The Wozniak ‘Patient Zero’ Case Study

Executive Summary

This report analyzes the public claim by Steve Wozniak in March 2020 that he may have been “Patient Zero” for COVID-19 in the United States.

It deconstructs the factual basis of the claim. It also uses the case to investigate the profound, systemic failures of the U.S. diagnostic testing apparatus during the pandemic’s critical early phase.

The central argument is that the failure to test Wozniak was not a personal or isolated incident, despite his wealth, location, and connections.

Rather, it was the direct and inevitable result of a cascading series of failures. These regulatory, manufacturing, and logistical failures created a diagnostic vacuum for the entire nation.

I. The Wozniak Case Study: Deconstructing the “Patient Zero” Claim

A. Factual Deconstruction of the March 2, 2020 Claim

The investigation begins with the primary claim: a social media post from March 2, 2020.

On that date, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak posted a location tag at the West Coast Sports Institute in Santa Clara, California, using the Foursquare check-in app.¹ The accompanying text, cross-posted to Twitter, read:¹

“Checking out Janet’s bad cough. Started Jan. 4. We had just returned from China and may have both been patient zero in U.S.”

A closer examination of Wozniak’s claim reveals three critical inconsistencies that challenge its medical validity.

1. Geographic Inconsistency: The claim of returning from “China” was a critical detail. In early March 2020, travel to mainland China (specifically Hubei province) was the primary and often only criterion for testing.5However, Wozniak provided a different itinerary in subsequent email clarifications to media outlets.He stated that he and his wife had returned from Southeast Asia on January 4, 2020. Their trip included Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong.7This distinction is not trivial. It is the central reason he would have been denied testing. His travel simply did not match the rigid, China-centric criteria in place at the time.
2. Symptomatological Inconsistency: Wozniak’s description of his illness did not align with the primary COVID-19 symptoms known at the time.He stated that he and his wife had “the worst flu of our lives”.7 But he also specified that their “GI symptoms better fit some other flu, because you rarely hear of that with COVID-19”.9While gastrointestinal symptoms were later associated with COVID-19, his primary description contradicted the focus on acute respiratory distress.
3. Contradictory Diagnosis: The event precipitating the March 2 clinic visit was not an emergent COVID-19 case. It was an evaluation of his wife’s “bad cough,” which had persisted since January 4.1The outcome of this visit was not a COVID-19 confirmation but a mundane diagnosis.Janet Wozniak confirmed in an email to USA Today that she was diagnosed with a sinus infection.2

B. The “Kind of a Joke” Defense: Assessing Motive

The “Patient Zero” claim collapsed almost as quickly as it was amplified. In response to the immediate media coverage,² Wozniak clarified his intent. He explicitly told media outlets that the “patient zero” reference was “kind of a joke”.⁸

He later attempted to parse this retraction. He distinguished between a joke he had made on January 23 and the March 2 tweet.

He claimed the March 2 tweet was “true” only in the literal sense that they were at a doctor’s office for a persistent cough.¹³

This pattern of claim, amplification, and retraction suggests the “Patient Zero” statement was not a sober assertion of fact.

Rather, it is best understood as a flippant, frustrated remark. Wozniak was an individual who had been sick for two months and was unable to get a definitive diagnosis from the medical system.⁷ This frustration is the actual, verifiable event.

Regarding the query’s hypotheses of manipulation, the available evidence provides no support for any external influence.⁸

The claim and its rapid retraction are wholly consistent with a high-profile individual making an ill-advised, half-joking comment. That comment was then irresponsibly amplified by media outlets in the high-anxiety environment of early March 2020.²

C. The Psychology of the Origin Narrative

The query’s focus on the psychology of the situation is astute. The Wozniak story gained traction not because it was credible. It succeeded because it satisfied a powerful cognitive bias: the narrative fallacy.

Pandemics are complex, abstract, and systemic phenomena. The human mind, however, seeks simple, concrete, and individual-based stories to make sense of amorphous threats.

