Thread by @SethCotlar

The CDC website has this interesting data about levels of Covid 19 detected in wastewater. The data is very scattershot (none from Oregon, from what I can tell). Just speaking as an interested citizen, but shouldn't we be investing more resources in this? covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…

Again, not an expert, just a citizen, but it strikes me that this sort of data would offer us a much more accurate and easily attainable picture of the rate of community spread in specific places at specific times. What a great risk management tool for individuals.

For example, let's say I work as a cashier at a supermarket and I see that levels of Covid 19 in that community have suddenly spiked upward. I might then decide to upgrade my masking on the basis of that information.

Or let's say levels of Covid 19 have plummeted and are negligible in a community. Then maybe folks can feel comfortable returning to something more like normal for the time being.

The increased availability of in-home testing means that the "daily positive test" counts will become less reliable as a metric of how widespread the virus is. More at home testing is good. But we also need data to assess risk. Wastewater testing seems ideal for that.

It's totally anonymized, so no privacy concerns. From what I understand, it's pretty empirically sound and reliable. And if we want to manage Covid as endemic in a way informed by data rather than vibes and degrees of "patience," isn't this one good way to do that?

Imagine how useful that CDC website would be if every wastewater treatment plant in the country got a federal grant to collect data that was then uploaded automatically to the CDC website where anyone could look at it any time they wanted.

Thanks to @rich_blaha who clued me in to Oregon's wastewater data site. Again, not an expert on this stuff, but it seems pretty good. public.tableau.com/app/profile/or…

Here's the data from my town. Look at that spike back in very early January. Our daily case numbers were still pretty low at that point, but this reading blared red in terms of what would be coming (we got hit hard the 2nd week of Jan).

My university just returned to in-person instruction. We have a booster and a mask mandate. Given the wastewater numbers, it would seem like we timed it pretty well. These are the sorts of decisions we'll probably (sadly) be needing to make in the future. More data is good.