There are 15k covid RNA in every ml of sewage coming out of boston right now. Figure 200l a day of sewage per person and that is a lot of covid. I would hold off on eating oysters for a bit.
One whole population group to study to get a better understanding of how bad this wave is is to look at the cruise line industry. Everyone has to get tested, and thus you are studying a whole population. According to a recent CDC report [1], between Nov 30 - Dec 14 of 2021, 162 cases were reported on cruise ships. Then the next two weeks 5013 cases were reported. This is roughly a 30x increase!
If you look at the NY Times infections chart[2], in the same time period, their 7 day average only went up like 3x. This is grossly under reporting of infections.
The sewage chart looks at a whole population and it is easy to see the increase in infection is more in the 30x scale than it is the 3x scale.
Be safe out there everybody. If you look at whole population groups, Covid is way more infectious than what a lot of news media outlets and their data would tell you.
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/30/us-cdc-says-people-should-av... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-c...
This sewage report is about a whole population and it is clear to see infections many more times higher than what a lot of news agencies are reporting.
Early in the pandemic researchers swabbed lots of surfaces and while they were able to amplify COVID DNA from a bunch of the swabs, they were not able to successfully culture a single sample from any surface, which included the hospital room of a patient on a respirator where the virus would have been beyond abundant.
https://www.livescience.com/62485-how-does-norovirus-get-int...
Some harvesters will hold oysters in sterile water for a few days to clean them out (Depuration). This usually works but it is hard to know for sure if the one on your plate got this treatment or not.
why? RNA detected != active virus. e.g. in room temperature, virus can survive the maximum of 5 days (on plastic 3 days, cardboard 24h). It's an impossible vector of transmission.