Several months ago Stephen Schumacher wrote to Dr. Thomas Locke, Jefferson County’s Health Officer, regarding questions and concerns he had about protocols being used in tests for COVID-19. He did not receive a response. After Port Townsend Free Press published several of his articles, (on masks, on how Jefferson County may still have no deaths from COVID, and a ticker-tape of news on resistance to COVID lockdowns and questions about vaccines) as well as an article by Annette Huencke based on information obtained from a public records request to Jefferson Healthcare that raised questions about the validity of COVID test results, he has now received a response. Both gentlemen copied Port Townsend Free Press in their correspondence, that also went to County Commissioners and other public officials.
Mr. Schumacher initiated the exchange with the following correspondence to the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners:
February 1, 2021
Dear Jefferson County Commissioners,
Watching the Zoom of this morning’s BoCC meeting, I noted that Dr.
Locke did not answer or even address any of my questions at bottom,
so they are all still on the table. I’m mystified by his
mischaracterization of well-documented concerns over 90% false
positive rates at high cycle counts as “nitpicky” and his
easily-refuted opinion that PCR tests are “highly accurate”.
Philip Morley observed that Jefferson Healthcare handles only a small
percentage of our county’s PCR testing, with most conducted by UW and
others. If so, that raises the additional question:
7) What Cycle Threshold is used by each organization performing PCR
testing in our county, and approximately what percentage of testing
is done by each organization?
Because of the critical importance of the cycle count in evaluating
the significance of a positive PCR test result, both pieces of
information need to be reported to individuals as well as in overall
county statistics.
Dr. Locke’s report began by warning about a tripling of cases with 26
new ones last week if I heard correctly. But what are the cycle
counts of these new cases? It makes a huge difference whether they
were found positive after 20 amplification cycles or after 45 cycles.
My interest is getting at the truth, not politics. But today’s
meeting seemed concerned about county cases showing percentage
improvements before a Feb. 14 deadline One way to achieve that in a
hurry might be to re-examine recent cases and reclassify any that
were incorrectly counted due to amplification cycles higher than 33,
then continue using that rule for new cases. Not only would that be
the right thing to do, it might achieve the “negative cases” Greg
ruefully joked are needed!
Yours truly,
Stephen Schumacher
— Pubic Comment sent 8:28 PM 1/31/2021 —
Dear Jefferson County Commissioners,
On September 2, 2020, I sent the following Public Comment to the
Jefferson County Board of Health and Health Officer Dr. Tom Locke:
“Per the August 29 New York Times report [of 90% false positives at
40-cycle threshold], I’m concerned about the criteria used to
determine confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Jefferson County. Do all
these cases exhibit symptoms, or are “cases” being equated to
positive test results? If the latter, what percentage of cases
exhibit symptoms? Are positive test results being recorded using PCR
tests, and if so, what is the Cycle Threshold value used for these tests?”
I never received any answers to these questions nor have seen them
addressed by Dr. Locke in the press.
Last week the Port Townsend Free Press reported that Jefferson
Healthcare is “using a PCR assay with a 45-cycle threshold, well
beyond the outer limits of reliability.”
https://www.porttownsendfreepr
This revelation raises various accountability issues, including:
1) Why did our county have to wait nearly 4 months to learn about its
45-cycle threshold from a fortuitous Public Records Request?
2) Since Dr. Locke was also Clallam Health Officer until recently, is
this same unreliable 45 Ct test also in use throughout Clallam County?
3) Was the choice to use this 45 Ct test ever discussed and approved
by the Jefferson County Board of Health or County Commissioners? If
not, was it ever even reported and its significance explained to them?
4) Does Dr. Locke or anybody else keep statistical track of
cumulative cycle counts for positive tests and resulting cases in our
county, or is this info unavailable or being ignored? Could this
information be regularly published in the media, or at least be made
available upon request?
5) Does our county always order a second test following a positive
PCR result, and if not, how often and on what basis? Are all
positive tests treated as COVID-19 cases regardless of symptoms, and
if not, how often has high cycle count been used to discard extremely
weak positive test results?
