How is a disease is diagnosed?

Important question to ask, right?  More specifically, are manifestation of symptoms required to diagnose a disease by the medical profession’s own standards?  Common sense says that you don’t go to the doctor unless you are manifesting symptoms… “Doc this hurts.”  “Doc I’m not sleeping well.” Are symptoms officially required to be counted as someone who HAS a disease?

Turns out, the official answer is… yes.

A case definition is required (CDC – Lesson One >>).  According to the CDC,  ” A case definition is a set of standard criteria for classifying whether a person has a particular disease, syndrome, or other health condition.” “A case definition consists of clinical criteria… The clinical criteria usually include confirmatory laboratory tests, if available, or combinations of symptoms (subjective complaints), signs (objective physical findings), and other findings.”  It’s important to have because, ” Use of an agreed-upon standard case definition ensures that every case is equivalent, regardless of when or where it occurred, or who identified it.”

So… I tried to find a case definition for CV19.  There isn’t one!  Look for it yourself.  The best you’ll do is this (CDC – Recommendations for Reporting, Testing, and Specimen Collection >>).  “Clinicians should immediately implement recommended infection prevention and control practices if a patient is suspected of having COVID-19.”  Suspicion is the only criteria.  There are no definitions specific to this disease… none… and if there are diseases that do not have specific sets of manifestations (such as rheumatic fever), then the Jones Criteria is the next protocol – and even then, this protocol defines a disease according to major and minor manifestations of symptoms!  In any case, the case definitions are specific to a disease so that no mis-counting can occur.  As the CDC, itself, states, “Use of an agreed-upon standard case definition ensures that every case is equivalent, regardless of when or where it occurred, or who identified it.”

So, what are they counting exactly???