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Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#31

Post by refurb »

mirimir wrote: post #19
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you talk about the vanilla a little more? I don’t get that one.

> In the area around Puget Sound, the University of Washington team found, the spicy residues that remain in wastewater end up flowing into the sound's inland waterways. > Of all the flavors trickling downstream, artificial vanilla dominates the sound, Keil said. For instance, the team found an average of about six milligrams of artificial vanilla per liter of water sampled. > The region's sewage runoff contains more…

I'm not sure I'd assume that all of that vanillin would come from human sources.

The decomposition of wood creates vanillin, which I assume makes up most of what these folks found.

Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#32

Post by jart »

Before anyone goes collecting sewage samples, consider deriving your scaling factors from discrepencies in ICD-10 diagnostic encoding practices.

- Stacked bar chart: https://twitter.com/OccupyWallSt/status/1246478379064295425/...

- Govt data: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-Death-Counts-for-Coron...

ICD-10 is really the heart of the matter. Earlier recommendations have asked doctors to encode corona death information using Pneumonia (J12.89) or Bronchitis (J20.8, J40) if positive test results are available, suffixed by B97.29 if authorized by the CDC to do so. We now appear to finally have the pneumonia encoded info thanks to NCHS. Hopefully govt will open source the bronchitis encoded reports too.

See also:

- https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/icd/ICD-10-CM-Official-Coding-...

- https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/icd/ICD-10-CM-April-1-2020-add...

- https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/icd/COVID-19-guidelines-final....

Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#33

Post by mirimir »

refurb wrote: post #31
mirimir wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the area around Puget Sound, the University of Washington team found, the spicy residues that remain in wastewater end up flowing into the sound's inland waterways. > Of all the flavors trickling downstream, artificial vanilla dominates the sound, Keil said. For instance, the team found an average of about six milligrams of artificial vanilla per liter of water sampled. > The region's sewage runoff contains more…

I'm not sure I'd assume that all of that vanillin would come from human sources. The decomposition of wood creates vanillin, which I assume makes up most of what these folks found.

Huh.

I see that some artificial vanillin is made from lignin, but I don't know whether natural wood decomposition creates vanillin. Do you have a reference for that?

Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#34

Post by ramraj07 »

jart wrote: post #32

Before anyone goes collecting sewage samples, consider deriving your scaling factors from discrepencies in ICD-10 diagnostic encoding practices. - Stacked bar chart: https://twitter.com/OccupyWallSt/status/1246478379064295425/... - Govt data: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-Death-Counts-for-Coron... ICD-10 is really the heart of the matter. Earlier recommendations have asked doctors to encode corona death infor…

What is the implication here? Is it that the number of pneumonia deaths is the real indication of covids prevalance?

Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#35

Post by 8bitsrule »

jerzyt wrote: post #29

What a wonderful symmetry to the cholera outbreak in 1854 in London, where John Snow traced the sources to drinking water wells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...

Interesting that while Snow blamed germs, 'authorities' later blamed 'miasma' instead and ignored Snow. Once again, we learn from history that...

Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#36

Post by soperj »

refurb wrote: post #31
mirimir wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the area around Puget Sound, the University of Washington team found, the spicy residues that remain in wastewater end up flowing into the sound's inland waterways. > Of all the flavors trickling downstream, artificial vanilla dominates the sound, Keil said. For instance, the team found an average of about six milligrams of artificial vanilla per liter of water sampled. > The region's sewage runoff contains more…

I'm not sure I'd assume that all of that vanillin would come from human sources. The decomposition of wood creates vanillin, which I assume makes up most of what these folks found.

It literally says how much is contained in the sewage run off. You don't even have to click the link.

Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#38

Post by jart »

ramraj07 wrote: post #34
jart wrote: post #32

Before anyone goes collecting sewage samples, consider deriving your scaling factors from discrepencies in ICD-10 diagnostic encoding practices. - Stacked bar chart: https://twitter.com/OccupyWallSt/status/1246478379064295425/... - Govt data: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-Death-Counts-for-Coron... ICD-10 is really the heart of the matter. Earlier recommendations have asked doctors to encode corona death infor…

What is the implication here? Is it that the number of pneumonia deaths is the real indication of covids prevalance?

We don't know yet. These numbers are still preliminary, but it helps us to understand better the impact of the workarounds that doctors have needed to use, to tell the CDC it's COVID, when the software does not yet have a button for COVID.

The good news from the recent report (https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-Death-Counts-for-Coron...) is that overall mortality in America these past few months, has actually been lower than previous years. The bad news is that we should prepare for the possibilty that mortality for the new coronavirus specifically could turn out to be much worse than many non-official sources online have speculated, and that what's happening in NYC is happening in a lot more places too. Correcting for software workarounds and verifying good accurate data takes time.

Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#39

Post by kijin »

ddrt wrote: post #23
nradov wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a recent wastewater analysis study showing the prevalence of several illegal drugs in Europe. http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/topics/pods/waste-water-analysis...

> This report is focused on illicit stimulants. No results for cannabis are reported because cannabis use is estimated by measuring its main metabolite (THC-COOH), which is the only suitable biomarker found so far, but is excreted in a low percentage. More research is needed to understand the excretion percentage of THC-COOH or find alternative biomarkers (Causanilles et al., 2017a). this is the second sewage testing…

It's a kind of hack on modern sanitation systems. It makes you realize that everyone is (literally!) leaking all sorts of information about what's in their bodies. You just need to know where to pick up that treasure trove of information. It tickles the hacker fantasies!

Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak

#40

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

mirimir wrote: post #33
refurb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'd assume that all of that vanillin would come from human sources. The decomposition of wood creates vanillin, which I assume makes up most of what these folks found.

Huh. I see that some artificial vanillin is made from lignin, but I don't know whether natural wood decomposition creates vanillin. Do you have a reference for that?

lignin is wood (or rather it's a polymer in the cell walls of wood/plants)
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