this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Rates of severe disease may be staying at relatively low levels, but experts agree that there are probably more infections than the current surveillance systems can capture.

“There is more transmission out there than what the surveillance data indicates,” said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. “And we should be paying attention to it, because we are starting to see an increase.”

Weekly hospital admissions have nearly doubled over the past month, including a 19% bump in the most recent week, CDC data shows. And a sample of laboratories participating in a federal surveillance program show that test positivity rates have tripled in the past two months.

There are some hopeful signs: Biobot data shows that wastewater levels may be starting to flatten, and relatively low hospitalization rates suggest that there may be a lower risk of severe disease for many.

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Physician here. The best marker we have of covid prevalence is wastewater testing. With the availability of home kits (and no reporting) and people refusing to test when symptomatic, the old markers of positivity rates and number of positive tests aren't as valid. Even hospitalization numbers can fluctuate for multiple reasons. Municipal wastewater testing truly gives a sense of covid in a population.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Covid deniers gonna start shitting in the back yard

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Naw, they're going to shit in their neighbor's yard as god intended. As the golden rule states, do unto others before they do unto you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

*poo unto others before they poo unto you

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Or in their septic tanks.

Which I suppose are in their back yard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I laughed and then realized that is not out of the realm of possibility.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds like a shitty way to get data.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't get all pissy about it, it works great!

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

You should toilet sewer your whole cock. Is that a good pun

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Wastewater-based emidemiology guy here. Thank you for your recognition of the field! I work at a competitor of Biobot, and what I find interesting is the article claiming Biobot data showing a plateau, as our data is showing a significant uptick over the month of August.

On a different note, the majority of funding for WBE and wastewater surveillance comes from state/federal coffers, so please ask your colleagues to write to your representatives and ask for more funding towards WBE.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Which is interesting, because at least here in Boston, we're seeing an increase, but not a huge spike: https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

We can barely find test kits around us, and they are stupid expensive when we do find them. Like 10 bucks apiece.

If it's still running rampant, maybe the tests should still be affordable (or better yet, free).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's what I've been thinking. I can't even recall the last time I heard of anyone I know taking a PCR covid test.

And that makes it challenging trying to manage behavior. I've definitely noticed a marked uptick in people I know that have gotten covid in the past couple weeks, but when I try to look at the data to validate my anecdotal experience, it's difficult to find compared to two years ago. Oregon, for example, has wastewater monitoring, but the page used to convey the data doesn't work on mobile and is confusing to use at best.