Dutch Scientists Find a Novel Coronavirus Early-Warning Signal

This article is almost two months old. If I'm not mistaken, these researchers were actually the first to test and find S-CoV-2 in wastewater. Their data was shared unpublished, in the name of haste. This led to a prompt parallel study by Lodder & Husman, who hit publication within days of the study named in the parent article.

These are the folks who set off the whole 'testing wastewater for covid' thing. They're not falsely claiming to be first on the scene. You're being misled by the context, because someone posted an old article.

Since at least 2011, the Dutch test wastewater of cities for traces of drugs, such as cocaine and XTC, and use this to inform public policy.

Already in 2009 it was known that coronaviruses can survive and remain infectuous in sewage water for up to two weeks.

Early covid wastewater research mostly focuses on waste water and stool as a possible infection vector, and in March 3rd the WHO suggested that COVID patients use their own toilet, to avoid spread through aerosolization during flushing, and to increase chlorination efforts of sewage systems.

From the first outbreak of SARS-CoV, it was found that apartment plumbing can be an infection vector, and due to this, in Hong Kong, people suggest closing the toilet lid before flushing.

> If it's useful for covid it might be useful for other diseases or health problems.

Wastewater surveillance is an important part of the global polio eradication project.

Most wastewater treatment systems require ongoing lab testing on a regular basis. This is to test for bacteria and treatment chemicals to ensure the system is cleaning the water effectively and not dumping harmful chemicals into the water systems. I'm certain these tests could be modified to check for other chemicals.

Yeah I’m sure this is at least the third article I’ve seen posted in the last month or 2 boasting about being the first to use sewerage to detect the virus.

I doubt this would become a privacy issue -- testing is done at the processing plant, which aggregates sewage from a large number of sources. They won't be able to track whether you powdered your nose yesterday or not.

the CDC advice on not wearing masks early on was pure BS. pure BS and misinformation spread to cover lack of resources.

> CDC advice on wearing Masks

I don't know what the consensus is about this, but my take on it is that this was never not false...

Given some automated tests and strategically positioned inspection points, it should be possible to monitor the outbreak of this and other deceases. That might be more cost effective than being surprised by outbreaks and then dealing with the consequences. Right now we have entire countries on lock down to preempt the decease spreading because we lack fine grained detection mechanisms that can effectively give us a high degree of certainty that a given area is affected or not and take measures quickly if something pops up.

At this point, most countries seem to be getting this under control and most of the business of hand washing, mask wearing, and social distancing, etc. that is wrecking our economies is just that: preemptive measures because we just don't know other than by monitoring death rates and new reported cases numbers.

If it becomes endemic is there really a need?

Google Toilet must become real.