Researchers are analysing wastewater to determine how much coronavirus is circulating in the community: Poop may tell us when the coronavirus lockdown will end
Not every person is on city sewage.
Do you think that make this method totally pointless?
I haven’t seen any information about how they are getting an estimate of cases. I assume there have been studies on the amount of virus in faeces of infected patients, and they are extrapolating out from that. But the estimate numbers vary wildly, to the point where it is little more than a yes/no answer.
We know that some people get a gasto-intestinal upset as the virus seems to sometime infect cells in the gut. I wonder whether these people might be adding a disproportionate amount of virus to the sewerge system, making estimates of infection rates much harder.
It’s not entirely pointless, but in my state at least it wouldn’t tell you much because a 50% of people have wells and septic tanks rather than municipal water & sewer. I suspect New Hampshire is not unique in this.
My central California county and its four “cities” (including the state’s smallest by area) provide sewers for maybe 1/3 of non-prison residences. Many rural areas in the US lack sewers* so infection rates can’t be computed by sifting wastes. Thus, rural undercounts.
- Look it up. Nearly one-fifth of U.S. households are not connected to a public sewer. “Vermont tops the chart, with 55 percent of homes on septic.” Oh, those Yanks!
I’m always surprised at the surprise around this. Not far outside Boston, where you start to find 3 acre lots, it just isn’t practical to run water and sewer lines. In the NH town I lived in, the more built up downtown area had water and sewer, but outside that it was well and septic.
And FWIW, I loved well and septic. Take care of it and the cost is negligible. My septic system was running great at 30 years old when I sold the house.
What exactly are the naysayers trying to say? It’s just one additional tool that may provide additional information about the spread of the virus. Every tool has obvious limitations and biases. I’m sure the people using the tool understand that.
Do you respond to every political poll by saying “But not everyone has a phone!”?
I made a post about this once, but the range is so large that its almost useless. The study I discussed is mentioned a bit in the article.
that is such a huge range that I don’t know what it actually tells you. There could be anywhere from 5 to 250 times more cases than are official diagnosed.
Could be worse. If the projection was on the order of 23,000, the range would be from 2,300 to 230,000, twice the study’s top estimate. My take: it’s a start.
For the US presence/absence may not be the most useful data, since they can open the window and look out, but for countries that have got their shit together (I speak only in the technical sanitary sense) the presence of the virus as we approach and seek to maintain a virus-free environment, I expect it will be incredibly valuable.
I gather that when its used for illicit drug tracking you track up the branches of the system if you get a hit, and can get to an individual street and then even specific houses or clusters. That would be good, especially if someone is asymptomatic and untested.