It seeks a “Patient Zero”.¹⁷

Wozniak, a “Silicon Valley icon” ²⁰ and universally recognized figure, provided the perfect protagonist for this narrative.

His “joke” gave a familiar face to the frightening concept of “community spread.” This concept was, at that very moment, first being identified in Santa Clara County.⁵

The psychological engine that drove the story was the public and media fascination with a simple origin story ¹⁹, not a conspiracy to manipulate Wozniak.

This phenomenon is a recognized bias in public health communication.²¹ It occurs when the first person identified (or to self-identify) bears a disproportionate burden of blame or association.

Ultimately, the “Patient Zero” claim is best understood not as a medical fact, but as a media artifact born from the public’s psychological need for a simple narrative in a time of crisis.

II. The Diagnostic Void: Why Wozniak Was Not Tested (Jan 4 – March 2, 2020)

A. Establishing the “Wozniak Window” and His Access

Wozniak’s illness began on January 4, 2020.⁷ His public complaint about not being tested was on March 2, 2020 ¹, and reiterated on March 3.⁹

His location was Santa Clara, California ¹, the heart of Silicon Valley.²² This placed him in the jurisdiction of the Santa Clara County Public Health Department (SCCPHD).⁵

The central premise of the user’s query is logical. It assumes Wozniak’s wealth ²⁰, tech connections ²², and potential links to Asia ⁷ should have granted him access to testing.

The systemic failure is demonstrated by why these assets were rendered useless.

B. Phase 1 Failure: The Centralized, and Broken, Response (Feb 4 – Feb 29)

On February 4, 2020, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared a public health emergency. This declaration was the legal predicate for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for in vitro diagnostics.²⁵

On that same day, the FDA issued an EUA to only one test: the CDC’s “2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel”.²⁹ This decision was the “hold up.”

It was a deliberate federal policy to centralize all diagnostic testing through the CDC and its network of designated Public Health Laboratories (PHLs).

This policy created a regulatory monopoly. It legally prohibited high-complexity CLIA-certified laboratories from developing and deploying their own tests. This included labs at Stanford University, UCSF, and commercial facilities.

This policy created a catastrophic single point of failure.

The CDC’s test was almost immediately discovered to be critically flawed (see Section III). When this happened, the entire U.S. testing apparatus was rendered inert.

This regulatory decision was the direct cause of the diagnostic vacuum that existed for nearly the entire month of February 2020.

C. Answering “Why not a public health lab?”: The Access Barrier

A question arises as to why Wozniak did not “go to a public health lab.” In early 2020, PHLs were not walk-in clinics; they were secure reference laboratories that only received specimens submitted by clinicians or health departments.³⁰

More importantly, Wozniak was ineligible for testing. His wealth and status were irrelevant against the rigid CDC testing criteria in place during this period.

The criteria used by his local Santa Clara County Public Health Lab were extremely narrow.

Even on February 27, when the SCCPHD identified its first case of community transmission, testing guidance was strictly focused on specific groups.⁵

• Persons with clinical findings of lower respiratory illness AND a travel history to an affected area (i.e., Hubei province, China).
• Persons with a close epidemiologic link to a laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 case.
• Persons hospitalized for severe respiratory disease with no alternative diagnosis.

Wozniak failed on all counts.

His travel was to Southeast Asia, not Hubei.⁷ His symptoms were primarily GI, not “severe respiratory” (he was not hospitalized).⁷ He had no known contact with a confirmed case.

A physician following CDC guidance would not have been able to order the test for him.

D. Interpreting the “Run-Around”

Wozniak’s “connections” were useless. He was attempting to bypass a federal policy, not a simple administrative hurdle.

His complaint on March 3 that he “could never get a test” and had been “through the same run-around with the CDC” is entirely credible.⁹

He claims he contacted the CDC directly and received a “boilerplate response” about washing his hands.⁷

This is consistent with an individual who did not meet the official testing criteria. He was, therefore, correctly (by the flawed policy) dismissed by the system.

He was not being personally failed. He was experiencing a system that was failing the entire nation.

