A Global News Investigation Misses the Mark

COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Testing of Asymptomatic People was a Debacle for the Ages

It has been two years, five months, and eleven days (893 total days) since the administration of my employer, the University of Guelph, banned me from accessing my office and laboratory. I would like to have access to my work spaces. Segregation makes me feel less than human.

- B. Bridle -

I wish you a healthy and prosperous new year. May truth and happiness be abundant in 2024, despite both being hard to come by in the last several years.

During my Christmas break I saw a pop-up on my computer. It was a link to a Global News story about COVID-19 rapid antigen testing. Sticking to my commitment to avoid what has become known in my household as “COVID crap”, I delayed commenting during my time off until now. This is because my priorities are faith, family, then work, in that order. Now it’s time to get to work…

Global News is part of Canada’s legacy media and they apparently spent a full year ‘investigating’ the fact that my government spent two billion Canadian tax dollars to purchase 400 million rapid antigen test kits for COVID-19 from a Canadian supplier called BTNX, which imported the kits from China. Their key issue is whether BTNX may have overstated the sensitivity of their test.

You can learn more about the Global News investigation through their video and article at this link.

It was no surprise to see Global News relying on experts from places like Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. The ‘experts’ they interviewed for their investigation have histories of being willing to parrot the COVID-19 narrative by keeping critiques of primary scientific data at a relatively superficial level.

At the heart of the investigation was a Dr. Barbara Baro, a Spanish physician at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. She was part of a group that evaluated the same test kits sold in Canada by BTNX, then recommended against Spain adopting them as a public health tool. The primary reason for rejecting the validity of the kit was because it was “among the worst at detecting COVID-19 among asymptomatic patients”. What a preposterous reason to discard a test designed for diagnosing a disease in sick people. This is a physician who has clearly misunderstood two key principles…

1. COVID-19 is a disease. In fact, the “D” in COVID-19 stands for “disease”; the coronavirus disease that was first identified in 2019. A physician should realize that a person only has a clinically relevant disease if they have signs and/or symptoms of illness. Further, a healthy/asymptomatic individual that does not need to see a physician is certainly not a ‘patient’. To many of the physicians out there, stop trying to make healthy people think they are sick patients of yours! Second, learn how to diagnose diseases! An accurate diagnosis requires a physician to confirm the presence of signs and/or symptoms consistent with a particular clinical diagnosis, and this should, ideally, be supported by laboratory results derived from properly calibrated tests; otherwise known as ‘diagnostic aids’.

2. There is a lack of convincing data to suggest that SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted by asymptomatic individuals at loads above the threshold dose needed to overwhelm the innate defense mechanisms of competent immune systems, thereby resulting in a productive infection. I previously discussed the fatal flaws in the science underpinning the misconception of asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

   In short, published peer-reviewed science suggests that application of proper cut-offs to identify samples containing replication-competent viruses by PCR testing would invalidate the papers purporting to demonstrate asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

   Replication-incompetent viruses won’t cause disease. Even the presence of replication-competent viruses, as detected by PCR, does not mean a person is diseased, let alone able to transmit a disease to someone else. The replication-competent viruses have to be above a threshold and in an anatomical location with a physiological response capable of delivering a sufficiently large bolus to someone else; for example, expulsion by coughing and/or sneezing.

   For example, I had chickenpox when I was a child. So, it is likely that I have the causative herpes virus in my nervous system where it can hide from my immune system (this is why some older people get shingles, a re-emergence of ‘chickenpox’, as their immunological functions decline). This means it would be possible to detect varicella-zoster virus, that is legitimately replication-competent, in me by using a sensitive PCR test. It would be a true positive. But in no way do I have chickenpox nor shingles! I am not a ‘diseased patient’. Nor can I transmit the virus to others.

   The concept of telling someone that they have COVID-19 based on the exclusive reliance on an improperly calibrated PCR test is equally ridiculous.

On the basis of misinformation from some of their favourite ‘experts’, Global News decided to invest a substantial amount of time, energy, and money to complain about a diagnostic test for sick people not yielding positive results in healthy/asymptomatic people. Hello! It seems to me that the test did exactly what it was designed to do. I have reviewed the data for BTNX’s COVID-19 rapid antigen test kit and it does a great job of identifying SARS-CoV-2 in people who genuinely have COVID-19. Just as important, it seems to do an excellent job of providing a negative test result for people that should never be labeled as ‘diseased patients’ or ‘spreaders of COVID-19’.

So, Global News completely missed the mark with their year-long investigation. It was a waste of time. Quarrelling over the inability of a diagnostic test to give a positive result for a healthy person is crazy, especially once one understands the lack of solid evidence of purported asymptomatic transmission. Instead, the resources of Global News would have been better utilized to ask why a test kit that was designed to be an aid to physicians diagnosing COVID-19 in sick people was, instead, inappropriately promoted and used as a tool for screening healthy people!

