When will people realize that positivity has nothing to do with infection? Why have so many people tested positive after vaccination? Why so many asymptomatic cases? What if you could increase or decrease covid positivity rates at will? You can. Why were recovery plans linked to case positivity around the world and suddenly cases decreased after US elections?
Below is a link to what I believe is the only peer review of
“Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR” also known as the Corman-Drosten paper which established PCR testing as the accepted method to detect Covid 19 infection.
https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/
There are a number of flaws identified in this review but I would like to focus on item number three below which I have grabbed from the above linked paper in different locations. The take away should be that the number of PCR cycles is important and over a threshold is meaningless. Please note that if you increase the cycle count high enough you will almost certainly get a positive result, this is not noted below directly.
"3. The number of amplification cycles (less than 35; preferably 25-30 cycles);
In case of virus detection, >35 cycles only detects signals which do not correlate with infectious virus as determined by isolation in cell culture [reviewed in 2]; if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the case in most laboratories in Europe & the US), the probability that said person is actually infected is less than 3%, the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%"
"Between 30 and 35 there is a grey area, where a positive test cannot be established with certainty. This area should be excluded. Of course, one could perform 45 PCR cycles, as recommended in the Corman-Drosten WHO-protocol (Figure 4), but then you also have to define a reasonable Ct-value (which should not exceed 30). But an analytical result with a Ct value of 45 is scientifically and diagnostically absolutely meaningless (a reasonable Ct-value should not exceed 30). All this should be communicated very clearly. It is a significant mistake that the Corman-Drosten paper does not mention the maximum Ct value at which a sample can be unambiguously considered as a positive or a negative test-result. This important cycle threshold limit is also not specified in any follow-up submissions to date."