The PCR Test As A Predictor Of Acute Respiratory Conditions (part 2)

I utilise data from an unknown NHS Trust to determine the real-world value of a COVID-19 diagnosis in the EPR of in-hospital deaths

In part 1 of this series I ended by opening another can of worms. I have been using an indicator variable called COVID-19 Dx to flag in-hospital deaths that were given an ICD-10 emergency code of U07.1 COVID-19 virus identified or U07.2 COVID-19 virus unidentified assuming these would unequivocally identify genuine COVID cases. After a fair few articles it became quite clear that there’s nothing unequivocal about this diagnosis, with acute respiratory conditions being mixed with chronic respiratory disease and asymptomatic cases in the biggest coding mess you can imagine. In fact, I couldn’t make a bigger mess if I tried, and it does make you wonder how much can be ascribed to sheer ignorance and how much to deliberate obfuscation brought down to bear on the NHS by government lackeys and senior NHS executives wiping the arse of WHO instead of ensuring public safety.

After a couple of blueberry muffins, a few digestives and a gluten-free chocolate thingy washed down with long-cut Rooibos I decided to re-code the diagnostic records of all 57,557 in-hospital deaths in my data sample to identify anybody with a viral or bacterial respiratory infection of any sort – including SARS-COV-2 – to ring fence absolutely anybody and everybody with a flu-like illness with or without a secondary (bacterial) infection, as well as those suffering bacterial pneumonia and other unpleasant respiratory conditions like aspergillosis (a reaction to the aspergillus fungus). Chronic disease states such as asthma, COPD and emphysema were excluded, the objective being to nail anything respiratory and acute brought about by an airborne pathogen. That is to say, I’m seeking the sort of broad diagnostic forest in which genuine and misdiagnosed COVID-19 would be hiding.

I called the new variable DDx_VIBAC and gave it the mundane label of Respiratory Infection. So let us have a quick look at some basic stats for this newly forged indicator starting with a crosstabulation of DDx_VIBAC vs. COVID-19 Dx for all 19,457 adult in-hospital deaths (>=18 years) for the period 2020/w11 – 2021/36:

There you go! By definition a COVID designated death is classified as a respiratory infection; hence the zero, the figures of interest being the 3,412/3,898 (87.5%) of respiratory infection cases also testing positive for SARS-COV-2. COVID takes the lion’s share as expected but we expect some of this share to be disingenuous for one reason or another. Disingenuous in that the PCR primers may have been triggered by previous SARS-COV-2 infections, nucleic fragments (not whole viruses), other coronaviruses, and other pathogens that happen to share the same or similar base sequences for part of their length. In a nutshell we’re talking about a test that was billed as highly specific to SARS-COV-2 in theory but in all likelihood was detecting all manner in practice. You can deduce this by the difficulty associated with digging for the relevant information, and by the level of raging scorn heaped on the curious. Alleged pro-science websites and bloggers also give the game away - especially fact checkers - who, in the words of Queen Gertrude, are protesting “too much”.

Non-COVID Viral & Bacterial Respiratory Profile

Before we proceed further let’s have a look at the weekly count of acute respiratory conditions brought about by bacterial, fungal and non-COVID viral agents:

This gives some feel as to what normally happens to folk since I have excluded any positive test results. We see that influenzal death is relatively uncommon, reaching a peak of 15 such cases back in the 2017/18 winter season. The absence of the 2020/21 winter flu peak is most striking and, of course, a controversy still rages over this with the theory of viral dominance serving to utterly crush alternative thinking even though it’s just a theory.

Whilst we might well buy into viral dominance (it certainly has a certain appeal for some) we cannot apply viral dominance to bacterial infection and fungal spore irritation, so we may well ask what happened to the 2020/21 bacterial/fungal spore peak that has also magically disappeared. Another of those ‘coincidences’, perhaps?

My eyeballs suggest a spread of elevated bacterial/fungal diagnoses where a seasonal peak should stand. This may be due to opportunistic infections following genuine COVID-10 infection, but it may equally be due to inappropriate withdrawal of antibiotics and other treatments that became the fashion, including the insidious practice of ventilation to isolate a patient’s respiratory tract from the ward.

What we can do at this point is draw upon the entire sample of 57,070 adult in-hospital deaths for the period 2017/w1 – 2021/w36 and ask whether there are differences to be seen between pre- and post-pandemic periods (assuming a start date of 2020/w11 for the ‘pandemic’). Here’s the crosstabulation for non-COVID viral respiratory deaths:

We observe 187/37,616 (0.5%) adult in-hospital deaths flagged with a viral respiratory infection in the pre-pandemic period compared to 15/19,454 (0.1%) for the post-pandemic period. In terms of crude odds ratios we’re looking at OR = 0.155 which translates into a six-fold reduction in the incidence of viral respiratory infection in the post-pandemic period. Hmmm…

On the bacterial/fungal side we get this:

There’s not so much of a difference to be seen, with the odds ratio popping out at OR = 0.865, so I am going to assume near equivalence. It is most interesting that the seasonal spike disappears but the overall rate of illness remains the same. This suggests the ‘squeezing’ of the spike down and over time, which we cannot possibly attribute to viral dominance. This is not just curious but downright fishy to the level of salted anchovies, in that there are repercussions for the validity of viral dominance.

The Full Monty

The full Monty of COVID and non-COVID viral, bacterial and fungal infection (DDx_VIBAC) looks like this over time:

However, we must remember that a positive test result for COVID is not an indicator of active infection by a long chalk- not even a whole virus is required to trigger the PCR test! Before we settle into accepting this official picture of how things supposedly were we ought to consider the outcome of such infection in terms of acute respiratory conditions:

Now this is seriously fascinating for this crosstabulation reveals near identical rates of acute respiratory condition at 22.0% pre-pandemic and 21.4% post-pandemic i.e. the overall picture of severe respiratory illness didn’t change despite an alleged pandemic of a novel and deadly virus.

These stats are not going to lie folks, ‘coz they came directly from the EPR of an undisclosed NHS Trust via a highly reputable source and I’ve had my very own beady eyes run over the diagnostic coding to ensure all is sound and proper. The upshot?...

NOTHING CHANGED!

It’s worth repeating that a few times because it flies in the face of the official narrative as mirrored by the slide above. Two dirty great red spikes of seeming COVID death, yet nothing changed in terms of overall incidence of acute respiratory conditions between pre-and post-pandemic periods. How bizarre is that?

As Mrs Dee puts it, “the same bucket of balls, but they decided to paint them all red”.

Quite.

Summary

• In-hospital deaths with mention of non-COVID viral respiratory infection were notably absent from the 2020/21 winter season and this is believed to be the result of viral dominance, with newer SARS-COV-2 strains dominating older viral strains.

• In-hospital deaths with mention of bacterial respiratory infection failed to peak during the 2020/21 winter season. This cannot be blamed on viral dominance and thus doubt is cast on the accuracy of the diagnostic coding of respiratory conditions.

• Incidence of acute (life-threatening) respiratory conditions in the EPR of in-hospital deaths (both COVID and non-COVID) was found to be similar in both pre- and post-pandemic periods despite SARS-COV-2 being billed as a novel and deadly virus.

Kettle On!