Testing . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . .

 

Yeah, yeah yeah. I stopped writing. 

Feeling hurt. 

So I didn’t do it for a little bit.

I’ve had ideas but I’ve been really busy with living a simple life. Mostly I’ve been putting myself together. But I’ve also been  organizing a global pandemic. Like my work? I mean, I rigged an election and covered up a cadre of pedophilic furniture pizza aliens on the side. Do you think Jodie Foster noticed me? 

So, what brings me here after all this time? An SM post that grew out of hand.

You see. It's like this . . .

My kid has a Bio Med Sci degree from a prestigious medical school and is finishing grad school in Bio Ed (as soon as student teaching is allowed again). Today some crazy shit went down on a very rare post on her SM page. So, like a good maaaaahm, I started writing a reply and it gained a life of its own. So, I thought I’d give it legs. Enough has died this year. Let’s resurrect something.

I’m posting this for me and cross-posting on her page for her. Sorry for any overlap or unexplained backstory.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

For fuck’s sake, now I’m in. I’ve been looking at rural Alabama’s college freshman final exams -- and they make more sense than this absolute ridiculousness.

Firstly, let me say that I’m crazy proud of the article my daughter wrote (which was published in NPP when she was just 22 years old) which required dedication to the study of DNA and RNA and all of the out-of-my-wheelhouse stuff she’s uncondescendingly explained to me over the years.[1] And I’m DOUBLY proud that she took the vast knowledge that she obtained from a prestigious university in science, biology, and medicine and has pursued a graduate degree in TEACHING biological sciences in the inner cities and rural hellscapes where superstition and conspiracy often take the place of real scientific understanding. Not because bio grad studies was easy (lol) or because teaching was her last resort (bahahaha) – but because she honestly believes she can make a dent in the misinformation spread by those indifferent to Truth because it is uncomfortable to their small, small, constrictive realities.

Secondly, let’s deal with the OP here.  (Which has over 115 comments today, BTW.)

A "faint" positive on a coronavirus test is still a positive test. Stay home.

To which I said, “That's like being just a little pregnant, right?” 

Hang on—it matters.

Scientists among us – please correct me if I’m wrong, my ego is not fragile. I’m a doctor[2] but not THAT KIND of doctor so let’s make sure I understand what’s happening BEFORE I make any claims at all. From what Kid#1 has taught me, I think I understand that PCRs are antigen tests; and if I understood correctly, antigen tests are used to detect a lot of different viruses, especially respiratory viruses, and this year emergency protocols went into place for SARS-CoV2. While, as I understand it, a nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) is preferred, it is often predicted by a PCR – which is why Kid#1 commented on a “faint positive.” BUT, as I’ve learned from my many Covid-19+ student cases, a PCR can produce a false negative if the viral load is low (but not a false positive because the virus exists – thus my earlier pregnancy comment (a corollary to when hGH is present)), therefore, an NAAT is only needed if it is inconsistent with the context in which the patient presents symptoms. Have I understood? So, yeah. A faint positive is still a fucking positive with a low viral load, but still a highly contagious and deadly viral positive. Sorry if that’s not scientific enough. It just seems obvious.

But since some insist on “proof” beyond the obvious, here’s more than a non-peer reviewed preprint (unworked, yet valuable – don’t knock it, hypothesis) – all of these sources are working with polymerase chain reaction tests as a baseline. ALL. OF. THEM.

Scientists are very comfortable with the fact that “False-negative results can be achieved and failure to quarantine the infected patient would be a major setback in containing the viral transmission” (Clinical Infections Diseases. 2020 Jul 28; 71(15):778-785). Further, a later study showed that, “negative antibody findings in . . . patients might be due to the lack of blood samples at [a] later stage of illness. . . . The presence of antibodies . . . rapidly increased . . . by day 15 after onset. In contrast, RNA detectability decreased . . . during days 15-39” and it’s for this reason that this study found that “Combining RNA and antibody detection significantly improved the sensitivity of pathogenic diagnosis for COVID-19” (Clinical Infectious Diseases.  2020 Nov 19; 71(16): 2027-2034). What’s more, doctors have known for a while that, “Over the 4 days of infection before the typical time of symptom onset (day 5), the probability of a false-negative result in an infected person decreases from 100% . . . on day 1 to 67% . . . on day 4 (Annals of Internal Medicine. 2020 Aug 18; 173(4): 262-267).[3]

Need more? Have a look at “Antibody Detection and Dynamic Characteristics in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019.” Clinical Infections Diseases. 2020 Nov 5; 71(8): 1930-1934. Or “Analysis of Adjunctive Serological Detection to Nucleic Acid Test for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Infection Diagnosis.” International Immunopharmacology. 2020 Sep; 86: 106746.[4] They ALL support the premise that a PCR test may show a false negative but not a false positive. If a false negative, an NAAT is only necessary to confirm Covid-19 if there are NO SYMPTOMS OR CONTEXT to support the diagnosis.

I mean, it’s contagious. Viruses want to live. They are going to spread.[5]

Next, I believe we can deal with one underlying text: Kid#1 ’s earlier post about her (anonymous) friend who tested positive but went out and about anyway. For which Kid#1 took some bizarrely decontextualized shit.

(This should be a footnote – but, nah: Some of you read that post and some of you were reasonably confused at the unreasonably wild accusations of “attacking” and “bullying.” Here’s the deal, some sorority girl (#notallsororitygirls) got unduly butthurt about a thing that had not one thing to do with her things – in the new post prompting this, some DNA-connected-grown-ass-desolate-AARP acted like an unduly butthurt sorority girl commenting on things that have nothing to do with any of her things aside from her twisted ideology that hundreds of thousands of people should die “for the sake of the market”[6] all while conveniently denying that hundreds of thousands of people are dying in this country alone. It’s genuinely that simple. And that irrational. And that selfish (and therefore lonely) and broken-souled. It’s 2020 in a nutshell – in real time – for your entertainment.)

