
Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study - ljf
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science-idUSKBN23X2HQ
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Izkata
The paper itself was posted yesterday, with a _lot_ of criticism:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23652804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23652804)

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abathur
Thanks for pointing to this. I missed it yesterday.

A little disappointed in Reuters for the handling of this.

I wish news outlets were treating direct reporting of single-study-preprint
(i.e., just credulously reporting the preprint's claims with no attempt to
seek expert feedback) as roughly equivalent of publishing a single-anonymous-
source article without bothering to fact check.

There might be circumstances where it's merited--but they'll be extraordinary,
and you should probably feel compelled to explain why you think it's important
enough to break the norm.

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ageitgey
They had one partial positive test result from one random sample taken in
March 2019. None of the samples taken during the following months tested
positive until Jan 15, 2020. The paper is a preprint that hasn't been peer
reviewed.

The overwhelmingly likely explanation is one incorrect test result due to
something like an imperfect test or cross contamination. You would need much
better evidence than that to rewrite the entire timeline of this disease.

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tyfon
Curious about how accurate these tests are. The recent coronavirus is just one
of many in a family that also includes common cold as written in the article,
"There was the potential for a false positive due to the virus’ similarities
with other respiratory infections".

Considering this is just one test out of many that came back positive and the
next positive result was in January 2020 I suspect it's just that, a false
positive.

But it makes for a good headline.

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darkerside
This seems like it must be a typo. March of 2019??? That doesn't compute at
all.

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dragonwriter
It's very unlikely to actually be COVID-19, but the sample was actually from
March of 2019. Others have covered many of the ways it could be wrong, but
things like this are important to point out when found if no clear (rather
than suspected, unconfirmed) source of error can be identified because it
provides indications for follow-up, and even things that are 99.9% likely to
be error will indicate a surprising new piece of information 0.1% of the time,
and if you ignore it, the world will miss those.

OTOH, things this improbable to be correct get presented inaccurately and as
far more likely to be correct (or as perceived by the scientific community as
such) than they are, which helps foster “science fatigue” in the public.