This misalignment is visually demonstrated in the timeline below.

E. Table 1: Wozniak Case Timeline vs. U.S. Testing Availability (Jan-March 2020)

Date	Steve Wozniak (The Individual)	U.S. Testing System (The System)
Jan 4, 2020	Returns from Southeast Asia with wife; both develop “worst flu of our lives” with GI symptoms.7	No authorized test for SARS-CoV-2 exists in the U.S.
Jan 4 – Feb 3	Wozniak and wife are sick. He states he contacted the CDC and received a “boilerplate response”.7	U.S. testing is non-existent, reliant on research-only protocols.
Feb 4, 2020	(Ill, unable to be tested)	HHS declares public health emergency.25 FDA issues EUA exclusively for the CDC test, blocking all other labs.[27, 29]
Feb 5 – Feb 28	(Ill, unable to be tested)	CDC ships its flawed, contaminated test kits.32 PHLs report catastrophic failures. A diagnostic vacuum exists.
Feb 27, 2020	(Location: Santa Clara)	First community transmission (no travel link) identified in Santa Clara 5, proving the testing criteria are wrong.
Feb 29, 2020	(Location: Santa Clara)	FDA Policy Reversal. Under pressure, FDA allows high-complexity CLIA labs to develop their own LDTs.[28, 29, 33]
March 2, 2020	Tweets “patient zero” joke.7 Visit to clinic; wife diagnosed with sinus infection.[2, 4]	Two days after FDA reversal. No commercial labs are online yet.
March 5, 2020		Labcorp is the first national lab to launch its LDT, per the new Feb 29 guidance.34
March 9, 2020		Quest Diagnostics launches its LDT.[35, 36, 37]

Wozniak was thus caught in a “diagnostic void,” where his personal resources were nullified by a centralized, non-functional federal policy and rigid testing criteria he did not meet.

III. Anatomy of a Systemic Failure: The CDC’s Contaminated Kits

A. Addressing the Egregious Failure

Skepticism about this failure, given the CDC’s extensive background with other viruses, is valid.

The CDC’s failure was not one of scientific discovery. It was a failure of basic manufacturing execution and quality control, which makes it an egregious failure.

This term describes an act of gross negligence that amounted to a fundamental breach of public trust.

The CDC, the world’s premier public health agency, failed to adhere to its own quality systems and basic manufacturing practices. It released a contaminated, non-functional product during a national emergency.³⁸

This failure was documented in detail by a subsequent HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit ³⁸ and peer-reviewed molecular analysis.³²

It was the direct cause of the diagnostic vacuum in February 2020. It was this failure that made the FDA’s centralized policy collapse.

B. Molecular Deconstruction of the Flaw

The CDC’s test was a “2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel.”

A real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction ($RT-PCR$) test uses fluorescent probes to detect viral genetic material (RNA) as it is amplified.

The CDC panel was designed to target three regions of the virus genome ³²:

• N1 and N2 (specific to SARS-CoV-2)
• N3 (a “pan-coronavirus” target designed to detect a wider range of related coronaviruses)

The test kits shipped to PHLs across the nation immediately failed validation. They produced false-positive results, rendering them unusable.

Subsequent analysis revealed two distinct and catastrophic molecular failures ³²:

1. Failure 1 (Contamination): The N1 primer/probe component showed false positive reactivity. This component was supposed to be specific to SARS-CoV-2. In-depth analysis concluded this was “due to contamination of the kits by a synthetic oligonucleotide”.³² In simple terms, a piece of synthetic DNA matching the N1 target had been accidentally introduced into the test reagents.
2. Failure 2 (Design Flaw): The N3 component also failed by showing false positives. This was not due to contamination. It was a fundamental design flaw where the N3 primers and probe interacted with each other, creating a false signal.³²

C. The Root Cause: A Breakdown in Controls

The most damning finding of the subsequent investigations is when the contamination occurred.

