Molecular analyst Merel Boogaard on PCR testing
Merel Boogaard is a molecular analyst at a university hospital in the Netherlands. She has 15 years of experience with PCR testing. She has set up, performed and co-validated PCR tests, including very difficult ones. She immediately saw the practical and technical difficulties of testing COVID-19 with a PCR test. At first she kept her doubts to herself, until stories started to emerge that the test was not working properly. Then she contacted Virus Truth to ask how they stood there.
She was invited to join a team of lab people and started to learn more about it. She found that the PCR test is not very correct. A report on this will be published shortly. In short, a PCR test serves as a preprocessing for further research on which the final result is done, and that is not happening now. The result is done directly on the PCR test via the test streets of the GGD, which is an outrageous state of affairs.
‘Analysts from the Netherlands, the government of the Netherlands, the RIVM, the GGD, I am here to express my indignation and genuine anger about the use of a fraudulent PCR test for the diagnosis of COVID-19. This test is poorly designed and does not give a reliable test result. This test gives positive results where they are not there and negative results where the SARS-CoV-2 virus is there but is not detected. Analysts from the Netherlands, I ask you to stand up and defend the honor of your profession. We have a special profession.
Without our data and measurement results, the doctor cannot do his or her job. The doctor relies on the data provided by the lab and the analysts. Our work must be impeccable. Free from technical errors and interpretation errors. As close to 100% accuracy as we can get. The data swindle with the COVID-19 PCR test is an intolerable stain on the laboratory face. Just like science, clinical diagnostics must deliver reliable facts.
That is our job. But what is happening? The data is produced in separate labs under conditions that leave much to be desired. The data is read by the RIVM. The analyst and the data are separated. The analyst conducting the test will not receive any feedback on how the test went. The person reading the data has no knowledge of the preliminary stage. There is no way to check the progress of the route.
As an analyst I didn’t have to take a Hippocratic oath like the doctors. But I feel such an oath to do only the right thing, deep down in my heart. And with every result I give, I think about the patient behind it. That patient deserves the best. But in the case of the COVID-19 diagnosis, the patient does not get the best. Our van is intended to provide a definitive answer. The disease is present, or the disease is not present. And if we’re inconclusive, we’ll be totally honest about it. That is our job.
We analysts do not always give a nice message, but a reliable message. Our profession is not intended to create confusion and fear. Our profession is not intended to implement restrictive policies based on unreliable data. It is criminal to misuse the analyst profession to implement unsound political policies. There is no second corona wave. There is a data wave based on false positive test results because the test is just right.
I ask all analysts in the Netherlands to stand up against hijacking our profession to make this mismanagement possible. I call on RIVM to return the data to the analysts and to have the data read by the analysts who produced the data. Because only then is there pure feedback between lab research, analysis and results. I call on RIVM to stop useless testing of healthy people and to offer an extensive test with sequencing and serological testing for those who really need it.
But there aren’t that many at the moment, because there is no second wave. Just a data swindle.’