Dana Ludwig

This is a special graph we only post periodically. It shows 2 things that have considerable implications. 1) Transmission has been lower than anticipated since December, and *only* since December. It's a recent phenomenon, not a long-term trend. WastewaterSCAN has poor longitudinal standardization so sometimes people mistakenly believe waves are getting smaller and smaller (or they say this because their listserv subscribers like to hear it). CDC and Biobot make very long-term data difficult to find. On the PMC 13-wave graph (which integrates long-term CDC and Biobot data, some of which is measured weekly by hand!), wave height gets smaller, but the waves are wider (hard to perceive visually). The take-home is we're in a very weird place in the pandemic, not a trend, but either an aberration or shift. 2) Cumulative levels for the current year (Y7) closely resemble that of Year 2. This is where the debate of aberration vs shift gets interesting. If we are in an aberration of lower than typical transmission, that means many people are walking around with limited short-term infection-derived immunity, and most people are not recently boosted. That would be a tinder box for a saltation variant (MANY variants are circulating), and put us on that scary Y2 path. The alternative is that this is not an aberration but a more meaningful shift, some population-level immunity building through a combination of boosters, infection history, and the most vulnerable dying (social murder), meaning time between infection starting to increase. These divergent hypotheses are the difference between 150 million vs 325 million infections for Y7. If I were a gambler, I'd bet about 200 million. However, you can see the uncertainty. This is a time like no other to monitor the data closely. The good news is that wastewater monitoring is not going away. PMC will keep posting. Retired NASA scientist, Dr. Eastman at WHN (@jlerollblues), is close to having localized *forecasts* too. On Instagram, a new entrant is integrating different data sources with other methodologies. @CyFi10, @amethystarlight, and @CovidDataReport post nuanced updates frequently. My advice would be to talk to the people who will listen and remember that much more important than understanding the risk is knowing you can do something about it. Boosting is the easiest intervention. If someone will mask, teach them how to properly fit their nose wire and do a seal check, get them to upgrade from a KN95 with cheek and chin gaps to an N95 like 3M Aura or 3M VFlex in the riskiest or socially easiest contexts. Easier said than done, but if that pessimistic scenario plays out, they may be ready to listen.

The CDC raised its benchmark for levels of the Covid virus in wastewater, adjusting a key metric for assessing the disease’s transmission. As a result, officials may now classify a level that once counted as high transmission as moderate instead. nbcnews.com/data-graphics/cd…