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TNK's avatar

There are a lot of Asimov's "Hmm that's funny... 's in those stats. There is really no way to have all of those things be true and for the narrative to survive. What we can say is more than likely true: 1-Serology tests are AT BEST highly unreliable, which completely disqualifies them for drawing any significant conclusions. 2- PCR testing is AT BEST highly unreliable and when it doesn't correlate with unique clinical observations of illness is complete misleading trash (asymptomatic silent spread!!). 3- Whatever "it" may have been, it was neither deadly nor highly contagious in at least MOST situations, not even for the elderly (see also the Diamond Princess). 4- All those things being true, the "pandemic", wasn't. 5- there is no way to justify the measures taken, certainly not in hindsight, but also certainly 5 years ago because all those things were known 5 years ago.

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Dr Mike Yeadon's avatar

I wonder how many of us have considered what it is, exactly, that is being measured in “covid serology”?

There a number of ways to approach the question, “Are there antibodies to something relevant to an illness in this patient’s blood sample?”

It’s not necessary to believe in germ theory for this question to be reasonable. Some people have antibodies to chemical adducts formed as a result of ingesting a drug which can give rise to reactive products which can bind to long-lived structural proteins. This is a new molecule which your body may recognise as foreign, prompting autoimmune attack. Antibodies might be a part of that.

If you wanted to investigate whether the individual was carrying such antibodies, you might synthesise in a lab some of the adduct and adhere it to the bottom of plastic, multi-welled plates. You could then add a sample of the patient’s serum, then wash the plate, then “develop” it by adding, for example, donkey-anti human antibodies to which a colour-generating molecule has been bound. When you’ve done the last step, allowing colour to appear, the amount of the colour is precisely measured using a spectrophotometer.

The important thing to note is that any such measurement is indirect. You can’t directly measure the amount of “antibody to the alleged virus”.

I don’t know what procedure is followed when doing the serology referred to here. I remember looking, a couple of years ago, for the original “methods paper” and not finding it. By this I mean an analogous paper to the one for the original PCR based test for the alleged virus (aka the Corman-Drosten paper). Given how widely serology has been used, it’s critical to understand exactly how what’s claimed to be able to measure “circulating antibodies to SARS-CoV-2” works. Pitfalls in the broad category of what are called “immunoassays” are legion. It’s very common to uncover cross-reactivity to things other than the nominal objective.

Without the methods paper, I tend to disregard any claims made about serology in this context. Unlike PCR, development and use of immunoassays is something I’ve done personally (they were considered quite new technology back then!). One thing is certain. These assays cannot be measuring antibodies to “SARS-CoV-2 virus”, because that’s an in silico construct. It isn’t antibodies to “related coronaviruses” for the same reason.

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