Does Quantification Matter?
(Note: Article originally written 10/28/2020)
I was emailed an article from a blog by Jon Rappoport titled The Smoking Gun: Where is the coronavirus? The CDC says it isn’t available. It posed a challenge to existing policies regarding coronavirus based on a July 13 CDC Article, which at the bottom of page 39, second sentence reads as follows:
“No virus isolates with a quantified amount of the SARS-CoV-2 are currently available.”
In his blog, Rappoport levels criticism of the article which admits no quantifiable isolates but nevertheless claims a diagnostic workflow in the absence of available virus isolates or original patient specimens:
"This is like saying, 'We have the 20 trillion dollars, they are contained somewhere in our myriad accounts, we just don’t know where.' If you don’t know where, you don’t know you have the money."
If you read Rappoport’s blog with regularity it is easy to see he does not obfuscate his opinions and bias with respect to the media establishment and those we may affectionately call “the powers that be.” If a person were to posit the idea that the last eight months of lockdowns, business closures, enforced masks and social distancing were all for naught, that individual may likely face severe rebuke and even be advised by some friends and family to check his or her head for the tinfoil hat.
But here is the deal. If you are reading our blog here in The Library it is most likely because you are at least familiar with our most recent book about a guy who was sentenced to ten years for something the chemists testified could not be quantified. Like Rappoport, I too have a bias with respect to Ali’s story insofar as I researched his case ad nauseum and was the primary writer of two petitions to vacate his conviction, three appellate briefs and three petitions to the United States Supreme Court. The majority of data upon which his story is based is public record now available on this website in the Online Appendix.
I am sympathetic to those who may have difficulty swallowing Rappoport’s interpretation of an isolated paragraph in a lengthy CDC article as being dispositive of the very existence of the coronavirus. His claim measured in contrast to the massive hysteria the global community has embraced so readily would, naturally, make many skeptical. I went online to see if there was the possibility this article was being quoted out of context. I found a January 23 article from Eurosurveilance which reads consistent with the CDC article:
“Among the foremost priorities to facilitate public health interventions is reliable laboratory diagnosis. In acute respiratory infection, RT-PCR is routinely used to detect causative viruses from respiratory secretions. We have previously demonstrated the feasibility of introducing robust detection technology based on real-time RT-PCR in public health laboratories during international health emergencies by coordination between public and academic laboratories. In all of these situations, virus isolates were available as the primary substrate for establishing and controlling assays and assay performance.
In the present case of 2019-nCoV, virus isolates or samples from infected patients have so far not become available to the international public health community. We report here on the establishment and validation of a diagnostic workflow for 2019-nCoV screening and specific confirmation, designed in absence of available virus isolates or original patient specimens. Design and validation were enabled by the close genetic relatedness to the 2003 SARS-CoV, and aided by the use of synthetic nucleic acid technology.”
These two paragraphs provide a remarkable statement that really begs discussion. In the first paragraph the writer explains that an RT-PCR test is supposed to be effective when the procedure is coordinated in laboratories where “virus isolates were available as the primary substrate for establishing and controlling assays and assay performance.” There are three ten- dollar words that need to be unpacked in that sentence: isolate; substrate; and assay. Googling these three terms yield the following results from Oxford Languages.
Isolate: a culture of microorganisms isolated for study
Substrate: the surface or metal on or from which an organism lives, grows or obtains its nourishment
Assay: a procedure for measuring the biological or immunological activity of a sample
The premise of the first paragraph establishes the standard operating procedures in the industry when incorporating the RT-PCR test. It presumes a culture of microorganisms that have been isolated. It also requires a sample of the surface environment upon which the organism lives and feeds so it can grow. These two elements are conditions precedent for the success of the procedure for measuring the immunological activity of the organism in question. So, now we come to the second paragraph:
“In the present case of 2019-nCoV, virus isolates or samples from infected patients have so far not become available to the international public health community. We report here on the establishment and validation of a diagnostic workflow for 2019-nCoV screening and specific confirmation, designed in absence of available virus isolates or original patient specimens. Design and validation were enabled by the close genetic relatedness to the 2003 SARS-CoV, and aided by the use of synthetic nucleic acid technology.”
So, if I read this right, the paragraph above claims the “diagnostic workflow” was “designed in absence of available virus isolates or original patient specimens.” Wait a minute! I thought I heard Joe Biden, in his last debate, state over 200,000 people have died from COVID in the United States. How is it within any realm of argument that if over 200,000 people have died from COVID we have no available patient specimens from which to extract tissue samples of the microorganisms and the surrounding cellular medium in which those organisms are growing? I am no biologist so I am very open to anyone out there who may enlighten me on this one. I can understand, if this all originated in China, that in January there was an absence of samples. But by July? As Joe Biden would say, “Come on, man.”
