenon where the risks from COVID infection reduces with a younger population (not that strange) but the risks of certain adverse events increase as the population gets younger. Specifically talking about teenage boys and myocarditis. Again, there must clearly be some cut-off point where the vaccination does not make sense.
The last point I would like to make is the fact that multiple new vaccines are under development. So just because it does not make sense to vaccinate a certain population today with the existing vaccines, does not mean it won't make sense to do so in future with a different vaccine.
Worldwide there is still more demand than supply of vaccines. So while there is any uncertainty of vaccination of specific populations with the existing vaccines, would it not make most sense to focus the deployment of these current vaccines in areas that have populations where the ARR would be high? And be a bit more cautions about those populations where the benefit does not so clearly outweigh the risk?
Fantastic comment. Thank you. Sebastian Rushworth MD (https://sebastianrushworth.com/) also has some very user-friendly information that lays out the ARR/RRR distinction. Also, I found this podcast with Bret Weinstein immensely helpful (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59LgoY6Nk6Y)
Awesome information! Thanks. Watch Dr. Merritt’s interview when you get a chance. It’s phenomenal.
https://thenewamerican.com/bio-warfare-weaponization-of-medicine-amid-covid/
Alex Berenson delivers truth bombs. So happy you announced this platform on Tucker. Would like a couple of trial days before I commit dollars! Thanks for all you do👍
Thanks for starting this. Glad I watched Tucker tonight. Will share with everyone I know
Same here! Love Tucker & Berenson!
Great work Alex and you need to be on Tucker, or anyone else that will have you, that's a short list I know, every Thursday. #AlexBerensonThursdays
Thanks Alex for everything you do for the public! I’m so appreciative of your work.
I don't pay for any journalism today, but for yours, I gladly will. Thanks for giving it to us straight, you are a spring of fresh water to this thirsty soul.
Great glimpse of the data. I’d like to see a discussion of PCR testing. It’s one of the topics that people dance around, but I have yet read a solid explanation of the issues with its ability to accurately detect COVID.
Yes, exactly. In my experience, even most COVID-skeptics do not really understand exactly what the tests are looking for. People cannot seem to understand that the tests are so biased toward positives that a false negative is *super* rare but false positive quite common.
PCR in a nutshell, as best I can put it without getting super technical. As such I'm going to alternate between normal speak and science speak here a bit. Apologies in advance for that. Also, this will be reasonably long.
(Information, including direct quotes for some definitions, from Concepts of Genetics, Eleventh Ed. Klug, Cummings, Spencer and Palladino 2015).
First I'm going to define a few things here for you.
Polymerases: "Enzymes that catalyze the formation of DNA and RNA from deoxynucleotides and ribonucleotides, respectively."
In other words, a polymerase takes the building blocks of DNA or RNA and assists in those things blocks being chemically linked together to form a chain that encodes genetic information.
Nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA or RNA when they're attached to the phosphate backbone that holds the structure of a nucleic acid together. You see this sometimes in the news or other publications as a string of letters like GACTTACG, or for RNA, the T will be replaced with a U. Each letter represents a nucleotide, the string of letters will come with markers 5' and 3', and is read 5'->3'.
The textbook definition for a nucleotide is as follows: "In nucleic acid chemical nomenclature, a nucleoside covalently linked to one or more phosphate groups. Nucleotides containing a single phosphate linked to the 5' carbon of the ribose or deoxyribose are the building blocks of nucleic acids".
5' and 3' represent the position of a carbon atom in the ribose or deoxyribose ring, these are the positions to which another nucleotide can be attached. The RNA or DNA "message" starts at the 5' position and heads in the 3' direction. You'll sometimes see reference with mRNA to a "5' cap", this is, without getting super technical the "start" of the mRNA message which will be ended with something called a "poly A tail" on the 3' end, which is a string of repeated adenine nucleotides that reads "AAAAA..."
