BisonRoadWarrior
Professor
Posts: 5203
Loc: Where the Bison Roam
Reg: 08-16-06
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02-06-21 12:29 PM - Post#320325
In response to BisonRoadWarrior
A technical question related to the latest disruptions of Bucknell's campus life: Do we know what "cycle threshold" Bucknell is using for its PCR tests?
If Bucknell's answer to that question is higher than 35, it may be a cause for concern and additional questions from students and parents.
For context, there's a growing appreciation among health experts that, across the country and around the world, testing is being performed with an excessively high sensitivity.
That means many people are being called "positive cases" and condemned to quarantines and social isolation--to say nothing of sports suspensions--when they aren't and won't be sick and aren't and won't be contagious.
The dynamic was documented as early as August, in a New York Times story: "Your Coronavirus Test is Positive; Maybe It Shouldn't Be."
A key quote: "In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found."
In a recent essay at The Hill,* Duke and Stanford experts explained the consequence of excessively sensitive PCR tests: "Dead COVID-19 RNA in the nose or mouth of someone who was never sick could create a positive PCR result. Recovered patients who test negative and are non-infectious can still come up positive repeatedly in the following months. These are neither new cases nor infectious ones needing quarantine but could be incorrectly counted as such."
* "Appropriate Use of PCR Needed for Focused Response to the Pandemic"
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