The Absurdity Continues: A Test For All Seasons

The current administration just announced that they are going to provide 500 million test kits for Covid.  These kits will be distributed to the general public somehow and will test for something in some way associated with Covid.

Pardon my skepticism, but I have to wonder just what they will be testing, and what will they do with the results.  After all, the CDC recently withdrew their request to the FDA for emergency use authorization for the PCR Covid test.  For most of the last two years, this test has been considered the Gold Standard for distinguishing between an active Covid infection, and the antibody residuum of recovery from a prior Covid infection.  Alternative antibody tests are widespread and can detect with fair specificity the leftovers of an infection, so they can be useful to determine how many people have been infected and recovered.

The CDC is now advocating, through a link to the FDA website, an alternative RT-PCR test that will detect both Covid and Influenza.  It is not clear how the test will distinguish between the two diseases, or if they will simply be reported under a single result – further obscuring the differences between the two diseases.  The only explanation the CDC provides is that since we are now heading into flu season, it is useful to have a test that detects both diseases.

Home test kits have been available for a while, now, but in reality, nearly all of them should be called home collection kits.  They provide the materials to collect samples but require that the samples be sent off to a lab for analysis.  The lab then reports back with the results.  Both antigen and molecular (PCR) tests are available.

Presumably, some versions of these tests are the tests to be produced in the hundreds of millions for distribution to Americans across the land.

So what’s the catch?

There are several, actually.  For starters, which kind of test will be distributed?  Will the tests detect current, active infections, or will they only report that someone might have a current infection, or they might have recovered from one in the past?  If they don’t detect an active infection, the only useful result they can provide is to indicate what fraction of the population has recovered and is now immune – in other words, where do we stand on herd immunity.

If the tests are the sort to detect an active case, and samples have to be sent to a lab for processing, I would expect that there would be a significant period between the time the samples were collected, and the labs worked through a massive backlog of tests.  It would, at that point, be likely that someone infected would have already recovered, or died.  Again, what would be the point of the test?

I am going to assume that the tests would have to be processed at a laboratory and that the results would be reported to the government, and maybe to the individual.

That raises additional questions.

Now it is a fundamental premise of sampling theory that if a particular property is more or less randomly distributed in a population, the more samples you take, the more instances of that property will be detected.  The proposed Covid tests would be a huge sampling of the population for the presence of Covid or antibodies to Covid.

Even if active cases were rare, such massive testing would yield large numbers of cases.  What could we expect a government to do with that information?

Given the determination of our current administration to jab everyone, I can see the headlines now: “Test results show Covid raging throughout the country – mandatory vaccination essential” and “Vaccination passports and universal lockdowns needed to address the massive epidemic of Covid uncovered in testing.”

In other words, massive testing would produce evidence of huge numbers of Covid infected citizens.  Never mind that there would be lots of people with mild or even unnoticeable infections; disregard the false positives; perhaps even claim that people who have recovered could still be infectious.  Just like that, instant justification for vaccine mandates and “proof” to show the courts that the good of the community outweighs the rights of the individual, and everyone must be vaccinated whether they want it or not.

In fact, universal testing is such a great idea and opportunity, that they might even select tests that have high false-positive rates, just to make sure there are lots of “cases” to justify the jab.

But this is our government, you might cry!  How can they betray us so?!  I would submit that it is no longer our government, and hasn’t been for a while now.  A recent article did an excellent job of laying out over a dozen examples of how the CDC and FDA have spread disinformation and misinformation about Covid and vaccines – all slanted to convincing people that the mRNA injections are safe, effective, good for children and all living things, and encouraging people to get the injection.

Why is there such a push worldwide to compel people to inject themselves with a demonstrably harmful substance that does not provide the protection against disease that it has been represented to provide?  Why do they want to inject us with something that at best only makes the symptoms of an infection less severe?  Why are they willing to violate every principle of Constitutional rights that have been the bedrock foundation of this country from the time of its founding to just two years ago?  Why are so many willing to destroy lives and livelihoods in order to force compliance?  Why such insistence in the face of a large and growing body of scientific evidence that the vaccines not only do no good but also cause great harm?  Why such deception and coercion and fearmongering for a disease that in its current form is literally indistinguishable from the common cold?  Why has investigation of therapeutics and treatment methods been actively discouraged or even prohibited?

In warfare, there are times when it is necessary to go all-in, without reserve, to win or lose all.  The current global push to force everyone to submit to an injection of such a questionable substance has all the earmarks of such a military-style thrust.  Is that what the jab is all about?  Are we in the midst of a global power struggle?  Is it We the People against the Global Elite?

Two years ago, such thoughts and questions would have been conspiracy theory material.  With every new push, every new mandate, every new lie, every new disregard of legitimate objection, every protest ignored, it becomes more obvious that there is some motivation beyond public health involved.  It would seem that this introduction of mass testing is simply another attempt to con the public into accepting a highly questionable injection with known harmful effects for no clear benefit to anyone beyond a powerful few.

Is this how freedom is lost – not through conquest, but through acquiescence?  Are we willing to surrender essential liberties in exchange for promises that if we comply we can have back the lives that we had before?  By what authority except that which we provide does any government presume to take or give what is rightfully ours?

These are all uncomfortable questions, but then, these are uncomfortable times.

One of our founding fathers said it best.

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. “ (Thomas Paine – The Crisis December 23, 1776.)

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