A bigger problem (or at least a more significant percentage of wrong results) is false negatives
Bigger, smaller, I don't know. I do know it is a problem. They really needed to find a good CT value and stick with it. As you pointed out it is not the only test and the other tests are likely more reliable but they are not as fast I think. There are good reasons the inventor of the RT-PCR test said it shouldn't be used the way they are using it.
I think you agree with me on all of that though.
up to 14 days
Some very rare cases of 21 days.
I don't get the impression that the CT values used thus far (up to 40) commonly give false positives
That doesn't match the claims of the guy that invented those tests. :)
Though I will state that someone discovering a hammer doesn't mean they are the best person at using a hammer that will ever walk the planet. There is a potential that he was wrong about his own discovery.
But yes, you have to be very careful how you compare the results for the purposes of counting infections.
There is not enough transparency to know. Hell it is difficult in some cases to even find out what CT you were tested on. Again, it depends where you are.
What the media reports and politicians say in their one sentence summaries of such reports may be a completely different story.
That is indeed probably the biggest problem. Also I don't consider Dr. Fauci anything other than a politician at this point. He hasn't actually practiced medicine for decades. He has pretty much been an administrator, and the guy to deal with the politics thus a politician.
So when he speaks I think he often causes a lot of the problems. The recent interview with Rand Paul was pretty bad IMO. He lied outright a number of times. The paper trail is there.
People see someone like him. They know enough to detect the lies. Then that colors their impression of the entire process.
We all have bias.
You seem to be suggesting that they shouldn't use different CT values in different circumstances but the above article explains why it is useful to do so.
Useful sure. Depending upon your GOAL.
I mainly stress it isn't scientific. That doesn't mean it is without use.
It is just simply not something I'd bash someone over the head with calling it "science".
Science follows a very specific methodology. It is simply a tool, a process. If you vary the measuring technique and then compare those as if equivalent that corrupts the process.
That doesn't mean there may not be reasons you would do it. Yet it shouldn't then get to hide behind the label "Science" when trying to shut people down who ask questions.
Actually if we are using science we wouldn't be shutting people down for asking questions.
Damn politics and power have corrupted too many institutions and people and by extension their actions often lead people to think "science" is dead.
It isn't. Things that are not scientific are often labeled as though they are in order to silence any opposition. Science is as it always was. There are just a lot of these things claiming to be science that are not.
Does everything need to be science? No.
If we can keep our bias out of things we should and that is what the scientific method is there for. Yet it is only useful if we can accurately measure and observe things.
It isn't particularly useful if we don't yet understand or see...