Following the Science?

 

Covid19 has obviously been on everyone's mind the past two years, and in part due to an obsessed mainstream media and overbearing authorities.  We’ve had numerous people test positive for Covid19 in the past two years locally but never once are we told what strain they had, and in some instances they have absolutely no symptoms.  Now a little bit of background for me: I got extremely sick in late December of 2019 (Christmas day was the onset, in fact).  I wasn’t bad Christmas day, and even went into the assisted living facility that day to wish all of them a merry Christmas.  The next day, I tested positive for influenza B.  A couple of days of medication, and I was getting better, until I suddenly spiked a fever and had it off and on for 5 days, had difficulty breathing, was horribly congested in my lungs, and lost my sense of taste and smell (which was odd considering that only happened in the past when my sinuses and nasal passage were completely plugged, which in this instance they were not.).  Now this is before Covid was officially Covid, mind you, so I never officially had it then, despite that in the fall of 2019, a good third of our town had this same “unknown respiratory illness” that left us all with a weeks-long horrible cough afterward.  It is worth pointing out also that blood tests from at least December of 2019 confirm it was here in the US, with some speculating that it was even here in August of 2019.  To my knowledge, no one died of it during that time.  

Fast forward now a year and two-thirds, through repeated misdirection and conflicting information  from those in charge (China, the WHO, the CDC, “phony” Fauci, and the like), through ventilators, deaths, mutated variants, where it appeared that the common cold and the flu completely disappeared during that time.  In mid October of last year, I had a couple of days of “feverish” feeling (with no actual fever), and a mild cough.  Only because my wife tested positive for Covid19 after running a fever, was I tested, and yes, it was positive.  Apparently I had it for 8 days and didn’t even suspect it.  One of my rheumatologists claims I was unaware because I take regular hydroxychloroquine for my rheumatoid arthritis (you know, that drug that all the talking heads claim is dangerous to take and shouldn't be used for Covid treatment?), while the other rheumatologist claims it has no effect on Covid 19!  In the meantime, I attended volleyball games, group functions, and the like, and in all instances, those I was closest to never came down with Covid19.

Now here we are at the beginning of 2022, and the mainstream media is in a full panic about the Omicron variant (pronounced OH-mi-cron, NOT AH-mi-cron), despite that to date, apparently not one person has died of it.  And once again, the common cold seems absent, despite the deep freeze we are currently in.

Now I’m not questioning whether or not I had it back in October: while I didn’t lose my sense of taste or smell, I did notice after the fact, that they both “changed,” to where things didn’t taste right, so I assume I had it then as well.  But it made me think: Where is the common cold, which is also a coronavirus?  What about the other common coronaviruses?  There are 4, according to the CDC, that cause the common cold.  There’s even a “fact sheet” that tells us how to help prevent the spread of them, which sounds an awful lot like the information regarding stopping the spread of Covid19 (minus the mask, of course).  There are also coronaviruses that causes SARS and MERS, which are more serious.  And then of course, we come to Covid19, or SARS-Cov-2.

Considering how common the common cold is, it made me wonder that since it is also often caused by these 4 different coronaviruses, how does a rapid test actually distinguish between Covid19 and other coronaviruses?  They are all distinguished by the spikes on their outer shell - the very thing that the mRNA vaccines are supposed to be “replicating” to help the body develop immunity to Covid19.  

So I dove in, trying to do some research to see how the rapid test distinguishes one from another.  In other words, considering all of the reports of both false positives and false negatives out there (admittedly not fact checked by me), and reports of them being only 50% reliable (also not fact checked by me), I wanted to see just how reliable they are, while not doubting that my positive last fall was indeed a positive.

So I searched on "DuckDuckGo:" “how does a Covid rapid test distinguish between covid19 and other coronaviruses?”  It seemed like a good wording to pull up any information out there from any official sites: WHO, CDC, various medical journals, and the like.  I was astonished at the results, or lack thereof.

Two pages of results yielded some articles (mostly CDC) on how Covid19 affects the body differently than other coronaviruses.  Some purportedly debunk claims that the PCR test can’t distinguish between Covid19 and the flu (even I understand those are two completely different viruses, so no big deal there, despite that is not what I asked the search engine to find).   Several sites gave me comparisons between the PCR test and the rapid test, which only skirted around the theoretical unreliability of the rapid test, listing many reasons why it may not detect the virus.  The ONLY article that answered the question I asked was from a now debunked fact check site used and paid for by (you guessed it) Facebook, to claim that “no, PCR tests don’t detect other coronaviruses.”  That’s interesting since I didn’t ask about the PCR test (which I understand to be different than the rapid test, according to the CDC’s own website), and since there is no supporting material to back up their “debunking” of the supposedly false Facebook post which makes the claim to the contrary.  But there are plenty of articles that pop up calling “Fullfact” a bogus fact check site paid for by both Soros and Facebook.  One website claimed to debunk my question, but with a CDC link that relates to antibody testing, not virus testing.  Following that link does indeed show it talking of past infections, not current ones.

The last link led me to refine my search somewhat.  So I searched for “how does a rapid test distinguish between Covid19 and the common cold?”  Basically, I got the same results, with the exception that most sites explained the difference between Covid19 symptoms and the common cold symptoms.  No new information was gleaned other than what I’ve already identified here in the links.  

So how do I verify that a rapid test does NOT in fact, detect other coronaviruses?  For that matter, given the PCR test attempts to ID the genetic material of the Covid19 virus, how does it distinguish between other Coronaviruses and Covid19?  Nothing pops up in my search for either of these questions, other than the false “fact check” claim from a dubious site.  It’s time to call the local clinic and see if someone there can tell me.

After speaking with a person whom I know and trust at the clinic (who I am not naming out of respect for their privacy and anonymity), while they could not specifically answer the question I had, I came away with some reassurance from their understanding of the matter - more than I had with the completely lacking information from my internet searches.  False positives are rare with the rapid test, but false negatives should not necessarily be trusted.  The longer PCR test is the more reliable one, and it was used in respiratory coronavirus testing long before Covid19, and always was reliable before Covid19.  So while this was not the specificity I was looking for, considering the source, I have confidence in trusting the answer.  But given that coronaviruses are still similar in structure (i.e. the spike protein on the outer shell) and yet cause wildly different symptoms as well as potential lethality, my question still remains unanswered.  The Delta variant was rampant when I tested positive in October, but yet was never told what "strain" I had, nor have I seen any information on what different tests are used to determine the variants as well, despite that we are simply to trust that it is now the Omicron variant running rampant through the country.

Like so many things we’ve seen in the past two years regarding Covid, it is just one more  thing that casts doubt on the reliability of science and what we are told by those in charge.  Sadly, science, which was supposed to be the search for absolute truth, has now been sold to the highest bidder or the most influential political party.  (See these past entries for some more insight into this)  Our society and the world has gone along with it all, and has now deified science, instead of placing their trust in the creator of all things first. 

Also like so many things, many of my (and our) questions remain unanswered, because we are fed a steady diet of proven falsehoods, partisan rantings, and dubious and unproven or supported scientific claims.  Like my former profession of Sedimentary Petrology (geology), I am finding that to trust in science implicitly is indeed to turn it into a false god, and always at the expense of the one true God - the triune God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  

None of this means that those of us skeptical of the past two years' worth of the pandemic don't take Covid seriously, and don't do things to help mitigate the spread of it.  What it does mean is that few things, if any, are as they appear or as we are told, and it's long past time to put our collective trust back in God first.  Let the Scriptures guide us in how we understand science.  Science should never guide us in how we understand the Scriptures.