DannyTS
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Instead of relying on the "fact checkers" that many times have a predetermined conclusion, you can look at the actual science. In the previous comment I posted a link from the UK government.I'm not sure how a picture of Africans dancing shows that covid testing in Oman was necessarily inaccurate. As far as covid in Africa, I suspect the numbers are not totally huge, but are higher than reported. (There are articles explaining why Africa has not been hit as hard as more northern countries.) Here is an article that was published in the British Medical Journal just yesterday that found that 15% to 20% of the deaths in a hospital in Zambia last summer were traceable to covid.
Impact of COVID-19 in Africa 'vastly underestimated' warn researchers
The impact of COVID-19 in Africa has been vastly underestimated, warn researchers in a study published by The BMJ today.medicalxpress.com
Anticipating Danny's response, he will want to suggest that this is all due to (not a maybe, but due to) the use of the inaccurate PCR tests, probably using too many repetitions. Here is a USAToday fact checker published a week ago on claims that the use of PCR tests are unreliable.
Fact check: Post distorts WHO's COVID-19 PCR testing guidelines
A Facebook post falsely claims WHO has changed its guidance on PCR testing and that asymptomatic individuals will no longer count as COVID-19 cases.www.usatoday.com
While the article mentioned a lot of social media claims to that effect, the tests are in fact accurate. If anything, they underestimate the number of false negatives, not false positives. A high number of repetitions does not produce false positives, but is useful in estimating how infectious the disease is. The article does admit that the test procedures need to be strictly adhered to. So I guess the new out is that the lab technicians in Oman and Zambia are necessarily incompetent. Personally, I would find such a claim insulting.
Your article mentions that there were reports of problems and we do not know how widespread. According to your article:
"WHO's investigation into these reports revealed the tests were not being used appropriately in compliance with the manufacturer's instructions. Laboratories especially ran into problems "when they did not apply the recommended positivity threshold," or the number of PCR cycles needed to amplify the DNA enough to see a positive signal."
"This can result in either false negative results (if the threshold applied is lower) or false positives (if threshold is higher).
Coincidence or not with the WHO changing (more like clarifying) the guidance, the number of new cases has started to plummet in the US from 308,000 to 72,000 ( 77%!!!!) :
It is not just the US, the same in Canada and Mexico as well if you believe in coincidences.
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