6 ms·

its unfortunate that we'll never know what this data looked like in 2019 or before

by a45a33s 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago
Seems like it’d be a pretty flat, unremarkable chart.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  Perhaps, but there have been reports of varying veracity hinting that COVID-19 was already in Western sewage, blood and autopsy samples in 2019. Who knows if that was contamination, flawed equipment, geopolitical shenanigans or legitimate data though.
  - patall 5y ago
    The reason why these are mostly believed to be false positive is that all current covid-19 lineages (sequences) can be traced back to a single clone that (based on mutation rate estimates) appeared somewhere in late 2019. There may have been other lineages before that, but we seem to have no RNA sequence of those lineages, so we cannot put them in relation to any existing strain. One has to wonder, where are those 'alternative' lineages now, if they existed in the first place? Sure, they may have gone extinct in the great lockdown. But then one has to ask why did those went extinct while so many other virusses didn't. An a simple (occams razor) explaination is: they never existed.
- teeray 5y ago
  Hopefully, otherwise we have other problems
- a45a33s 5y ago
  thats an assumption that we have no way of confirming
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    It's a very safe assumption. We can look at excess deaths (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm) and the speed and locations it spread around the world and be fairly certain that if the virus were here in significant quantities in 2019 we'd have seen signs of it.
QuarterReptile 5y ago
Or in 1889-1890.
orblivion 5y ago
Maybe they have old samples?
- muzani 5y ago
  I'm entertained by the idea that somewhere out there, the CCP sent Chinese James Bond to swipe archived wastewater with covid infected ones to prove that it wasn't in Wuhan, but nobody has tested it yet.
TechBro8615 5y ago
That makes me wonder… where does the Covid in the wastewater go? Do we successfully filter it out of the wastewater before recycling it back into the ecosystem? Where specifically does filtered wastewater go, and how confident are we in the filtering process?
- revicon 5y ago
  I am not at all an authority on this but I think they use UV light to kill it during one of the treatment steps.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Only in a relatively few places. But it's not really necessary most of the time. It's often done more for political reasons than technical ones, because it's easier for the public to understand and trust UV disinfection than the other, much more complex processes that are typically used. Cobb County GA is an example of a plant that has large scale UV treatment right before discharge into the Chattahoochee River. But it's effluent is cleaner than the water getting pumped into their water supply.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  A significant goal of wastewater treatment is reducing or eliminating pathogenic load. For a methods overview, see: https://www.filtsep.com/water-and-wastewater/features/pathogen-removal-from-water-technologies-and/ https://www.filtsep.com/water-and-wastewater/features/pathog... This paper discusses treatment and emergent pathogens: "The Role of Wastewater Treatment in Protecting Water Supplies Against Emerging Pathogens" https://www.jstor.org/stable/23803199 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23803199 I thought direct chlorination played a larger role, it seems it doesn't. (Heavy chlorination of water does result in post-treatment chlorine compounds being present, these are themselves an environmental concern. The bulk of the chlorine evaporates or is reacted relatively quickly. Chlorine also negatively impacts "digestors" which process residual organic matter in wastewater.) UV, oxygenation, sunlight, filtration, and dilution are all utilised as well. Viruses tend not to survive long periods of environmental exposure outside a host in most circumstances, though I'm not knowledgeable on specifics or exceptions.
elihu 5y ago
If memory serves, there was a city in Italy I think where they were able to verify that Covid was present in the city some time before the first reported case because they keep samples of the sewer water for awhile, and that allowed them to retroactively test for it.

its unfortunate that we'll never know what this data looked like in 2019 or before

ceejayoz 5y ago

Seems like it’d be a pretty flat, unremarkable chart.

jdavis703 5y ago
Perhaps, but there have been reports of varying veracity hinting that COVID-19 was already in Western sewage, blood and autopsy samples in 2019. Who knows if that was contamination, flawed equipment, geopolitical shenanigans or legitimate data though.
- patall 5y ago
  The reason why these are mostly believed to be false positive is that all current covid-19 lineages (sequences) can be traced back to a single clone that (based on mutation rate estimates) appeared somewhere in late 2019. There may have been other lineages before that, but we seem to have no RNA sequence of those lineages, so we cannot put them in relation to any existing strain. One has to wonder, where are those 'alternative' lineages now, if they existed in the first place? Sure, they may have gone extinct in the great lockdown. But then one has to ask why did those went extinct while so many other virusses didn't. An a simple (occams razor) explaination is: they never existed.
teeray 5y ago
Hopefully, otherwise we have other problems
a45a33s 5y ago
thats an assumption that we have no way of confirming
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  It's a very safe assumption. We can look at excess deaths (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm) and the speed and locations it spread around the world and be fairly certain that if the virus were here in significant quantities in 2019 we'd have seen signs of it.

QuarterReptile 5y ago

Or in 1889-1890.

orblivion 5y ago

Maybe they have old samples?

muzani 5y ago
I'm entertained by the idea that somewhere out there, the CCP sent Chinese James Bond to swipe archived wastewater with covid infected ones to prove that it wasn't in Wuhan, but nobody has tested it yet.

TechBro8615 5y ago

That makes me wonder… where does the Covid in the wastewater go? Do we successfully filter it out of the wastewater before recycling it back into the ecosystem? Where specifically does filtered wastewater go, and how confident are we in the filtering process?

revicon 5y ago
I am not at all an authority on this but I think they use UV light to kill it during one of the treatment steps.
- beerandt 5y ago
  Only in a relatively few places. But it's not really necessary most of the time. It's often done more for political reasons than technical ones, because it's easier for the public to understand and trust UV disinfection than the other, much more complex processes that are typically used. Cobb County GA is an example of a plant that has large scale UV treatment right before discharge into the Chattahoochee River. But it's effluent is cleaner than the water getting pumped into their water supply.
dredmorbius 5y ago
A significant goal of wastewater treatment is reducing or eliminating pathogenic load. For a methods overview, see: https://www.filtsep.com/water-and-wastewater/features/pathogen-removal-from-water-technologies-and/ https://www.filtsep.com/water-and-wastewater/features/pathog... This paper discusses treatment and emergent pathogens: "The Role of Wastewater Treatment in Protecting Water Supplies Against Emerging Pathogens" https://www.jstor.org/stable/23803199 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23803199 I thought direct chlorination played a larger role, it seems it doesn't. (Heavy chlorination of water does result in post-treatment chlorine compounds being present, these are themselves an environmental concern. The bulk of the chlorine evaporates or is reacted relatively quickly. Chlorine also negatively impacts "digestors" which process residual organic matter in wastewater.) UV, oxygenation, sunlight, filtration, and dilution are all utilised as well. Viruses tend not to survive long periods of environmental exposure outside a host in most circumstances, though I'm not knowledgeable on specifics or exceptions.

elihu 5y ago

If memory serves, there was a city in Italy I think where they were able to verify that Covid was present in the city some time before the first reported case because they keep samples of the sewer water for awhile, and that allowed them to retroactively test for it.