Public health agencies track a lot of reportable diseases. They have databases, they collect test results, and they do contact tracing.

PCR tests were deliberately set to detect tiny amounts of virus because the goal was to track SPREAD.

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The Fact Sheets for the PCR tests say they're not supposed to be used on asymptomatic people, and diagnoses should be confirmed with clinical observations.

But you don't care about diagnoses when you're tracking SPREAD.

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So public health agencies started testing anyone who showed up, to track SPREAD.

Here's where I veer off into speculation: certain groups saw this as an issue to pin on Trump. We wouldn't have the SPREAD if he had done more.

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Politicians everywhere saw a chance to be seen as DOING SOMETHING.

At the beginning, public health recommended standard hygiene: Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. Cough into your elbow.

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Social distancing was added, and politicians found SOMETHING TO DO: Tell people to stay home, and close businesses so they don't have anywhere to go.

Enter emergency orders to support shelter-in-place orders.

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Then masks were added to the recommendations - remember we were told in March that there is no reason for healthy people to wear them.

Politicians seized on this as SOMETHING TO DO. Masks went from recommendation to mandate.

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Dashboards were added early on to measure SPREAD. Once we had dashboards, politicians devised metrics that had zero scientific basis. These metrics aren't consistent anywhere, and they change when they're in danger of being met.

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Politicians need overnight reporting to track metrics. It doesn't matter whether the reports are accurate or timely; it only matters that there are numbers they can point to, to justify ever-increasing restrictions.

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Few people know that the tests detect non-infectious virus, that yesterday's reported tests were sampled any time from yesterday to multiple weeks ago, that reported deaths actually occurred on many different days over the past 4-6 months.

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Because of the push to DO SOMETHING, a system that was designed to track SPREAD was instead used to close businesses, quarantine people, and fundamentally change society with no exit strategy at all.

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Overly-sensitive tests lead to over-reported cases, over-reported hospitalizations, and over-reported deaths (any non-accidental death with a positive test in the past 30 days becomes a COVID death - and some accidental deaths are counted, too).

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The whole "crisis" spirals from the initial determination to track SPREAD with overly-sensitive tests.

If we simply reduced the cycle threshold for diagnostic tests AND required a diagnosis from a physician, this would all go away.

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"Cases" would disappear, along with the hospitalizations and deaths (except for those from months ago).

1.7% of emergency room visits right now are from COVID symptoms. We would not notice COVID at all without the overly-sensitive tests.

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