The HHS OIG audit ³⁸ and the PLOS One paper ³² both note that the pre-validation materials (the “pre-EUA” lot) used inside the CDC laboratories worked correctly. The test that the CDC validated and submitted to the FDA was functional.⁴¹

The contamination was introduced after validation. It occurred “during the post production quality control process or packaging of the EUA kits distributed to public health labs”.³²

The FDA had already granted the EUA on February 4 based on the clean, non-contaminated data.⁴¹

The CDC’s failure, therefore, was a basic breach of its own quality systems ⁴¹, CLIA standards, and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP).

The OIG audit confirmed these “internal control weaknesses.” It also noted that the agency’s guidance documents “do not address the development of a test kit”.³⁹

This critical manufacturing and quality control lapse at the CDC was the first domino. It invalidated the nation’s entire centralized testing strategy at its inception.

IV. The Regulatory Bottleneck: Deconstructing the FDA “Hold-Up”

A. The Feb 4, 2020 EUA as a “Barrier to Entry”

This section directly addresses the question of why the FDA had a “hold-up” and why high-complexity labs could not immediately begin testing.

The answer is that they were not legally allowed to. The “hold-up” was the FDA.

As established, the FDA’s February 4 EUA for the CDC test was a deliberate decision to create a regulatory monopoly.²⁵

Under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA), high-complexity laboratories have the authority to develop and validate their own “Laboratory Developed Tests” (LDTs). This includes labs at major universities, hospital systems, and commercial entities like Quest and Labcorp. In a normal environment, they could have begun testing immediately upon validating a test.

However, the Public Health Emergency declaration changed the rules. All tests now required an EUA.

By granting an EUA only to the CDC, the FDA legally prevented all other labs in the country from using their own LDTs, even if they were functional.²⁹ The “hold-up” was a deliberate, albeit flawed, regulatory strategy to centralize the national response.

B. The Feb 29, 2020 Policy Reversal: The Dam Breaks

The CDC kit failure in mid-February created an untenable crisis: the country’s sole legal test was unworkable.

This immense pressure, combined with the discovery of community transmission in California ⁵ and Washington, forced the FDA to reverse its policy.

On February 29, 2020, the FDA issued a new guidance document, a critical turning point.²⁵

This new policy stated that the FDA did not intend to object to high-complexity CLIA-certified labs developing and immediately using their own validated LDTs for clinical diagnosis before receiving an EUA.

The only condition was that the lab must submit its EUA application to the FDA within 15 days of beginning clinical testing.²⁹

This February 29 policy change is the single most important event in the Wozniak timeline. His March 2 complaint occurred just 48 hours after this policy change. The “hold-up” had just ended, but the new, decentralized system was not yet built.

This February 29 policy reversal was the moment the “hold-up” ended. Unfortunately, it simultaneously triggered a new set of logistical failures.

V. The Commercial Response: Why Wozniak Still Couldn’t Get a Test in March 2020

A. The Lag from Policy to Practice

It was correctly noted that Quest and Labcorp took approximately a week to respond. This lag is the normal “startup time” for developing, validating, and scaling a complex molecular assay. Wozniak’s tweet on March 2 ⁷ fell directly into this gap.

• Labcorp: Announced on March 5, 2020, that it was the first national commercial lab to make its LDT available. This was just five days after the new FDA policy.³⁴
• Quest Diagnostics: Announced on March 5 that it would be in position to receive specimens for its new LDT on March 9, 2020. This was nine days after the policy change.³⁵

Wozniak’s March 2 complaint about the timing of LDTs was slightly inaccurate.

His complaint was after they were allowed (Feb 29) but before they were logistically available (March 5-9). He was witnessing the “startup lag” of an entire industry being born in a single week.

B. Answering “Why didn’t he press the matter?”: The Two Great Bottlenecks

The assumption that Wozniak’s personal wealth and connections should have allowed him to “contact a high-complexity lab” and get a test in mid-March is logical. It is also completely incorrect, for two fundamental reasons.

Bottleneck 1: The Supply Chain Collapse

The suggestion that this was not an issue of “scale” is a central misunderstanding of the March 2020 crisis. In this period, scale was the only thing that mattered.