An identical statement to the CDC’s is printed in an April 16 Working Document of the European Commission on Current Performance of COVID-19 Test Methods as well as the diagnostic panel at labcovid19.com (which appears to be a products page for the CDC).
CNN, Fox, Facebook, and Twitter remind us daily of mortality rates of enormous proportions based primarily on repeated positions of the CDC. You Tube inserts a standard line of COVID-19 choices in its feed whether you ever click on one of them or not. Has any one of those media pieces provided any data analysis on the virus beyond the repeated claims that it originated in China and is similar to one from 2003? With exception of Doctor Fauci, how many wandering the supermarket and the hardware stores can name one doctor who recommended wearing a mask to protect themselves from a presumably airborne virus that officials have admitted they have never substantively examined under a microscope?
If the CDC is "gospel" why isn't the agency's feet held to the fire on this by CNN, NBC or FOX? Why was this not a relevant issue to debate before drastic steps were taken that caused unemployment to rise and businesses to close with no hope of recovery in the foreseeable future? And, most importantly, why are doctors who do voice skepticism of the efficacy of RT-PCR testing and masks ridiculed and censored from Facebook when the CDC admits it cannot even quantify the virus?
One of the big conflicts on the horizon is the contemplated measure for encouraging (if not mandating) a vaccine being rushed through development at “warp speed.” Wouldn’t it be useful to know how biochemists are able to create a serum to prevent a virus they have never been able to examine or quantify? Of further concern is the curious policy recently announced by Facebook of “rejecting ads globally that discourage people from getting a vaccine.” Isn’t it a fair question to ask, if peer reviewed science confirms this virus has never been isolated, whether any vaccine being developed is being done so under a theory that the virus has a close genetic relatedness to the 2003 SARS-CoV? And would such a procedure not constitute an “experiment” which would be governed under Title 21 CFR § PART 50 Protection of Human Subjects in the United States Code of Federal Regulations? How can any government official suggest the mandate of an experimental vaccine for a virus no one has seen yet under a microscope?
Again, I am no biologist so I sincerely welcome cross examination and impeachment of both the data and analysis I have presented in this article. But I do not see why the conversation should be censored by Google and Facebook just because the resultant position may encourage many to opt out of an arguably experimental vaccine developed at “warp speed.”
If you have read, or are reading, Ali Awad’s story you are aware that the government’s entire case against sixty two Somali immigrants was premised on the argued presence of a derivative chemical that degrades within 24-72 hours after the host plant is cut from the ground. On the witness stand, chemists from the DEA were unable to testify to any measurable amount of cathinone and the jury found the government completely failed to show that Ali or any of his codefendants put so much as one gram of cathinone on the streets of this country from the plants imported from Kenya and Yemen. As any attorney would point out, one need not succeed at a conspiracy to be convicted of conspiracy. But to be subject to forfeiture of money and assets derived from the sale of a controlled substance one must have sold that controlled substance in the first place. So how is Ali subject to a ten-million-dollar forfeiture money judgment for the sale of “khat containing cathinone” if the jury found no cathinone ever hit the streets for sale?
These inconsistencies were preserved as a matter of public record in the district and appellate courts even though the issue was never brought to the forefront sufficiently to overturn the money judgment. When the reader takes the time to examine Ali’s complex story in detail it isn’t hard to see that people of significant power and influence obfuscated an injustice and violation of the liberties of over five dozen immigrants who had done nothing more serious than shipping mangoes or bananas without inspection. It is further difficult not to see the goal at the beginning of Operation Somalia Express was to present to the American public the optics of a massive terrorist operation here in our back yard. If the book had never been written no one might ever know there existed several legitimate concerns over the integrity of Operation Somalia Express.
In this current crisis, with respect to the lockdowns and mask mandates, most folks are keenly aware that many disagree with these measures. But few in mainstream media seem to grant audience to those who challenge those policies while the internet and social media shows a surplus of professionals in the fields of both chemistry, medicine, and epidemiology who bring significant data forward to call to question the current “consensus.” Is it not cause for serious concern that their voices are so often being deplatformed or shadow banned by organizations like Twitter, Facebook. YouTube and Google who, nevertheless, maintain a statutory liability shield because, as platforms as opposed to publishers, they are not supposed to be engaged in activities like “fact-checking” to begin with?
Social distancing should not mean distancing from discourse and data simply because the argued conclusions intrude upon our comfort zones. Rappoport’s conclusion may be subject to debate but it is a debate worthy of fair and open forum.