Well, that explains a lot. Not something I'd be proud of...

Yeah and most of what you write is nothing I'd be proud of so....

Let's try a different approach. You say it's a "false positive" if there is no live virus detected. If there are markers of the virus detected they were indeed positive. Are they infectious? Nope.. but they were indeed positive because they have or have had the virus. You also make the assumption that a person who tests positive at or near 40 isn't a real positive case which is simply wrong. That person could be either in the beginning stages with low viral load or at the ending stages of fighting the virus. Either way, a positive is a positive.

But rage on bro! It's all a big conspiracy!

As I have said before, if I get a test I’m interested in knowing whether or not I have sufficient live virus in my system to cause me to suffer from an active viral infection.

I couldn’t give two ****s if I don’t have any live virus present within me but I have some quantity of dead virus or virus fragments.

To remind you of the context, we were talking about a person who had been vaccinated, who had no symptoms and who had a positive test that was followed by a subsequent negative test.

I will add that there was no mention of a previous Covid illness in this person, which I assume would have been mentioned had it been relevant.

One question you might want to research is whether or not you can ingest a sufficient quantity of virus fragments that cause you to test positive in a PCR test from someone who has previously had the disease and still shedding virus.

I don’t recall seeing anything definitive on that, although I suspect it is possible.

That is a distinction without a difference in this case. Reported as positive is positive. If it is an irrelevant positive, how is that different in any real respect from a false positive?

A false positive means you were never actually infected. In the case of a positive where only signatures and not culturable virus was found, you still had the virus which means you were a positive test.

Might tell your friend to contact the CDC?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/cdc-ramps-up-scrutiny-of-rare-post-vaccination-breakthrough-infections/ar-BB1fubGl?li=BBnb7Kz