6) How many county residents have been reported as cases,
quarantined, and contact-traced based on cycle counts above 33, when
the CDC shows “it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus in
a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles”?
/s/ Stephen Schumacher
Today Dr. Locke responded:
Mr. Schumacher,
Cycle threshold values on PCR tests performed to detect SARS-CoV-2 are not routinely reported by laboratories to health departments or the person ordering the test. The Washington State Department of Health establishes standards for what is considered a positive PCR test and is reportable as a notifiable condition. The local health officer has nothing to do with establishing CT parameters or any other diagnostic lab parameter. If you have an issue with CT values you should take it up with Washington DOH or the FDA. Jefferson County Public Health does case investigations and contact tracing of all positive tests reported to Washington State and available to us through a confidential on-line registry known as WEDSS.
The fact that a thermal cycler can perform up to 45 amplification cycles does not mean that ALL tests are amplified to that degree. Samples are cycled until a signal is detected or they have undergone the maximum amplification of the testing protocol. Samples can have high CT values for many reasons — poor sample quality, degradation of the sample during transport, low viral levels in the person being tested, and testing late in illness when fragments of non-replicating virus can be detected. And it is certainly true that high CT values correlate with lower transmission risk (assuming adequate sample collection and specimen transport). Setting standards for FDA approved diagnostic tests is a federal regulatory function. States set standards for notifiable conditions such as SARS-CoV-2 infection. County health officers, local boards of health, county boards of commissioners, and public hospital district commissioners have nothing to do with these decisions.
Again, if you have grave concerns that the Washington State Department of Health is using scientifically indefensible criteria for determining which COVID-19 PCR tests are positive, please share your expertise and concerns with them. These criteria are not set by county health officers or local hospital districts. Nor do we manufacture or license the PCR machines that are used to test diagnostic specimens for SARS-CoV-2. We rely on these tools along with our case investigations (looking at exposure risk, symptom onset, and other risk factors) in assessing cases. False positive tests can occur with any diagnostic technology. They appear to be quite infrequent with PCR testing, especially when a person has a COVID-like illness or a recent exposure to a confirmed case. If your goal is to support the pandemic denialism that Ms. Huenke promotes in the “Port Townsend Free Press” article you reference, I could not disagree more. With the spread of more transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2, the social cost of pandemic denialism is increasing. If sizeable numbers of people indulge in the wishful thinking that attempts to control COVID-19 transmission are unnecessary, it is only a matter of time before variant strains become predominant. We still have time to avert this future or at least slow it enough to allow widespread vaccine deployment. I urge you to join the community fight against COVID-19 and stop attacking those who are working long hours trying to protect their community from the worst public health emergency in the last 100 years.
Sincerely,
Thomas Locke, MD, MPH
Jefferson County Health Officer
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our “About” page for more information.
As I was coming to the end of reading Dr. Tom Locke’s response to Stephen Shumachers’s reasonable requests, I was taken aback by Dr. Locke’s pejorative remarks about Annette Huenke. The fact that a public health official would refer to a public citizen’s efforts to present well researched information as simply her “pandemic denialism” is evidence to me of Dr. Locke’s defensive concern with his authority being questioned by the citizens he serves.
I found the tone of Lock’s severely belated response to be evasive, avoidant, defensive, passive-aggressive and down right snarky.
Thank you Stephen Schumacher and Annette Huenke for raising the issue of the reliance by the Jefferson County Health Department on the use of high cycle PCR tests to determine the presence of actual SARS-CoV-2 infection cases in our community. NIAID’s Dr. Fauci himself has warned about the unreliability of such high cycle tests–in this case 45 cycles– to determine the presence of active SARS-CoV-2 infection in a test subject.