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR): "A method for amplifying DNA segments that depends on repeated cycles of denaturation, primer annealing, and DNA polymerase-directed DNA synthesis."
Reverse Transcriptase: "A polymerase that uses RNA as a template to transcribe a single-stranded DNA molecule as a product."
So, without turning this into a genetics class, PCR is a method of taking a section of genetic code and making copies of it. This process doubles the number of sections each time it's repeated. So if you have 100 copies of a target genetic code to start and you run a cycle you now have 200 copies. Two cycles and you have 400.
This method also works for amplifying RNA sequences if you use the right enzymes and alter the process slightly. This is known as reverse transcriptase PCR testing, rtPCR or RT-PCR.
How does this work?
For PCR, first you need some information about the genetic sequence you're targeted. This allows you to make primers that match it. The DNA is heated to cause the double-helix to unwind and denature (the two sides of the ladder separate). There is now a place for your primers to attach to the DNA where they complement it. This is done by heating the DNA to 92C-95C for about a minute.
The temperature of the solution is then dropped to 45C-65C which allows the primers to attach where they're supposed to.
Primers are a starting point for your polymerase to grab onto and begin copying from the 3' end of the primer and in the '3 direction of the genetic material. This runs 5'->3', but starts at the 3' end of a primer that also runs 5'->3'.
The temperature of the solution is again changed, up this time to 65C-75C which allows your polymerase to begin work and copy from the primer as a starting point
This brings us to RT-PCR, at this point I will simply copy the text book's explanation which is shorter than I would explain it but is more than satisfactory:
"...RNA is isolated from cells or tissues to be studied, and reverse transcriptase is used to generate double-stranded cDNA molecules... this reaction is followed by PCR to amplify the cNDA with a set of primers specific for the gene of interest. Amplified fragments are then separated and visualized on an agarose gel."
In other words what your cells normally do [DNA -> mRNA -> protein] is done in reverse. The RNA is used to go backwards, using reverse transcriptase, and create a DNA version of the RNA message. This DNA message can then be copied using the PCR technique.
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So how does this accurately detect CoV-2?
Well that depends on what you mean. Technically, it doesn't detect "CoV-2". It detects the genetic material of CoV-2, which is not a distinction without a difference. Your death would not erase your DNA. CoV-2 being rendered useless or fragmentary doesn't immediately destroy it's RNA either.
So, generally, what you're trying to do with PCR here is test for a known section of CoV-2's genetic sequence which is unique to CoV-2. You do this by controlling the primers that you use in the reaction. Done right this process should only amplify copies of CoV-2 RNA, telling you that you do in fact have some amount of CoV-2 RNA present in the sample.
Now, what does that mean in the real world and why did Mullis say not to use this diagnostically? Well, remember a few things here. First, how many copies you end up with is based on how many cycles you run. Secondly, it's not like you actually count the copies. You work out a basic idea of how many you have via mass just like you do with any chemistry work.
So, there's a huge difference in what you'll get based on the number of cycles you run. Each cycle doubles the amount of material so going back to my original example of 100 as a starting point, 100 cycles one cycle will give you 200, five cycles will give you 3200 and ten cycles will give you 102,400. 20 cycles will give you 104,857,600 and 25 cycles will give you 3,355,443,200. You can probably see where this is going when you start talking about the difference between 28 and 35 cycles or 40+.
Remember also, the final count isn't going to be exact in a lab. This means that working backwards, dividing by 2 for each cycle gives an approximate starting value.
So how much did you really have to start with? You don't REALLY know.
And this matters because, what's the infective dose of CoV-2? No one really knows how many virions it takes to make someone ill and really, this probably varies quite a bit from person to person. And on top of that we just have a general idea of how many copies of genetic material we started with... so how many virions were there? It's a guess.
But on top of that are those really virions? They could be viral debris inhaled from the environment OR already defeated by the person's immune system. They could be a mix of "live" virus, debris created by the immune system and debris inhaled from the environment. PCR cannot tell us the difference between these sources. It just gives us a rough idea of the amount of material present.
