[ExI] bikers again

[Dylan Distasio]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020, 12:33 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Keith was the one who hipsterized me to how viruses don’t have DNA, they
> have RNA.  But I had heard that polymerase chain reaction is not a reliable
> amplifier of RNA, only DNA.
>
Two comments, many viruses do have DNA.   CV-19 is not one of them though.

There are no issues with RT-PCR used for RNA detection in terms of
protocol.  There's just an extra step in the beginning using reverse
transcriptase to get a DNA strand to amplify from the RNA, and then it's
just like regular PCR.

> a?  If so, it would explain why the people who use the covid tests every
> day say they are notoriously unreliable: they are using PCR to amplify
> RNA.  My nurse cousin thinks they have an unacceptably high false positive
> rate.
>
> spike
>

It's actually very accurate, the potential issue is with sensitivity being
too high.  Even a very small amount of RNA can be detected that may not be
biologically active.

Sensitivity issue:
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/09/01/covid-tests

Protocol:
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/how-is-the-covid-19-virus-detected-using-real-time-rt-pcr

>
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