Let’s evaluate the evidence that shows how using diagnostic rapid antigen tests to screen asymptomatic people was a massive money-maker with absolutely no public health value…

First, remember that government and public health officials, and mainstream media proclaimed incessantly that only asymptomatic people could use the COVID-19 rapid antigen tests. Many so-called ‘unvaccinated’ people were forced to undergo this testing to attend their workplace, despite the fact that many of them had received superior natural ‘vaccination’ via recovery from infection. Even though those who had received COVID-19 shots are more prone to being diagnosed with COVID-19, they were inappropriately promoted as being the safer workers to be around and, therefore, were largely exempted from the cost and hassle of regular testing. These were typical of headlines across Canada and many other countries…

These were the official guidelines issued by the health regulatory agency for the province that I live in…

…in other words, if you are almost 100% certain that you cannot have COVID-19, then you can get tested for COVID-19!

Some workers were forced to attend testing facilities first thing in the morning of every single workday to obtain ‘official’ negative results before they were allowed to enter their workplace. This was often done at the expense of the worker. Most people didn’t bother to read the multiple pages of text on the consent forms that they were required to sign. But, this text tells you all you need to know about how insane it was to have healthy people being tested with kits designed to diagnose an illness. Before showing this text, I need you to shut down the portion of your brain that deals in the realm of logic or this will drive you crazy. This is text that I extracted from the consent form used by Shoppers Drug Mart, which is a chain of pharmacies and stores that made a massive amount of money off of healthy people forced to do this testing ($40 CAD/test was typical for a client; each test cost ~$16/test from the manufacturer). Are you ready for this? Here it is…

…did you see that! You may need to reread this text a few times to fully appreciate the insanity. Let it soak in. People had to affirm that they were asymptomatic and then confirm that the test being used on them was not for asymptomatic people! This little bit of text from consent forms tells you everything you need to know about the great debacle of COVID-19 rapid antigen testing. And Global News is upset that these tests usually failed to yield positive results in asymptomatic people?!?

Note the use of the term “Screen” in the consent form used by Shoppers Drug Mart. This is important because words matter in science and medicine. There is a fundamental difference between screening and diagnostic testing. The former typically involves using a test on asymptomatic people to evaluate risk of disease. A good example is the routine screening done for cancers; like a pap smear, for example. Nobody makes a diagnosis based on a screen. Instead a positive result from a screen triggers a diagnostic process. In contrast, diagnostic tests are to help health professionals definitively identify a disease.

Global News published pictures of the test kits that they were investigating. So, they should have noticed the very clear message that the kits were designed for diagnostic testing, not screening. Here is a photo that I took…

For Shoppers Drug Mart to refer to the test kits as ‘Screens’ was an incorrect use of the term. They knew these were diagnostic tests that were never intended for screening purposes.

Honestly, what has happened to medical education!?!

Under the “Limitations of the Test” section of their product insert, BTNX stated the following…

“The performance of this test has not yet been clinically validated for use in patients without signs and symptoms of respiratory infection or for serial screening applications“

Also, the product inserts from kits clearly state that the tests are to be administered by trained health professionals. This is because there are subtle technical aspects to the method that can impact the accuracy of results. The insert for the BTNX kit states…

“The Rapid Response COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test Device is for professional in vitro diagnostic use“ and “This assay is not intended for home testing (or self-testing)”

But, how many people were were told to self-administer these tests at home?

Nothing about how these test kits were used during the declared pandemic made sense. It was all a scam. A massive waste of money and effort, with no value for promotion of public health. Everyone involved in this scam should be investigated.

Global News is as guilty as anyone in promoting wasting the money of taxpayers to use a diagnostic aid as a screening tool that it was never designed for. They vigorously promoted this concept of screening of asymptomatic people.

The reason why so many asymptomatic people tested negative using these kits is because they didn’t have the disease known as COVID-19! The reason why so many healthy people tested negative with these kits but sometimes tested positive when using the ultra-sensitive PCR assay was because the PCR tests were never calibrated to differentiate replication-competent SARS-CoV-2 from replication-incompetent SARS-CoV-2 (or fragments thereof). In contrast the results of the rapid tests happened to correlate closely with the presence or absence of potentially infectious SARS-CoV-2.

I have also been asked why some asymptomatic people got positive results when using the rapid antigen tests, but then failed to get sick. First, remember that the tests were never designed to be used with healthy people. Any result from any test that is being used in a way other than its intended purpose is, by definition, uninterpretable. However, the tests were designed to detect protein components of SARS-CoV-2. They could not differentiate between replication-competent and replication-incompetent viruses. So, it was feasible for there to be true positive results in people that were of no risk of transmitting SARS-CoV-2 to others. For example, a person whose immune system was capable of rapidly and efficiently ‘killing’ SARS-CoV-2 could have a true positive result because of the presence of viral debris, including the target proteins, yet would remain asymptomatic and never be at risk of causing someone else to get COVID-19.