As such, it's a VERY imprecise diagnostic tool. This is why Mullis cautioned against its use in this regard.
So why was this done? Well, simply put, the downsides of false positives were well known. But at the beginning of all of this it was determined that this test was 1) fast, 2) accurate and 3) most importantly, what was available for rapid deployment. It was assumed that ramping up such a test to a lot of cycles would have two effects: It would create false positives and it would catch pre-symptomatic cases.
The latter was deemed more important than the former and so the test was widely deployed for diagnostic purposes, warts and all. They just didn't tell the public about the warts because it was thought that the lay public couldn't understand the details and might argue the test results because, honestly, this is a pretty poor diagnostic testing method. Keep in mind that at the time this decision was made what was known about CoV-2 was 1) it kills some people 2) it appears to be highly contagious and 3) the Chinese dataset is garbage that has to be scrapped and tested against newly gathered data that, at the time, didn't exist. IOW, the decision was made to err very strongly on the side of caution in case CoV-2 was some very, very dangerous new pathogen.
After that... well, it got political and that, dear reader, is open to interpretation as to the hows and whys.
Excellent! Great post and I appreciate the work. A note on the virions - I thought they determined it was as low as 300 to cause illness? Can’t recall where I read this (been reading so many things since the outbreak) but it was during some inquiry I made about mask effectiveness. Anyway, 300 was the number referenced. But I agree with you that it stands to reason that this number varies depending on the individual. Again, thanks for this explanation.
I haven't seen anything that nails down the infectious dose for CoV-2 in humans.
The most recent paper I've seen on this topic is linked below. It offers a rather wide range because it's a review (meta study of other studies) covering animal models, other diseases etc. The truth is, I don't think anyone really knows. This paper gives a range from 100 to millions of virions required but notes that millions is what flu requires and that CoV-2's higher R0 means that it likely takes less.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/review-of-infective-dose-routes-of-transmission-and-outcome-of-covid19-caused-by-the-sarscov2-comparison-with-other-respiratory-viruses/8607769D2983FE35F15CCC328AB8289D
Great. I’ll take a look at this. And if I find that reference to 300 I’ll pass it along.
This one is good
https://www.chinadailyhk.com/article/168617#The-COVID-19-gaslighting-express
The portion starting with, "The PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) test used to identify COVID-19 infections is, at best, the wrong tool for the job."
Thanks, Brian.
I heard a pathologist state that these experimental injections can have negative effects on the naturally immune. There is no testing for natural immunity, so it is also possible these "vaccines" given to people who were naturally immune actually reduced their immunity. But with no prior testing, no decent data collection/verification, who knows?
Thank you for doing the work that other journalists have refused to do. Every newspaper in the country should be reporting this. People have the right to know the risks.
I appreciate, respect, and support your work, so thank you again.
There is nothing noble about spreading vaccine hesitancy. You do realize you are aiding and abetting anti-vaxxers, right?
Reporting the truth is unnoble? Are suggesting we lie and censor certain undesirable topics for the “greater good”?
It’s not a vaccine. It’s an experimental drug. But thanks for stopping in
It's hi-tech rat poison.
Don't call it "Vaccine Hesitancy", Call it what it is: "Vaccine Rejection": And don't assume people who are unwilling to take these concoctions are necessarily stupid and crazy. I took the flu vaccine as a condition of employment in 2017, my left arm hasn't been the same since. It's numb, it's weak, the coordination is off, there's a persistent ache at the injection site. Meanwhile after what I've learned about the pharmaceutical industry in general and vaccines in particular as a result of this abominable fraud I will never take a vaccine again.
reporting the truth >>> thinking what behavior it might encourage.
Another ridiculous stalinist
News flash: Facts are no "pro" or "anti"; they are just facts.
No content in Chris’s reply. It amounts to ad hominem. The progressive way of discourse.
Thanks Tucker, and of course A.B!!