3 ms·

What is this? They e found a highly infectious person via wastewater and want to identify them?

Scoundreller 3y ago
Highly infectious and with an unusual strain. Not sure how they can confirm that it’s just 1 person infected vs. a group. But with common or typical strains, it wouldn’t be easy to determine if you have a few highly shedding individuals or a lot of lightly shedding ones. That’s one issue with wastewater sampling for infectious diseases, versus what the technique was developed for: detecting pharma/recreational drug use in a population.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  that was what I thought of: I know people have worked on detecting community meth or heroin or other drugs through the wastewater. I don't know how much that's being done, though.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    more than twenty years ago (?) discarded pharma materials in the public wastewater, was identified as a serious environmental problem.. There was a public relations campaign funded at that time.. well-before the Sackler-era
- maxsilver 3y ago
  > Not sure how they can confirm that it’s just 1 person infected vs. a group. They've explained it before -- https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1665444605511311362?s=20 https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1665444605511311362... -- while they aren't confirming it's exactly one person, they've got strong data to suggest it's likely just one person, and for sure not some kind of community outbreak situation.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Always present in a part of a large city and sometimes present in a smaller town that largely commutes into that larger city (the closest part) isn’t that strongly suggestive of a single person to me. To complicate things, people flush more than poop down the drain. And poop with different regularity along with location preferences. (The second thing being another reason why wastewater analysis is better for drugs/metabolites that excrete through urine)
    - ssnistfajen 3y ago
      Author of original Tweet has another thread on narrowing down the search space for cryptic lineages, although this wasn't the Ohio one: https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1587551682388295680 https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1587551682388295680 It may not be a single person, but the individual(s) being infected exhibiting the same movement patterns would certainly be living together in close contact, and the lack of community spread supports the group of patients being very small, possibly just an individual.
jsnell 3y ago
Not highly infectious, but the opposite. A person with a high viral load and a very long-lived infection, who is not infecting others. (If they were infecting others, they'd be finding the samples elsewhere over time.)

Highly infectious and with an unusual strain. Not sure how they can confirm that it’s just 1 person infected vs. a group. But with common or typical strains, it wouldn’t be easy to determine if you have a few highly shedding individuals or a lot of lightly shedding ones. That’s one issue with wastewater sampling for infectious diseases, versus what the technique was developed for: detecting pharma/recreational drug use in a population.

AlbertCory 3y ago
that was what I thought of: I know people have worked on detecting community meth or heroin or other drugs through the wastewater. I don't know how much that's being done, though.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  more than twenty years ago (?) discarded pharma materials in the public wastewater, was identified as a serious environmental problem.. There was a public relations campaign funded at that time.. well-before the Sackler-era
maxsilver 3y ago
> Not sure how they can confirm that it’s just 1 person infected vs. a group. They've explained it before -- https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1665444605511311362?s=20 https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1665444605511311362... -- while they aren't confirming it's exactly one person, they've got strong data to suggest it's likely just one person, and for sure not some kind of community outbreak situation.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Always present in a part of a large city and sometimes present in a smaller town that largely commutes into that larger city (the closest part) isn’t that strongly suggestive of a single person to me. To complicate things, people flush more than poop down the drain. And poop with different regularity along with location preferences. (The second thing being another reason why wastewater analysis is better for drugs/metabolites that excrete through urine)
  - ssnistfajen 3y ago
    Author of original Tweet has another thread on narrowing down the search space for cryptic lineages, although this wasn't the Ohio one: https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1587551682388295680 https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1587551682388295680 It may not be a single person, but the individual(s) being infected exhibiting the same movement patterns would certainly be living together in close contact, and the lack of community spread supports the group of patients being very small, possibly just an individual.

jsnell 3y ago

Not highly infectious, but the opposite. A person with a high viral load and a very long-lived infection, who is not infecting others. (If they were infecting others, they'd be finding the samples elsewhere over time.)