Dr. Lucky Tran 
People often say #COVID cases are rising but there are far fewer cases than any other time in the pandemic. Wastewater shows that's false. There are far more cases now than the first summer of the pandemic, and this year's pattern is ominously similar to the lead up to the huge Omicron surge.
Don't let minimizers spin the false narrative that the pandemic is over. The data shows us that there's more COVID-19 spreading right now than the first summer of the pandemic. Governments need to stop doing damage control PR, and start acting to protect people.
To be clear we can't yet say that a variant will cause an Omicron level surge. But the data shows us that we absolutely should not be complacent. That's what happened right before Omicron, leading to devastating levels of harm that could have been reduced if we were more humble.
HawkmoonI just got it this weekend.
Didn't go anywhere but the grocery store.
BAM
Laid out, doing breathing exercises because my lungs felt like they went on strike.
MadisonMonkey@luckytran Odds of governments doing what’s best for people’s health & safety?
-Zero
-Zero
EmbraceTheBald
Troed Sångberg@luckytran Is this from the "more viral, less deadly" evolution in becoming "a common cold" or is it still as dangerous?
sabik
FortunateFool 🧊🦐
Elizabeth Sudduth
Erin ConroyI was looking at a similar chart recently & the wastewater patterns are very consistent from year to year - Except for the first few months of 2020, where we were still learning the importance of masking & social distancing, the first year actually kept the levels the lowest - because we were all doing it together. Then in 2021 the Biden Admin removed masks, removed the norm of social distancing, & removed quarantines. 2021 was the worst year of the ongoing pandemic. So far anyway.
RebelGeek99@chargrille @luckytran as far as we know. The specific metrics being tracked shifted in 2022 to be more conservative wrt what specifically was counted as a COVID death or hospitalization, nevermind widely acknowledged anecdotes of undercounting. Those were later reflected in the excess deaths, but of course nobody's really tracking PACS which might have been more prevalent in 2022 due to the sheer number of Omicron infections.
@RebelGeek99 I fully agree about the tracking of all kinds.
I was just looking at a chart of wastewater levels, which ostensibly should not change. However, the amount of wastewater monitoring & its geographic extent surely are subject to important fluctuations.
Every wastewater treatment plant in the country should be monitoring #COVID levels & IDing variants.
And if we actually cared to learn about the disease & its spread, we would be funding it.
@chargrille 💯 agree. The wastewater data has been reliable and consistent, though not always easy to interpret for laypeople. I was relying on Biobot.ai for a while since it had my county, though the WA state DOH site has more granular information for stations within my county, but it doesn't go back as far. The copy number bias (i.e., different variants might reproduce better in gut tissues) always makes me wonder how much of a factor that might be, as spotty as surveillance is anyways. There's apparently a formula some people are using to estimate how many people are infected in the community based on signal strength, I'd be curious to know more about that.
KeepingMySanity@RebelGeek99 @chargrille @luckytran Agreed - it is so frustrating to know that hospitals aren’t reporting/aren’t testing so why do they keep saying hospital levels are down. I don’t even think they are reporting #covid related deaths in many hospitals so waste water is all we have and those have decreased signficantly. It’s all so frustrating.
Mike Buckley@luckytran Hi! I was wondering from which locations these measurements were taken? (I'm in UK but presuming this data is American?)
Gillinger has moved+1
I know we are all facing the same problem but location information is important. If this is US based I don't know if the UK is behind or ahead of this trend.
PaulNickson 🕊️🎛️🎼@luckytran Starting to look like another ruined Christmas - the 4th in a row. Well I suppose it saves money as well as lives eh.
Alan Miller 
🇺🇦@luckytran I'm very disturbed by the slope of the trend line at my closest wastewater treatment plant. Definitely back to masking. (Chicago suburbs, newest data 8/27/23)