 

As for the larger underlying text? Sorry to regurgitate and pummel that vomit with masticated facts: over 1.62 million people have died of Covid19 worldwide and over 300K in America alone – SINCE MARCH (and we just got a glimmer of a vaccine that has been in the works since before the 2009H1N1 outbreak). Anyone who has tried working anything by committee knows that you can’t fake that kind of conspiracy. And all the bullshit about “sUrViVaBiLiTy”? That has to do with those who contract it, not total population. I don’t feel the need to post a clicky for anyone because that’s how math and statistics work. It just is. Like it or not.

And sometimes we survive things that leave us physically, emotionally, economically, and even patriotically scarred.

But hear me – there are individuals who give no fucks about their fellow citizens, even their immediate family members, having to live with physical, emotional, economic, and civic injuries as long as it doesn’t inconvenience their pocketbook and “happiness.” I understand that these are only those who are compassionless and eternally jaded on a spiritual and emotional level; and I weep for them and all of their many mortifications, but I will not engage with them – nor should you.

I have, myself, had[7] 10 loved ones (immediate and extended family and close friends) contract Covid-19. I’ll never see 3 of them again. 3/10 – gone – forever. Plus, there are many dozens of less close friends and acquaintances, some of whom I see others mourn.  I’m not alone in this. Not nearly.  

Those Americans who live in isolated rural areas may never see the same statistics we see in larger rural counties, suburban counties, or big cities. But it doesn’t make it less true that people we love are dying. Or that people we love have to watch their patients die. Or that people we don’t know are dying in vast numbers or that people we don’t know have to watch their patients die at an extraordinary – and preventable – rate. It doesn’t have to revolve around us to be “real.”

And, geez, now to the comments section. Thanks to those of you who are rational. And – know what? Hats off to those of you who are irrational but at least humane. Humanity for the win, I say.

Because Covid-19 isn’t the only disease we are dealing with here. We have, not a pandemic but, a national endemic of anti-intellectualism fueled by capitalistic sadism – that is to say, we have an ongoing infestation of Reagan-era throwbacks who don’t care if their fellow citizens live or die as long as – ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, MINE, MINE, MINE, MINE! These poor, lost, regressionists see some sort of romance in the fiction of rugged individualism and a misguided bootstraps mentality.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean just Boomies – there are those for whom the trickle-down virus remained dormant and has reemerged in an era where giving a shit about one’s neighbor (physically or philosophically) has become too unwieldy for their fragility.

Weak-minded and selfish, this new generation is absurd – Reaganomics sans Reagan.

Consider Denver Riggleman, a former Air Force officer who became a National Security Agency contractor who eventually became a US Representative of a conservative district in Virginia who based his political philosophy on Tea Party principles who became a penitent who recently renounced the GOP and his position of leadership. He just wrote a book, _Bigfoot . . . It’s Complicated_ that draws direct parallels between Bigfoot enthusiasts and Covid deniers, Q-conspirators, vote-fraud adherents, and MAGA worshippers (a grotesque vin diagram). I mean – even former Republicans are saying, “This shit is bonkers.”

And I assume it has footnotes, so . . .

These odd relics often have a contradictory mindset that runs like this:  

I DON’T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT unless it’s providing me with corporate breaks and qualified immunity, I BELIEVE IN STATES RIGHTS except when the people of another state have elected officials with whom I disagree, THE FIRST AMMENDMENT except when my misunderstanding of science is involved, THE PEOPLE’S TAXES SHOULDN’T GO TO SERVICES except the ones I benefit from (like DIC), THE SECOND AMMENDMENT except the part where militias are supposed to be well-regulated by the government instead of a flustercuck on Parlar, THE REST OF THE CONSTITUTION except the parts that say I should sit the fuck down because I don’t really understand that meme that I circulated based solely on confirmation bias. And ALL LIVES MATTER as long as mine matters more.

Yes. America has a sickness for the sickness.

Get up. Come on. Get down with . . . you know.

Yes, there is a pandemic. But there is also something eating away at the pancreas[8] of our nation. It’s the kind of disorder that causes chronic dysfunction. An inability to properly process what could be otherwise helpful.

Superficiality and greed strike me as symptoms rather than causes. Likewise, mistrust (on all sides) and contempt (again, on all sides). Somehow, the anti-intellectualism of the McCarthy Era has resurrected and is now asking, “Are you now or have you ever been . . .?”

But I think it’s treatable, if not curable.[9]

And, I mean, we already have a pretty solid test …

Right?

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[1] I remember back in April, when all of this was new, that she called to tell me that she qualified to run PCR testing and explained antigen testing (again, out-of-my-sizable-wheelhouse) so that even I understood it (and has now posted an original PPT on her own page for everyone else).

[2] And Joseph Epstein be damned, I AM a doctor.

[3] Also Epub 2020 May 13.

[4] Also Epub 2020 Jun 26.

[5] Remind me to post that poem about what God said about viruseseseseseseses.

[6] Serious question – if Libertarianism is so awesome, why has NO country ever tried it as their main economic philosophy – or secondary economic philosophy – or tertiary …. anything. Ever. It’s OK – I’ll wait.

[7] In addition to a spreadsheet full of beloved students.

[8] Look, man. I’m not comparing diabetes to a national disease. It’s just a metaphor.

[9] Then I remember that there are anti-vaxxers who have been so foundationally traumatized that they will never trust an inoculation. Another metaphor.