No-one's addressed the problem I mentioned in my previous post - how accurate is the covid test?
When I was arguing with a 'libertarian' recently he was going on about cycles. I was puzzled and assumed the test was like a litmus test, yes or no.
It just struck me that the German guy was going on about cycles, and maybe I wasn't that well informed about the subject.
This link suggests there is a problem:
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/09/01/covid-tests
(nothing to suggest it's a dodgy site).
It says:
"PCR tests look for genetic matter from the new coronavirus using amplification cycles. The fewer cycles needed to detect genetic matter from the virus, the higher a patient's viral load and the more likely that person is contagious"
It continues "many coronavirus tests have fairly high cycle thresholds, with most set at 40 and some set at 37. That means a number of patients who aren't carrying much of the new coronavirus are still testing positive, even though they may not be contagious...tests with high cycle thresholds could be detecting genetic fragments of the virus, or pieces of the virus that are leftover from a previous infection that don't pose any current transmission risk."
For me, the bottom line is QMC saying they're getting increasing numbers of covid patients and won't be able to do some operations because of the extra load. I don't agree with brushing it off as just nasty flu.
But if anything, this makes it more important that a test and trace system spots people who are infected and stops them passing it on. If the basic test throws up loads of false positives, that would be profoundly unhelpful.