Founder of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (IPAK), Dr. Lyons-Weiler has a PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology, and he's held research positions at the University of Nevada and the University of Pittsburgh. (source: https://jameslyonsweiler.com/james-lyons-weiler-phd/)
"Abstract
COVID-19 public health responses, including lockdowns and diagnostic testing strategies, have had consequences... While harm to small businesses, unemployment, worsening poverty, death from cancer, increased suicides, social isolation, and restriction of freedom all increase the perceived need for drastic responses from the top, flawed measures are costly. A diagnostic assay of tests for COVID-19 depends for its validity on its sensitivity and specificity assessed in terms of the true positive rate (TPR), false positive rate (FPR), true negative rate (TNR), and false negative rate (FNR) of the assays. In this pandemic, RealTime—Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) testing has been relied on for drastic top-down responses... Here I focus on false positive results where RT-PCR testing suggests many infections by SARS-CoV-2 where there are none...
Introduction
... The cost of the false positive depends entirely on the policies put in place to respond to positive tests, which range from a patient becoming aware... to shutting down schools, businesses, and public spaces... Unnecessary disruptions can lead to job loss, and permanent shuttering of businesses. On an individual patient basis, false positives can lead to useless and harmful quarantining, wasteful contact tracing, and patient harm due to failure to provide an accurate diagnosis. If the patient is hospitalized due to the results of the test, hospital-acquired infections of SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens is a real and unnecessary risk... For society, inaccurate published rates of 'cases' can lead to unwarranted levels of panic, fear, anxiety, and social stress...
Conclusions
To date, public health responses have included oversimplification of public messages, and bleed-over from misguided attempts using inhumane and immoral tactics to control perception and social behavior, all designed to reduce 'vaccination hesitancy,' — and all without consideration of the attendant negative consequences of such programs... Any cost to society stemming from errant policy is blamed on 'the pandemic', not on the malformed policy or politicization of public health policy positions. Social pressures, once in place, are difficult to reverse...
In the 'Fog of Outbreak', the fear factor has driven people and policies to the naïve position that (1) any death due to COVID-19 is more important than any deaths due to other factors, (2) therefore, all COVID-19 cases must be detected... One thing is clear: false positives are non-zero, and their cost cannot be externalized: they impact everyone. Harvard economists Cutler and Summers project economic losses attributable to COVID-19 to be $16 Trillion dollars, or 90% of the US GDP... COVID-19 has provided an extremely valuable but expensive lesson that perception-control based public health is a failed paradigm."
Copyright (c) 2021 James Lyons-Weiler
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