PCR testing and cycle thresholds

As told: above about 35 amplification cycles PCR detects dead viral debris rather than infectious virus, laboratories were running 40 cycles, and the inventor of PCR is quoted as saying it should not be used this way — so "cases" were an artefact.

The argument was built on a real methodological literature about cycle thresholds and infectiousness, promoted heavily from mid-2020, with a widely circulated Kary Mullis quote taken from a different dispute years before his death in 2019.

Accounts are deliberately not collected here. This entry documents a historical case rather than a circulating remedy.

The kernel is real and was discussed openly in virology: a high cycle threshold can detect residual RNA from a resolved infection, PCR positivity does not equal infectiousness, and single-threshold reporting loses information — which is why culture studies and threshold reporting became part of clinical practice. What it does not support is the conclusion. Cases tracked hospitalisations and deaths with the lag you would expect, antibody surveys found infection at the scale the tests implied, and the excess deaths were real. A test that mostly detected debris would not predict who ends up on a ventilator three weeks later.