The instant the FDA opened the LDT floodgates on February 29, all laboratories tried to ramp up testing at the exact same time. This included PHLs, academic labs, and national commercial labs.

This created an immediate, catastrophic collapse of the global diagnostic supply chain.⁴³

Surveys of clinical laboratories from March 2020 show crippling shortages of all necessary components.⁴³ This included:

• Nasopharyngeal swabs
• Viral transport media (VTM)
• RNA extraction reagents (most critically)

Wozniak’s wealth was irrelevant. He could not buy reagents that did not exist.

His “connections” were useless. He needed connections at Qiagen or Roche, and those companies were prioritizing massive, nation-state-level orders.

A single “rich guy” test was not a priority. It was a physical impossibility when labs were rationing their limited reagents for hospitalized, dying patients and healthcare workers.⁶

Bottleneck 2: The Medical/Reputational Context

By the time Quest (March 9) ³⁵ and Labcorp (March 5) ³⁴ were theoretically operational, Wozniak’s own medical case had been resolved.

On March 2, his wife was diagnosed with a sinus infection.² His “patient zero” claim had been publicly dismissed by him as a “joke”.⁸

There was no longer a pressing medical impetus to “press the matter.” His query was academic, not urgent.

In a system crippled by shortages ⁴³, an academic, “I’m curious if I had it” test for a non-hospitalized patient with a resolving cough was the lowest possible priority for any lab.

C. Answering “What about on March 16-17?”: PCR, Antibody, and T-Cell Tests

The query correctly notes that Labcorp (March 16) ⁴⁷ and Quest (March 17) ⁴⁸ received their formal EUAs at this time.

The query is also scientifically correct that PCR positivity can persist for weeks after symptom onset.⁴⁹ Wozniak may have still tested positive.

However, as established, the supply chain and priority blockades made this access highly unlikely.

The question of whether antibody or T-cell tests were available is where the timeline provides a definitive “no.” These tests were not an option.

• Antibody (Serology) Tests: These tests detect the body’s immune response (antibodies), not the active virus.⁴³ In March 2020, they were not available. The first EUA for an antigen test (a different category) was not issued until May 9, 2020.⁵² The first point-of-care antibody test did not receive an EUA until July 2020.⁵³ While Labcorp began limited antibody testing for high-priority healthcare workers in late March, this was not a service available to the public.⁵⁴
• T-Cell Tests: This hypothesis is anachronistic by a full year. T-cell tests identify an adaptive T-cell immune response to the virus.⁵⁵ They are a highly complex form of testing. The T-Detect COVID Test, the first-in-class assay from Adaptive Biotechnologies, was not even launched as a clinical product until February 23, 2021.⁵⁶ It did not receive its EUA until March 5, 2021.⁵⁵

D. Table 2: Early 2020 Diagnostic Test Availability

Test Type	Target of Detection	Date of First EUA	Available to Wozniak (Jan-Mar 2020)?
RT-PCR (CDC Panel)	Viral RNA	Feb 4, 2020 25	No. This test was functionally non-existent due to contamination 32 and inaccessible due to strict criteria.5
RT-PCR (LDT)	Viral RNA	Policy enabling: Feb 29, 2020.33 First EUA: Mar 16-17, 2020.[47, 48]	Theoretically, yes (post-March 5). In practice, No. Access was blocked by catastrophic supply shortages 43 and prioritization of hospitalized patients.[6]
Antigen (Rapid)	Viral Proteins	May 9, 2020 52	No.
Serology (Antibody)	Human Antibodies (IgG/IgM)	First POC EUA: July 2020 53	No.
T-Cell Test	Adaptive T-Cell Response	March 5, 2021 [57, 58]	No.

Therefore, by the time testing became legally possible, it was logistically impossible—a crisis of supply, not access, which rendered his wealth and status irrelevant.

VI. Final Report: A Systemic Failure, Not a Personal One

A. Synthesizing the Failures

This investigation concludes that the “Skeptical Researcher” is correct to identify a critical failure. However, the failure is systemic, not personal.

