
Dutch Scientists Find a Novel Coronavirus Early-Warning Signal - toshk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-31/coronavirus-in-sewage-portended-covid-19-outbreak-in-dutch-city
======
dopylitty
They claim "the first report of detection of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage" but if I
search Google News for 'covid wastewater' I find several reports of similar
studies going back months.

That aside I wonder if there's already an infrastructure in place for mass
testing of wastewater for all sorts of things. If it's useful for covid it
might be useful for other diseases or health problems.

Then I start to wonder about the privacy implications of mass sewage
collection. If it was localized I can imagine an authoritarian state using it
to enforce anti-drug or anti-beef policies.

~~~
arkades
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shared unpublished, in the name of haste.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.

~~~
toshk
Yes true, was inspired by this story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23319800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23319800)

If I still could I would change the title to correctly reflect it's age.

------
devy
This was dated in March 31, 2020.

For a very rapidly developing global pandemic event, any news that's more than
one month old could potentially proven to be false or irrelevant. For example,
Hydroxychloroquine, CDC adivce on wearing Masks, ventilators demand, etc.

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

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rubidium
This is pretty cool. Poop’s a good universal, non- invasive test. If the
sample rate was high enough would be helpful to detect outbreaks, esp. if this
becomes seasonal.

Probably not economically feasible, but you could envision “in-line” sampling
systems spread throughout the waste system to localize where an outbreak is
starting and send in the contact tracers and testers.

~~~
arcticbull
If it becomes endemic is there really a need?

~~~
grafs50
It'd be pretty cool if we had a general system in place for capturing the
spread of future diseases.

~~~
arcticbull
Yeah for sure, though I wonder by the time we realize that’s where we’re at,
and by the time we design, ramp and scale the detection grid, how much the
ship will have sailed.

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azepoi
Paper Preprint
[https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00357](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00357)

a french team in this space too
[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.12.20062679v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.12.20062679v2)
[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/coronavirus-found-
pa...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/coronavirus-found-paris-sewage-
points-early-warning-system)

also this from Yale
[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.19.20105999v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.19.20105999v1)

at EPFL [https://actu.epfl.ch/news/covid-19-les-eaux-usees-pour-
detec...](https://actu.epfl.ch/news/covid-19-les-eaux-usees-pour-detecter-l-
evolution-/)

------
CrazyPyroLinux
Time for SmartPipe! :)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ)

