“Locke…is concerned about a Jefferson County group that may be spreading misinformation concerning the accuracy of the tests, claiming incorrectly that up to 90 percent of COVID-19 tests provide false positives.”  [Peninsula Daily News, 2/7/21]

“Public naysaying on the spread of COVID-19 continued at Monday’s meeting of the board of county commissioners, with the public comment period being marked by more claims of false positive COVID-19 tests by some Jefferson County residents…  ‘That kind of denialism is becoming more dangerous,’ Locke said.”  [The Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader, 2/3/21]

Who are these citizens being called dangerous by Jefferson County’s Health Officer, Dr. Thomas Locke?  They are concerned citizens being censored by all media on the peninsula except the Port Townsend Free Press. 

I am among them.

Dangerous Misinformation?

Over the past year, a group of local researchers has diligently examined data and analyzed information driving the global policies now devastating our world. Independent of our efforts, Stephen Schumacher was also deeply researching, coming to similar conclusions that much of the fear narrative being broadcast didn’t hold up to scrutiny. 

In July 2020, Schumacher submitted a letter to the Port Townsend Leader citing statistics related to COVID-19 (Covid) lockdowns. His letter was withheld from publication for nearly a month, but eventually ran. 

The following month, the Leader flatly refused to print his next letter. Unable to participate in the community opinion forum which “welcome[s] letters from our readers,” Schumacher then paid $500 to purchase ad space to share his information. A second ad, at the end of August, costing $550, warned about problems with the now-infamous discredited models Dr. Locke was citing to justify lockdowns. This was followed by two more ads regarding lockdowns in September and October.

In November, the Leader took censorship to the next level. After first accepting a paid ad about concerns over PCR tests, the publisher emailed Schumacher to inform him that they would not be running it. His ad featured a graph from a Harvard epidemiologist, and cited the Journal of the American Medical Association, the CDC, and other mainstream sources. In an email exchange asking why he was being censored, the publisher wrote, “We need to make decisions based on the best interest of our business.” 

Was the payment Schumacher offered to exercise his right for freedom of expression insufficient when weighed against the newspaper’s role as a propaganda arm of Dr. Locke?

Schumacher took his rejected ad to the Peninsula Daily News. The PDN first agreed to accept his $530, then balked. The ad ultimately ran on Nov. 22. Several weeks later he attempted to buy ad space there a second time, but was told the publisher had rejected it. “When I asked if there was something specific I could have tweaked to make the ad acceptable, the answer was negative,” he said. “The content was verboten.”

PCR tests come into focus

While local censorship was ramping up, many scientists were expressing concerns that the PCR tests, responsible for exploding “case” counts and continued lockdowns, were not reliable. In some experts’ words, they are “not fit for purpose.” Most of this information was also being suppressed. 

But on August 29, 2020, the New York Times published the story, “Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.” It quoted Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina: “from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold [Ct] of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles.” 

Evidence mounted that cycle thresholds are critical, confirming the New York Times story. 

In a September article in Clinical Infectious Diseases, a French team looked at more than 100 studies on PCR tests. All studies found that above 30 cycles “patients could not be contagious as the virus is not detected in culture above this value.” They then performed 3790 of their own tests, reporting similar findings—of the samples that tested positive after 35 PCR cycles, 97% were negative upon viral culture. And of samples testing positive after 37 or more cycles, 100% were culture negative.

The lack of PCR reliability was reinforced in November by an international group of experts who formally challenged these tests as a valid diagnostic tool for identifying Covid cases. In their extensive report—“External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results”—the authors contend that serious defects in the test have “led to worldwide misdiagnosis of infections.” They conclude that the test is “completely unreliable” and “unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

In December, an Italian team documented that when the Covid PCR test is positive only at a high Ct value, the incidence of false positivity is at least 70%. Their article in the Journal of Clinical Virology warns that the detection of viral RNA at a high cycle threshold “needs to be interpreted with caution.”

Revised guidelines from the World Health Organization followed in January. All parties agree that beyond 30-35 cycles, the PCR test cannot reliably provide accurate identification of a Covid case, calling into question case figures worldwide. 

Is this incontestable global consensus—that at high cycle thresholds PCR tests yield mostly false positives—the “misinformation” that Locke speaks of in the PDN quote above?

As revealed by Annette Huenke in her Port Townsend Free Press article, “Is Jefferson County Health Department Overstating COVID Case Numbers?,” the cycle threshold of the PCR test being used in Jefferson County is not 30 or 35 or even 40.  It is 45.  No scientist disputes that with a positive result at 45 Ct, the chance of infection is zero. 

Our test results do not report the cycle count; they merely declare a binary positive or negative. Without the Ct information there is no way to judge viral load, or if the test simply picked up dead viral debris; if the person is contagious, or if the result is a false positive. 