The Wozniak case is not an outlier; it is the epitome of a nation-wide failure.

The system failed Wozniak “so bad” because it failed in four distinct, sequential, and cascading layers:

1. The Scientific/Manufacturing Failure: The CDC, the world’s premier public health institution, failed at basic manufacturing and quality control. It contaminated its own test and violated its own quality systems.³²
2. The Regulatory Failure: The FDA, in an attempt to control the response, enforced a testing monopoly ²⁵ for a product that did not work. This decision created a month-long diagnostic void (Feb 4-29) during the most critical window of the pandemic.
3. The Logistical Failure: The moment the regulatory failure was “fixed” (Feb 29) ³³, it triggered an immediate and total collapse of the un-managed and fragile diagnostic supply chain. This made the new policy all but useless for most people.⁴³
4. The Information Failure: In the absence of tests, the public was left with rumor, anxiety, and frustration. Wozniak’s “joke” ⁸ was not an act of fraud; it was a symptom of this information vacuum.

B. The Central Paradox: Why Wealth and Connections Were Useless

This report’s final conclusion directly addresses the central question of why the system failed such a well-resourced individual.

The system failed because the failure was at a level that wealth and influence cannot touch.

• From Jan 4 – Feb 29, 2020: Wozniak’s wealth could not legally buy a test that the FDA had prohibited.²⁵ His “connections” could not medically bypass rigid federal criteria that excluded him.⁵
• From March 1, 2020 onward: Wozniak’s wealth could not physically create the RNA extraction reagents and nasopharyngeal swabs that had disappeared from the global market.⁴³

The Wozniak case is the ultimate proof of the failure.

If a wealthy, connected, tech-savvy individual ²⁰ living in one of the most advanced-resourced counties ⁵ in the world could not get a simple diagnostic test ¹, it means nobody could.

The system did not fail Wozniak personally. It failed the entire nation so completely that it nullified all of his individual advantages.

C. Implications for Future Public Health Policy

The cascading failures illuminated by this case study provide critical, forward-looking policy implications.

The primary lesson is that a centralized, single-point-of-failure diagnostic strategy is unacceptably fragile in a pandemic.

Future public health responses must prioritize regulatory flexibility. They must enable—not block—high-complexity CLIA-certified laboratories to immediately develop and deploy LDTs.

Furthermore, this incident exposes a critical gap between scientific validation and at-scale manufacturing.

Future planning must involve strengthening and auditing laboratory quality systems and supply chain resilience before a crisis. These logistical components, not scientific discovery, proved to be the ultimate bottleneck.⁴³

Specific mechanisms for this could include:

• Establishing a “warm-base” manufacturing network for critical reagents and swabs.
• Creating pre-vetted regulatory pathways for academic and commercial LDTs.
• Diversifying the national stockpile to include a wider range of testing components.

VII. Glossary of Technical Terms

• CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments): Federal standards that regulate all human laboratory testing in the U.S. to ensure accuracy and reliability. “High-complexity” labs are certified to perform the most sophisticated tests, including LDTs.²⁵
• EUA (Emergency Use Authorization): A mechanism used by the FDA to facilitate the availability and use of medical countermeasures, including diagnostic tests, during public health emergencies.²⁵
• LDT (Laboratory Developed Test): A type of diagnostic test that is designed, manufactured, and used within a single high-complexity CLIA laboratory.²⁹
• PHL (Public Health Laboratory): A government laboratory (state, county) that monitors and detects public health threats. In the early pandemic, they were the only labs designated to run the CDC’s test.⁶
• RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction): The “gold standard” molecular test that detects the virus’s genetic material (RNA). It is highly sensitive and specific.⁴⁰
• Serology (Antibody) Test: A blood test that detects the presence of antibodies. These are proteins the body’s immune system creates in response to an infection. It indicates a past infection, not an active one.⁴³
• T-Cell Test: An advanced test that identifies a different part of the immune response (T-cells) to determine a recent or prior infection. This technology became available much later than PCR or antibody tests.⁵⁵

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