What did Peter McCullough say about PCR test cycles and COVID false positives?

Peter McCullough said CDC guidance warned labs not to run COVID PCR tests past about 25 cycles, but companies pushed to 45 or more, so in his view most positives were false. He cited employee screening at the Japan Olympics, where he said about 1% of people tested positive and 80% of those were false. He argued that counting any death after a positive test as a COVID death, plus hospital reimbursement, inflated the numbers.

• McCullough said many hospitals dropped influenza testing, which he believes explains why flu seemed to disappear.
• McCullough said confirmatory antigen testing, as with HIV, should have backed up PCR results.
• McCullough said Quest and LabCorp have sharply increased measles PCR testing and suspects some reported measles deaths do not fit the disease.

▸In their words

“So the vast majority of the PCR positive tests were false positive.” Peter McCullough · at 2:27:07 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on The Joe Rogan Experience (2026-11-04). Read the whole episode summary →

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