Had a look through the state government health websites for each of the other 49 states, the CDC, and a few other sources (to look for PCR testing thresholds).
Learned something, either: I'm very bad at looking this up, I don't know where to look, and/or most states aren't very transparent at all.
Also learned that while they are all happy to make it easy for you to find information for testing and vaccines on their government websites, they seem less interested in sharing PCR data (shocking right?). Some of the state government websites barely talked about PCR's, some described them quite well without giving their thresholds.
Only have PCR thresholds for 5 out of 50 states, namely: Alaska, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, and, Tennessee. Four of these have 35-40 (at times of latest PCR threshold release), and one has < 33.
I suspect either Rocco has access to information not shown below, or, he's referring to a previous month early on in the pandemic when PCR's were higher (there's one case below where it dropped after 4-5 months).
Thanks! Rocco might have had a particular state in mind when he made that claim. 35-40 is bad enough, though, and does give the contrast to 28.
Edit:
The Tweet has a reply saying that Rocco misrepresented the CDC page linked above for PCR tests of vaccinated people.
"That's not what the document states. Wonder if you even read it. I'm a fan of yours but the 28 cycles is for sequencing of the genome this is not to determine positivity.
Sequencing is a different process unrelated to positive testing. Be better than this Rocco."
Comparing the CDC page and the Tennessee page that you provided, this Twitter commentator seems to be wrong (i.e., Rocco had it right).
CDC document:
Clinical specimens for sequencing should have an RT-PCR Ct value ≤28
Tennessee document:
Most RT-PCR tests use Ct cutoffs of 35-40 cycles, so any sample with a Ct value below the cutoff, would be considered a true positive
Ct values and cutoffs differ by test and thus cannot be compared from one test to another. A specimen with a Ct=36 may be considered positive by one test but produce a different Ct value and be considered negative or indeterminate on another.
That's part of his point--they are vague and evasive about the cycle threshold for unvaccinated people but clearly state that those vaccinated need a lower threshold.
Not seeing those numbers. To make this argument, we need the document that shows 43-45 and 28.
Indeed, needs to be verified.
So I'm seeing that Tennessee uses 35-40. https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/health/documents/cedep/novel-coronavirus/Ct_Fact_Sheet.pdf
Had a look through the state government health websites for each of the other 49 states, the CDC, and a few other sources (to look for PCR testing thresholds).
Learned something, either: I'm very bad at looking this up, I don't know where to look, and/or most states aren't very transparent at all.
Also learned that while they are all happy to make it easy for you to find information for testing and vaccines on their government websites, they seem less interested in sharing PCR data (shocking right?). Some of the state government websites barely talked about PCR's, some described them quite well without giving their thresholds.
Only have PCR thresholds for 5 out of 50 states, namely: Alaska, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, and, Tennessee. Four of these have 35-40 (at times of latest PCR threshold release), and one has < 33.
I suspect either Rocco has access to information not shown below, or, he's referring to a previous month early on in the pandemic when PCR's were higher (there's one case below where it dropped after 4-5 months).
Nice work. My guess is most of these states send it to Lab Corp or one of the other labs and trust them to use the default thresholds for Covid.
Thanks! Rocco might have had a particular state in mind when he made that claim. 35-40 is bad enough, though, and does give the contrast to 28.
Edit:
The Tweet has a reply saying that Rocco misrepresented the CDC page linked above for PCR tests of vaccinated people.
"That's not what the document states. Wonder if you even read it. I'm a fan of yours but the 28 cycles is for sequencing of the genome this is not to determine positivity. Sequencing is a different process unrelated to positive testing. Be better than this Rocco."
https://twitter.com/CliffKYYJ/status/1388273900203638787
Comparing the CDC page and the Tennessee page that you provided, this Twitter commentator seems to be wrong (i.e., Rocco had it right).
CDC document:
Tennessee document:
The link in the tweet to the CDC website literally confirms the 28 PCR cycles for vaccinated people.
That's part of his point--they are vague and evasive about the cycle threshold for unvaccinated people but clearly state that those vaccinated need a lower threshold.
Go to page 38 here for the 40 cycles that’s been creating cases for a long time. https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download
Go to page one of this document for the 28 cycle cut off: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/downloads/Information-for-laboratories-COVID-vaccine-breakthrough-case-investigation.pdf
“Clinical specimens for sequencing should have an RT-PCR Ct value ≤28.”
asking the real questions