It sounds like you went to shit school then, no offense. My med school actively works to make sure that old test questions can't get circulated. All of our exams are online, monitored, and we get 1 piece of scrap paper that's discarded afterward. Our professors would absolutely get hanged if people found out they were favoring certain students and giving them answers, especially if there's any sort of sexual connotations. There's legit no incentive to cheat because we're P/F. Like I don't think we have students that are SO dumb that they need to cheat to get a fucking 70%.
I've certainly heard of at least one med student who was circulating exams at an overseas school and got expelled. But international med schools are often dogshit anyways with no real standards for their admitted students (literally anyone with a pulse can get in). I'm talking exclusively about US MD schools because I don't know what sort of clown fiestas go on in DO or international schools.
lmao what? You do know that NBME practice exams are old board questions right? Those are pretty standard materials to pass onto underclassmen. No shit there are fresh questions every year, that's how every standardized exam works.
lmao you do know that the most important tests premeds/med students/doctors take like the mcat and step are video recorded and basically impossible to cheat on, right? Even at my med school, all of our exams are recorded in person or on our laptop cameras. Med schools take cheating very seriously- if you’re ever caught as a premed or med student, you can essentially kiss your chances of being a doctor goodbye.
As a former premed, I’ll tell you that the people that I did see cheat were too fucking stupid to get into med school in the first place. If you honestly think most doctors are breezing their way through weekly exams, step, and rotations, you probably never got into med school or know anyone who has.
Could I get a source as to where you’re getting that 1000 virion/20-25 cycle number?
A false positive means that the test is positive when you’re not infected at all (I.e. 0 RNA fragments). It doesn’t mean there was a small amount of RNA that lead to an asymptomatic infection.
I’m sure the standard are different for every machine/lab. The whole point of PCR is to amplify genetic sequences and inform you of the presence of said sequence or not. It doesn’t say anything about viral load and no medical professionals are using PCR that way- it’s simply a rapid and cheap test that gives doctors an idea of whether someone may be infected or not. I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that PCR tests are being using to amplify insignificant viral loads to tell patients “you’ve got the covid!” when that isn’t their purpose at all.
I haven’t seen or read any papers on exactly what viral load determines symptomatic vs asymptomatic vs early infection, but the amount of virus you have changes with the course of infection. So I’m not quite sure where you’re getting the idea that PCR mainly serves to amplify asymptomatic viral loads, since this likely differs for various patient demographics. I think that it’s important to rule out false positives, but detecting and treating early infections is important as well.
The influenza virus (orthomyxovirus) is a bit different structurally than coronavirus. The flu virus has segmented RNA and so it’s constantly producing new potent strains. Scientists and doctors are essentially making an educated guess when determining what will be the most common strains during flu season.
Coronavirus doesn’t have this segmentation- it’s just a regular RNA virus.
Even during the height of the first wave, I remember some ER doctors I used to work with told me that they were seeing a lot fewer patients than usual and that their hospital had slowed down quite a bit. The data shows that more and more people who are having actual emergencies AREN'T showing up.
If hospitals were truly being overloaded like the media portrayed, why were the hospital ships sent to NYC or LA hardly ever used?
Med student pede here, but the typical protocol for diagnosing a stress/hairline fracture is x-ray first, then MRI if you really need a diagnosis but the x-ray is negative (although that's pretty uncommon given how expensive they are).
I've personally haven't seen CT scans being used to diagnose broken bones very often (given how much radiation they use), and current guidelines say that they aren't recommended for hairline fractures because they have a high false-negative rate. They're only recommended if you suspect extensive bone injury, which doesn't seem to be the case here.
There are some studies that suggest that CT and MRI have comparable diagnostic accuracy, so maybe Biden's doc just went with the faster option. CT scans are also more liberally used for older patients since the risk vs. benefit of getting cancer isn't a huge concern when you're nearing the end of your life.
LMAO holy shit LECOM is legit one of the shadiest schools in the US. That's why they're DO my dude.
Yes, there are schools that take low score applicants. They're called international/Carib schools and they're meme'd on endlessly because they'll take anyone with a pulse, fail them out, then collect their free 300K. If we're talking about schools with actual standards like US MD schools, taking the MCAT multiple times looks bad on your record. Most schools will average your schools and look at your trends.