False positives could explain all

University of Texas found the following: 

The sensitivity of the RT-PCR diagnostic test was estimated to be 0.777 (95% CI: 0.715, 0.849), while the specificity was 0.988 (95% CI: 0.933, 1.000). The confidence intervals include sampling error in addition to the error due to probabilistic knowledge of the data

  

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078949v1.full.pdf

So the false positive error could be as high as 5%

If there is no virus at all, we would get 50000 

Pr million rested.  The us has tested 40 million 

If the specificity is 92% all of the tests could be  false positives.  Approximately 8000 people die in the us pr day. Covid 19 has been going on for about 130 days. During this time  

1 040 000 Americans have died.  Since many have been coded as covid deaths if doctors have suspected covid, 92% specificity could explain the whole epidemic with false positive.  

With labs being under pressure to perform, it is probably that contaminants from previous tests lead to higher false positives. They  cannot result in false negatives.  

Have a look at the quotes below and imagine stressed lab technicians pressured to work quickly and unconsciously being rewarded for finding sars cov2 infections. 



59 of 1599 in Louisiana  gives 3.6%.  So 3.6% is  4834.  Then the  percentage  would be 

134 853 - 4843. 129980 

Review of external quality assessments revealed false positive rates of 0-16.7%, with an interquartile range of 0.8-4.0%.

false positive rate of 2.3-6.9% has to be expected.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341091306_False_positives_in_reverse_transcription_PCR_testing_for_SARS-CoV-2

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting clinical laboratory staff and health care providers of an increased risk of a false positive result with BD SARS-CoV-2 Reagents for the BD Max System test. In one study, the manufacturer found approximately three percent (3%) of results were false positive results.

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care-providers/false-positive-results-bd-sars-cov-2-reagents-bd-max-system-letter-clinical-laboratory-staff-and

Also bear in mind that whatever "best estimate" one develops, it's an estimate of the mean; the actual FPR in one situation or another could vary significantly from this. For example, in the subset of EQAs with >100 negative samples per EQA, the FPRs ranged from below a fraction of 1% to just over 8%, and each of these rates was based on averaging the results from all the laboratories participating in the EQA (with an average of about 100 labs per EQA). 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v2.article-metrics

Currently, DNA amplification techniques have become important detection tools. However, the extreme sensitivity of such techniques can easily result in contamination. This is a major problem in using these techniques routinely in a regulatory agency such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because false-positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) results will fail our mission. Preventing PCR carryover contamination and a capacity to rapidly determine false PCR positives are crucial. In the past, several methods have been used to prevent amplicon carryover contamination

https://www.intechopen.com/books/polymerase-chain-reaction-for-biomedical-applications/regulatory-concern-of-polymerase-chain-reaction-pcr-carryover-contamination

There can be various sources of contamination during PCR, leading to myriad observations that may require troubleshooting. A common observation is excessive or unexpected signal, typically caused by contamination of reagents with template, genomic DNA, or amplicons from previous reactions.

https://www.intechopen.com/books/polymerase-chain-reaction-for-biomedical-applications/regulatory-concern-of-polymerase-chain-reaction-pcr-carryover-contamination

There are many ways a PCR experiment can go wrong, ruining your hard work. Environmental contamination of PCR samples is one such error, but it's one you can easily change.

Avoid DNA contamination with these tips

Obtaining a clean, successful PCR requires samples free of exogenous DNA. But contaminating DNA can be lurking around every corner—from previously amplified products hanging out in the lab to your own DNA. The good news is that you can largely avoid common types of contamination by following these simple guidelines:  

https://www.takarabio.com/about/bioview-blog/tips-and-troubleshooting/avoid-dna-contamination-in-pcr

Sensitive molecular methods, such as the PCR, can detect low-level contamination, and careful technique is required to reduce the impact of contaminants. Yet, some assays that are designed to detect high copy-number target sequences appear to be impossible to perform without contamination, and frequently, personnel or laboratory environment are held responsible as the source. This complicates diagnostic and research analysis when using molecular methods.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2777341/

PCR analyses of ancient and degraded DNA suffer from their extreme sensitivity to contamination by modern DNA originating, in particular, from carryover contamination with previously amplified or cloned material. Any strategy for limiting carryover contamination would also have to be compatible with the particular requirements of ancient DNA analyses. These include the need (i) to amplify short PCR products due to template fragmentation; (ii) to clone PCR products in order to track possible base misincorporation resulting from damaged templates; and (iii) to avoid incomplete decontamination causing artifactual sequence transformation