It's entirely possible his positive test was a false positive which explains how he had two negative tests so quickly afterward. There are some "interesting" things going on with the testing if you can believe anecdotal reports. A Hackensack, NJ medical facility was confused by some of the results they were getting and decided to test the lab they were using. They reportedly took 100 sterile swabs, dipped them in sterile saline solution, and submitted them for testing. 63 came back Covid-19 positive. Yeah, that shouldn't happen.
PCR testing works by taking a small sample of genetic material and reproducing it over twenty to thirty cycles, doubling the amount of material each cycle. You can go from one single strand of DNA/RNA to over a million in such a process. I'm starting to think we may have some contaminated labs that are getting a lot of false positives. That helps to explain why the number of cases is increasing quickly, but deaths are decreasing as quickly. We've seen a big increase in positive test results since the Memorial day timeframe when that was blamed for the increase in new cases, but the deaths that everyone said would come in a week or two haven't shown up. Now part of that could be improved treatments, but you'd still expect some uptick in the death rate instead of a steady decline.
My confidence in the test results right now isn't at the highest it's ever been. There are some "interesting" things one hears these days that make you wonder if there isn't some contamination in at least some of the labs now handling the PCR testing. PCR testing isn't something typically done on a large scale and we've now ramped it up to a much higher level than ever before. My suspicion is that something's not quite right with the testing process and we're getting a lot of false positives.
With major league sports about to resume and relying on accurate test results, things could get complicated. A star player who suddenly tests positive before a big game with no symptoms who feels fine, has no fever, no cough, and who'd tested negative with no outside contact since the last negative test could be a problem for a team/league. If the test was a false positive and you sat the player and the team lost, you can't replay the game.
I think the government needs to take a long hard look at the testing process and review everything. Send off random known negative swabs along with random known positive swabs for the labs to test and see what kind of results come back. If the known negative swabs start coming back as testing positive, there's a problem. Anecdotal reports indicate that's happening, but testing it to determine if those reports are true or not makes sense.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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