Global News is upset because it appears that BTNX removed some samples from the original data set, which resulted in a higher apparent sensitivity of the test kit. I am not going to discuss why data were manipulated and whether it was legitimately done or not. I did note that BTNX provided some explanations and Health Canada has been crystal clear that they will not be questioning the company beyond what was done for the initial regulatory approval. After all, Health Canada conducted their own independent tests and were obviously happy with the results, which showed a lower test sensitivity than what the data from BTNX showed. But, I refrain from diving deeper because to do so would only serve to get caught up in the weeds and lose sight of the much bigger picture, something that Global News likely does not want Canadians to focus on. In the bigger picture, Global News is as guilty as they believe BTNX may be. Let me explain…

Global News would tell the public that a better rapid antigen test kit would be one that yields positive results when PCR tests yield positive results in healthy/asymptomatic people. But, they could not be more wrong. I’ve already explained how a positive PCR test should never be used on its own to suggest that a person is diseased, let alone accusing them of having the potential to transmit the causative agent of the disease to someone else, especially when they are asymptomatic. Instead, the rapid antigen test kits were well-designed for their intended purpose, which was to assist health professionals in making accurate diagnoses of COVID-19 in people suffering a respiratory illness. They never should have been used in attempts to screen healthy people. Let me show you two important pieces of data to back this up…

• This is from the product insert for Abbott’s Panbio rapid antigen test kit, which was also approved and promoted by Health Canada for ‘screening’ healthy people…

Do you see the reference to published data that people with PCR test results that were positive at cycle thresholds greater than 30 were not contagious? Health Canada approved this text. Yet how many asymptomatic people who tested positive at cycle thresholds up to 38 and sometimes beyond were declared to be sick with COVID-19 and forced to isolate?

• More importantly, this is the performance comparison of Abbott’s test. Note that a key comparator was the PCR test run by a couple of labs, including Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory…

Note the column that says “E-gene Ct”. The E-gene is the genetic blueprint for the E protein, which is a part of the SARS-CoV-2. Please pay close attention… The Abbott test only yielded positive results at E-gene cycle thresholds less than 24. Global News and many others have got very upset over the fact that the rapid antigen test failed to yield positives for samples that were positive by PCR at E-gene cycle thresholds up to 31.6. Global News and many others assumed this is evidence of failure to detect potential spreaders of COVID-19. Instead, they failed to understand a critical piece of information. In a peer-reviewed scientific paper, the same National Microbiology Laboratory, which is run by the Public Health Agency of Canada, showed that the only samples with evidence of infectious SARS-CoV-2 were those that tested positive for the E-gene by PCR at cycle thresholds less than 24. It is important to note that people testing positive at cycle thresholds less than 24 are typically sick.

So, Global News and others got it all wrong. Had the rapid antigen tests been used for their stated purpose, which was to evaluate sick people to assist physicians with making a diagnosis, we would have been able to accurately identify the people who are at risk of transmitting the causative agent of COVID-19. And this correlated with the fact that these people were obviously sick. So, the entire premise for segregating healthy people because there was ‘no way to know if they could be transmitters’ was a lie. We could have simply asked sick people to stay home until well. Using this simple, age-old piece of common sense would have allowed us to navigate the declared pandemic without the total destruction of our economies, the infliction of profound mental health harms, and the promotion of societal segregation and hatred.

Conclusions

1. The rapid antigen tests were reasonably accurate in identifying people that had COVID-19 and differentiating them from people that were at no risk of spreading above-threshold doses of SARS-CoV-2 to others.

2. Diagnostic tests to be administered by health professionals to sick people should NEVER have been used, let alone self-administered, to screen healthy people.

3. Companies, including the manufacturers, suppliers, and testing centres made massive profits, and billions of taxpayer dollars were completely wasted by the government on a strategy that had no public health value.

The grand debacle of COVID-19 rapid antigen testing suggests that too many health care practitioners are functioning at a level that makes artificial intelligence-based medicine start to look dangerously appealing. Medical educators need to do a much better job of teaching what constitutes a diseased state and how to properly diagnosis it. If PCR machines are going to be allowed to take over the job of making definitive diagnoses, then many physicians will no longer be needed.

The practitioners that are being driven out of our health care system for boldly speaking scientific truths over the past few years are the ones that we desperately need to retain if we are going to have any chance of maintaining a system that genuinely cares about the promotion of good health.

And for organizations like Global News, you need to figure out how to conduct true investigative journalism, rather than wasting time on largely irrelevant and distractive tangents.

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