Locke has yet to disprove any of this information.

Censorship and Demonization: the New Normal

For several months I have been among the citizens writing to our county commissioners about this concern. In response, the commissioners repeatedly defer to their expert, Locke. He waves off any responsibility, passing the buck to state authorities—not my problem—while insulting the citizens bringing these issues to light.  

Locke’s attacks have grown increasingly shrill and aggressive towards residents challenging his pronouncements. In a response to a brief request from Annette Huenke asking for data he had referenced in a weekly report broadcast on KPTZ, Locke concluded his email with:

“And no amount of data will convince people who are consumed by pandemic denialism and wish to rationalize their pseudoscientific, sociopathic beliefs.”

In addition to the “pandemic denialism” pejorative he has been using for months, the county’s Public Health Director is now calling citizens who ask relevant, important questions “sociopaths”. It is no wonder that increasing divisiveness is pervading our community.

Our voice is censored by all local media except this online publication. When some of us raised the issue with our county commissioners of free speech being denied by the mainstream press, Commissioner Greg Brotherton rationalized that it was important to have “a unified approach” in messaging the public. That is a euphemism for “official propaganda only.”

The newspapers not only refuse to investigate valid citizen concerns, they allow no right of rebuttal to Locke’s messaging and name-calling. 

On February 10, I submitted this letter to the Leader:

To date, the Leader has not run my letter. 

 

Nor has a letter about PCR tests from Dr. Robert Rennebohm been published, submitted a week prior to mine. An MD who has extensively researched Covid issues, Rennebohm stresses the importance of disclosing Ct values in reporting new Covid cases, underscoring the need for and responsibility of public health departments to change course:

“Medically, morally, and ethically—individuals with positive PCR tests, as well as physicians, epidemiologists, public policy makers, and the public—deserve to know, and need to know, the Ct value at which a SARS-CoV-2 PCR test is positive.  Without Ct information, interpretation of the number of “new COVID cases,” “new COVID hospitalizations” and “new COVID deaths” is severely compromised, as is public policy and the care of individual patients.”

Rennebohm’s detailed explanation of Ct values can be read in the Port Townsend Free Press article, The Importance Of Knowing The Ct Value At Which SARS-CoV-2 PCR Tests Are Positive.

But not even a credentialed physician, one who I daresay has greater understanding of PCR’s uses and limitations than Locke, is permitted to offer a professional perspective in the Leader if it diverges from Jefferson County’s Public Health Director.  Rather than requesting interviews or promoting healthy debate on an issue that is profoundly impacting every one of us, there is only the silencing of any viewpoint that does not support the official narrative.  A “unified approach.”

Valid, scientifically confirmed concerns should generate robust public discussion in our community. Instead, county residents are deluged with one-sided information that is often inaccurate and falls significantly short of adequately educating the public.  Area newspapers, the local radio station, and other media provide a bully pulpit for Locke to disseminate what many scientists around the world would argue is misinformation. 

Reporting all sides of a story is the fundamental purpose of journalism, the recognition that a fully informed citizenry is the foundation of democracy. That has been suspended in our New Normal. Allowing diverse voices to engage in civil discourse is deemed dangerous.   

Cycle threshold values are only a small part of the PCR story, the one that has gotten the most attention. Equally critical is the clear instruction—in accordance with the PCR test’s authorized labeling—that its use should be limited to symptomatic individuals… not inflicted across entire communities of people who, for the most part, are not sick. 

On January 4, the Food and Drug Administration released “Risk of False Results with the Curative SARS-Cov-2 Test for COVID-19: FDA Safety Communication.”  The FDA’s direction to healthcare providers, patients and caregivers is that PCR test use should be “limited to individuals within 14 days of COVID-19 symptoms onset.” Use on asymptomatic people or outside the two-week window was likely to produce false results, or at least inadequately interpretable results.

The story in Jefferson County

Of more than 18,700 tests administered in Jefferson County since March 3, 2020, over 300 cases have been identified as “positive” to date.

 

This includes symptomatic people—those with Covid symptoms like fever, body aches, and sore throat—who may have been tested within the 14-days-of-onset window.  

It also includes people tested who had NO Covid symptoms—those who are in facilities or jobs that require testing; who go to the hospital for unrelated elective procedures; who are admitted to the ER after a heart attack, stroke, or accident; and those who ask to be tested out of fear, or curiosity—some of them getting multiple tests. None of these meet the criteria of showing symptoms in a 14-day window. Most of those tests are inadvisable and prone to false positives.

The only people with positive tests who can arguably be called legitimate cases are the first group—those who presented with Covid symptoms. As Dr. Tom Jefferson, the FDA and others have warned, PCR tests were not designed to be used randomly across general populations. 

