The world has been changed because of surrogate markers. So, what is a surrogate marker and how has the world been changed by them? A surrogate marker is an “indirect indicator of a diseased state.”
Let’s say that you were just mugged in a dark alley at night. You give up your purse to the mugger and he leaves. You make a report to the police. They ask you for a description and you tell them it was dark so you didn’t see his face but you recall that he was wearing a baseball cap. The police send out an alert to apprehend people wearing baseball caps. They pick up dozens of people and, unfortunately, you can’t tell which, if any of them, is the mugger.
The baseball cap was indirect evidence – a surrogate marker – that was insufficient to prove who the mugger was. Slightly better indirect evidence could have been used e.g. if the purse had been found in the mugger’s possession. Still this evidence is not as good as having direct evidence. The suspect might have found the purse left on the ground after the actual mugger abandoned it. The best evidence would be a video showing an actual image of the mugger or if the victim had the chance to see the mugger’s face. That would be direct evidence.
This is the situation we are in with the coronavirus. There is no direct evidence of a novel virus. The CDC says as much in a document about the PCR test:
“Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available, assays designed for detection of the 2019-nCoV RNA were tested with characterized stocks of in vitro transcribed full length RNA …”
– CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, page 39
Even the issue of Scientific American magazine about coronavirus does not use direct evidence of the virus on the cover. Instead, they use an illustration! You could say the illustration is a surrogate for the real thing.
Since there is no direct evidence of the virus, instead, the PCR test is used to find indirect evidence in the form of a sequence of nucleotides, also called a segment of RNA. However, this sequence has never been proven to be from a virus and can have other origins: bacteria, cellular debris, other viruses, etc.
Yet, without any evidence of a new virus we have had lock downs leading to job losses, business closures, social isolation, suicides, mental despair, economic distress … In a court of law you would never convict a mugger just because he wore a baseball cap. Why is it that lesser standards are good enough when it comes to our officials deciding to lock down much of the world?
Further Reading:
Covid19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless
Sources:
CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel