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Higher coronavirus numbers again being foretold in the sewage we produce
By adamg on Thu, 01/14/2021 - 3:48pm
Latest readings from the MWRA's southern sewer system.
The latest Covid-19 RNA readings from the MWRA's Deer Island treatment plant are out and not looking good: After a short stretch in late December where it looked like they were flattening or even coming down, they're once again on a near vertical rise, possibly foretelling yet another spike in Boston Covid-19 numbers.
The chart above shows viral loads in sewage coming from the southern half of the MWRA district - roughly suburbs south of the turnpike, except in Boston, where the dividing line is more the VFW Parkway and the Arborway/Morton Street. The black line shows the average amount of viral RNA for the preceding seven days.
The chart from the northern half of the MWRA system shows a similar trend, except that the seven-day average remains a bit lower than in the southern district.
Three times a week, samples from Deer Island are analyzed by Biobot, a local company that has figured out how to detect the presence of various diseases in sewage to give an idea of their prevalence. In the case of Covid-19, the numbers are considered a predictor of the future, because many people begin to excrete the virus several days before they develop symptoms or think to get a Covid-19 test.
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Comments
oy vey
Nothing more
Man!
I looked at this earlier today and was surprised. It seemed like hospitalizations and ICU use had plateaued a bit and I was hoping to see this leveling off. No such luck. That vaccine can't come soon enough!
(No subject)
A favorite movie. Thanks for
A favorite movie. Thanks for reminding me to bring it back into rotation.
Hmm
Can we blame that dipstick from the North End who just came back from Florida?
I think the biggest slice of
I think the biggest slice of blame belongs to the FDA and the power we surrendered to it. If they had authorized (or "not gatekeep from everyone") vaccines much earlier, before winter weather hit, then where would be be now?
No. The FDA moved swiftly to
No. The FDA moved swiftly to review and authorize the 2 vaccines we have available so far.
Really? The vaccines were
Really? The vaccines were developed in the spring. They could have been available in the summer. How many lives are being lost because that didn't happen? Answer: thousands every day.
Are you sure?
The companies that made the vaccines didn't even apply for emergency authorization until late last year. Who's to say that they were actually available to give people in any quantities before that and that the companies would have been ok releasing them?
The companies could only
The companies could only apply for emergency authorization after completing Phase 3 trials. For example, Janssen right now is sitting on hundreds of thousands of doses, waiting for their Phase 3 trial to wrap up. They're waiting on red tape.
Most phases of trials for all the the vaccines even excluded people over the age or 60, 65, or 85. That's just evil. If it makes sense for anyone to experiment on themselves with COVID vaccines, it's people over 85. They're the most likely to die of COVID, so the benefit of the untested vaccine most outweighs the risk of the untested vaccine. But they were denied to freedom to make that choice, under the pretense of keeping them safe, which is BS.
No.
No.
The decision to grant an Emergency Use Authorization — which is not the same as an FDA approval — is one that weighs the quickly, but diligently collected data on safety and efficacy against the risks of the unknowns that would usually be discovered under the normal regulatory process.
Phase 3 clinical trials are not red tape, they are the stage of the process in which we determine that a drug actually works the way we expect it to, and its safe enough to use. If you do not have the safety profile, you cannot weigh benefit vs risk, because you don't know the actual risk. And if you don't know the efficacy — maybe it just doesn't work — you also can't weigh benefit vs. risk, because you don't know the benefit.
It's not what I do anymore, but I have worked in drug discovery and development before. I have observed the normal process and we are experiencing something absolutely incredible right now. There has been, and still is, an incredible effort and dedication of skilled scientific and medical professionals to bring us the vaccines and vaccine candidates that we have right now. When we get through this, a whole lot of people deserve a whole lot more paid time off than they will ever receive.
I have faith in the process that is bringing us these vaccines, but we've pushed the limits on what we can do to the process and there's nothing left to accelerate or truncate.
It's an incredible thing
They sped up a process that usually takes, what, 3 years and got the first doses out within a year of the virus being discovered, yet for some that was too long.
3 years? More like 10 years
3 years? More like 10 years for most pharmaceutical products. Assuming your candidate actually works. You can make it into phase 3 only to find out your candidate doesn't actually cut it.
Hippocratic Oath be damned!
Hippocratic Oath be damned!
Evaluation of safety and efficacy of any drug or medical product is absolutely critical to maintaining the quality and credibility of medical care.
The sh*ts about to hit the fan
I tagged adam in a post yesterday about this on twitter... seems like others have clamped onto our poop scale and how bad (and accurate it is)
Boy I fear the next couple of weeks if this is the case.. sigh
Magoo sez
Yesterday morning Magoo had a bad case of the Rea. Magoo suspected something when there was a rumbily in Magoo’s tumbily and a bum burp squeaked out. Well needless to say Magoo was ascared all day about Covid because the Rea is a symptom. But things seemed to clean out nicely and Magoo had a firm one this morning. Magoo suspects it was the sauerkraut Magoo had from the night before. Magoo.
Magoo, you crack me up! Magoo
Magoo, you crack me up! Magoo.
An adult skill for you
Childish scatological self-pleasuring is best done in the privacy of one's home, and without informing the world.
Just stop.
Just stop.
The numbers are going up...
...meanwhile Cambridge and Boston are getting rid of metrics to bring more kids back into school. I just got yelled at by a parent in a meeting about the regulations we need to put in place to bring kids in, and she accused me and my co-teachers "you seem not to want to come in person, if we send our kids in person will you bring this bad attitude? Because kids pick up on that" and then said she wanted to send her kid in for 'socialization', even though they will get even less in school because we have to keep kids apart and can't have lunch groups for safety.
They city has failed teachers
They city has failed teachers miserably which means they have also failed students.
Parents that complain that teachers don't want to teach and are lazy should be ashamed of themselves.
Seriously, how much do these poop testers make?
Whatever they get paid would not be enough for me.
Is this data accurate?
Stubhub just sent me an email to buy tix for Michael Buble on March 8. Do they know something we don't?
They know one thing
They know exactly how much longer they can survive as a business with no customers and no revenue, and they're acting accordingly.
Are the governor and state
Are the governor and state regulators paying attention to this? I think it's time to crank up the restrictions, such as ending indoor dining.
No way!
You mean the same assholes who couldn't go without Thanksgiving dinner with extended family also couldn't do Christmas and New Year's Day without hugging and kissing Typhoid Aunt Mary?
Fucking assholes.
Yes. They tracked the poop
Yes. They tracked the poop down to these very people using top secret waste pipe technology. Thanks for blowing their cover