And these tests are not always reliable even in diagnosing symptomatic people. Without knowing the cycle threshold values of tests conducted, we have no clear data to identify true cases. 

Over nearly a year, only two dozen of our Covid “cases” have been hospitalized. And even the people in that category likely included false positives. If a person was admitted to the ER due to a heart attack or stroke but tested positive for Covid, they were added to the county “case” tally and put in the Covid ward.  

What is the real picture of Covid in our community? Of the 330 “cases” who received only a yes/no result from a PCR test that ran up to 45 cycles, how many test results were false positives? If the majority of people tested here were asymptomatic, how many of those with positive results were actually contagious? 

Based on testing data the New York Times obtained from three states, only a tenth of the people counted as cases were true Covid positives; 90% were unnecessarily forced to isolate and submit to contact tracing. Jefferson County’s percentage of false positives may not be quite as high as those in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada. But without reviewing the Ct values of our test results, we simply do not know. 

Why accurate case counts matter

In practical terms, being erroneously identified as a Covid case can have serious consequences. A false positive could result in your healthy teenager being quarantined for no reason, leading to suicidal ideation. Suicide rates have risen dramatically, especially among youth, since lockdowns were imposed.  

Your own false positive might mean lost wages or damage to your business. Perhaps most harmful, though, is being stigmatized as a threat to other people’s safety. I know of people who felt perfectly healthy, but tested positive—likely false positives—and even after two weeks of quarantine, were treated like lepers by friends and co-workers afraid to be around them.

In a Daily Mail article, Dr. Tom Jefferson of the internationally acclaimed Cochrane Collaboration gives many examples of how people’s lives are being ruined by a similar testing regime in the UK: 

“Last week I received an email from someone whose results have flip-flopped from positive to negative four times over two months, and another from a man who has been unable to see his elderly mother, isolated in a care home, because she continues to test positive week after week.” People, he says, “are at their wits’ end because they are testing positive for Covid-19 despite having recovered from their symptoms. Some never had symptoms in the first place but are still being told they have the virus long after any possible infection. They are anxious and confused. Their lives are on hold.”

At the extreme, being wrongly labeled a Covid case can kill you. 

Say you are the person described earlier with no Covid symptoms and you have broken a bone. You are rushed to the ER and required to have a PCR test. A false positive result at a 45 cycle threshold places you in the Covid ward next to a contagious true-Covid-positive patient. Whereas your only actual medical issue is from your broken bone, you are now at risk of contracting Covid. And of dying— like the 80-year-old woman being counted as a Jefferson County Covid death. She was put in a Seattle hospital for complications due to surgery and is reported to have died from catching the virus there.

What has all this cost?

How much time, energy and resources have been spent for this massive testing program and the relentless propaganda campaign of ever-rising case numbers used to keep the public in fear?  

What has been the true cost in Jefferson County? Much more than the money expended on 18,000+ tests and all the personnel involved. The impact on our community’s mental health, economic stability and social fabric is incalculable.

Dr. Tom Jefferson calls this deeply flawed testing program a “hugely expensive blunder”:

“I’d have to conclude that the official coronavirus figures have been grossly overstated, with all the damage that entails. Where appropriate we should carry out tests, but only in the context of symptoms, the date they first emerged, a history of recent contacts and any pre-existing medical conditions. I believe that Britain’s new-found testing mania is a retreat from properly conducted clinical medicine as well as from common sense. And that we are witnessing a triumph of herd thinking – an expensive one at that.”

Citizens have been terrorized week after week with alarming headlines about new case numbers, urging them to get their tests. Officials who have promoted this fear are deeply invested in the false story they have spun and the resources that have been wasted. No one wants to hear that they are responsible for such a massive error. 

So the response is to shoot the messenger. Voices revealing the truth are censored, insulted, and vilified.  In Jefferson County that is a coordinated effort between local media, the board of health, and our public health director.

We are now being told that censorship—the prohibition of free and open dialog—is justified. It’s for the greater good. These people are dangerous. And the more indefensible the narrative becomes, the more the censorship and attacks intensify. 

PCR tests are being misused “to justify excessive measures such as the violation of a large number of constitutional rights,” writes Belgian physician, author and public health analyst Dr. Pascal Sacré. The assumption that a “positive RT-PCR test means being sick with Covid” is misleading, he says. Falsely equating positive tests with Covid cases is “the starting postulate, the premise of all official propaganda, which justifies all restrictive government measures: isolation, confinement, quarantine, mandatory masks, color codes by country and travel bans, tracking, social distances in companies, stores and even more importantly, in schools.” [source]

Are our leaders going to permit this misguided testing program to continue to fuel fear and inflict untold harm in our county? It is long past due for our local officials to put an end to this costly mistake.