Fertility Rates are Dropping Around the World
Story Highlights Despite ongoing concerns about overpopulation, birth rates are falling worldwide, and in many countries populations are projected to drop by half by the end of this century. Decreasing birth rates have been attributed to such social changes as increasing access to higher education for women, modern methods of contraception and economic considerations leading […]
PCR Test for Coronavirus Questioned by Prominent Scientists
An International Consortium of Scientists in Life Sciences (ICSLS) have submitted a retraction request to the European public health journal Eurosurveillance of a well-cited article published in January 2020,1 2 which contained the first protocol for detecting the SARS-CoV-2 virus using a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. The test has been used by the […]
CDC Shortens COVID-19 Quarantine Period to Seven Days
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revised its quarantine guidelines for people who may have been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.1 Since the COVID-19 pandemic declaration last winter, the agency has recommended a 14-day quarantine period that was based on estimates of the upper range of the incubation period for SARS-CoV-2 […]
Understanding PCR Tests for Coronavirus
Opinion | From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the clarion call has been to test, test and test some more. However, right from the start, serious questions arose about the tests being used to diagnose this infection, and questions have only multiplied since then. Positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have been […]
Coronavirus Cases Plummet When PCR Tests Are Adjusted
Health experts now say that PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus associated with the illness COVID-19, is too sensitive and needs to be adjusted to rule out people who have insignificant amounts of the virus in their system.1 The test’s threshold is so high that it detects people with the live virus as well as […]
Misleading CDC Report on COVID-19 Testing Combines “Apples and Elephants”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged last week that it had lumped genetic tests that identify people with current COVID-19 infections together with serology (blood) antibody tests that measure whether someone has had the viral infection in the past.1 Combining the tally of the two tests overstates the country’s ability to […]