Given the interest in our community in bringing people together following a period of divisiveness, especially political, I regret Dr. Locke’s suggestion in his statement : “If your goal is to support the pandemic denialism that Ms. Huenke promotes in the “Port Townsend Free Press” article you reference,. . .” (https://www.porttownsendfreepress.com/2021/01/25/is-jefferson-county-health-department-overstating-covid-case-numbers/) that either Stephen or Annette might have a morally suspect or politically incorrect reason for their research and questions.
What better contribution can concerned citizens do than bring their thinking capacities to such an important issue as the present SARS-CoV-2 health concerns? There is at least one instance where a member of our community and a Jeff Cty Public Health Board member is known to have advised the “Port Townsend Leader” not to print information submitted to it by at least one citizen regarding the scientific basis of the public health policies adopted in Jefferson County, Washington state and the nation. And the paper refused to print the submission.
It now appears the vast majority of the “positive” PCR tests conducted on residents of Jefferson County have been performed with a high cycle threshold, in this case 45 cycles. These tests are therefore likely to have produced false positives in the vast majority of the cases wherein there were no symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, as Dr. Fauci has indicated.
We owe it to ourselves to come together around sound scientific principles and free inquiry and speech for the collective benefit of our community. The social cost of failing to share the findings of respectful and inquiring minds to bear on issues of such crucial importance is and will be incalculable.
I
The questions posed to Dr. Locke and our county commissioners are valid health concerns. They were sincere, unbiased, and non-accusatory. The impacts of quarantine and isolation on human health are considerable and it is alarming that an officer of public health could be so dismissive of the concerns raised by those he serves. Dr. Locke’s labeling the concerns of citizens around the validity of “health” mandates that violate body sovereignty as “indulgent denialism” is extremely unprofessional.
Most alarming, however, (if Dr. Locks portrayal of the system is legitimate) is the lack of oversight and the disconnect between the healthy humans being tested, quarantined, tracked and traced, and their ability to access, track, and trace the data being used to subjugate them. It raises the question, how would an asymptomatic person who has tested positive and has been asked to quarantine (and their traced and quarantined contacts) verify the cycle threshold of their test results? Furthermore, Dr. Locke fails to address the results of the Jefferson Healthcare public records request revealing a 45cycle threshold count (a methodology that is diagnostically unsound), while also acknowledging “false positives can occur with any diagnostic technology.” Now that this information has come to light in this community, it is the responsibility of our elected representatives to ensure that their directives are based on sound data. Illness breeds in isolation. Dismissal of the information in this context while continuing to enforce case-count-based mandatory isolation is criminal. Please do better.
“With the spread of more transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2, the social cost of pandemic denialism is increasing.” – Thomas Locke, MD, MPH
Denialism cost lives. The USA medical establishment denied (until very recently) that there were proven early treatment remedies for Covid-19. In some large cities, people died because they were sent home without any effective early treatment until their illness became a much more profitable ventilator worthy emergency. Have our local public health bureaucracies ever mentioned inexpensive remedies* which are available over-the-counter in many countries?
Surviving the next wave of SARS-CoV-2 variants is probably going to involve working around public health authorities who have mis-informed the public about the options available. There is no evidence that the EXPERIMENTAL vaccine will resolve Covid issues. That is the nature of an experiment – nobody really knows this early in the process.
Unfortunately, life usually doesn’t end well for most lab rats. Maybe it’s time to remind our wanna-be dictators about the Nuremberg codes. Everyone has the right to refuse to participate in medical experiments. Early treatment options must be made available ASAP because the current vaccines are all experimental.
*Some examples and search terms:
1) Hydroxychloroquine plus Zinc
2) ZIVERDO – Zinc / Ivermectin / Doxycycline remedy from India. https://covexit.com/did-you-hear-about-the-ziverdo-therapy-for-covid-19
3) OTC zinc ionophores (for example – quercetin) plus zinc
4) Plus Vitamin D3 or lots of sunshine for everyone
Dr.Locke, we are all working toward the same end. We all want a healthy population that retains its freedoms. Release the information requested so that we the people at large can discuss the meaning and relevance.