Query Response

Responder: Anonymous

Yes. Many patients who come down with covid-19 pneumonia experience acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a form of respiratory failure where the lungs are suddenly overwhelmed by inflammation and unable to deliver oxygen to the body’s vital organs. ARDS has a mortality rate of 30 to 40 percent and is the leading cause of covid-19-related deaths. There isn’t a whole lot of literature about what happens if you survive ARDS, but long-term lung damage is a possibility, especially for older individuals. UK doctors report that lung damage sustained by ARDS survivors may take 15 years to heal. Hong Kong doctors told the South China Morning Post that they witnessed some covid-19 survivors see a 20 to 30 percent drop in lung function after recovering from infection. If PCR tests are so easily contaminated, how sure are we about the accuracy of the case numbers? Should we be suspicious? PCR is a gold standard platform for testing. Even a tiny amount of virus in a patient sample can be found and amplified for detection and testing. That doesn’t mean the test is fool-proof. Yes, the reagents can be easily contaminated—which is precisely what botched the CDC’s initial rollout of coronavirus tests in February. But that’s why there are control tests that are used to ensure the entire platform is running as it should. The problem with the CDC’s February tests were that the negative controls were faulty—which was almost immediately made known. There is no real reason to be suspicious of PCR tests for diagnosing coronavirus.It’s probably the most accurate testing platform we have for diagnosing covid-19.