Scientists traced a mysterious Covid case back to six toilets(technologyreview.com)
technologyreview.com
Scientists traced a mysterious Covid case back to six toilets
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/22/1090059/how-scientists-traced-a-mysterious-covid-case-back-to-six-toilets/
59 comments
And the preprint
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.28.22281553v...
Edit: this pre print is from more than a year ago! It was just published in Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
Edit: this pre print is from more than a year ago! It was just published in Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
I must be missing something. There was only one line back to the restroom? Shouldn't there be another trail back to their residence? Or is there a person who only poops at work?
They could live outside the city where they would be connected to a local septic system instead of a central city sewer.
That's a good point! I knew there was an edge case I was missing
Pooping only at work (or at home) is perfectly reasonable for people with regular bowel movements that go at roughly the same time every day.
How does that work with weekends? hold it?
The person who did this study is actually YC '2025! Developing what is called "smart pipes" to trace these types of things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
I'm honestly of the opinion that all of the ethical questions that arose during this search are fairly minuscule compared to the potential findings that could help us end this never-ending outbreak altogether. (At least by developing better targets for drugs like Paxlovid, if their hypothesis about GI tract replication turns out to be correct.)
Of them all the potential to reveal that the patient X is hiding their HIV status is probably the biggest tragedy that can happen, since it will compromise their social and work standing due to stigma. If, however, this person does NOT know they have HIV or something similarly immunocompromising, it's in fact their moral prerogative to find this person and inform them of their disease, instead of beating around the bush trying to go easy on their feelings instead of potentially saving their life.
Either way, at some point it becomes a question of common-good vs individual good and these options aren't so bad to even have this debate.
Of them all the potential to reveal that the patient X is hiding their HIV status is probably the biggest tragedy that can happen, since it will compromise their social and work standing due to stigma. If, however, this person does NOT know they have HIV or something similarly immunocompromising, it's in fact their moral prerogative to find this person and inform them of their disease, instead of beating around the bush trying to go easy on their feelings instead of potentially saving their life.
Either way, at some point it becomes a question of common-good vs individual good and these options aren't so bad to even have this debate.
There is nothing that can help us "end" the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak. A highly infectious respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs can't be eradicated or even really contained. At this point it's just one more of several endemic human coronaviruses and will always be around in some variants, much like HCoV-OC43.
I think you misread what I said. I said "could help us" which just implies it's a distant possibility. I am aware that it's an extremely low probability event, but not an impossible one, for example in 200 years they might find a universal beta coronavirus vaccine based on a general stem and not on a variant specific spike.
More information in this case is better outcomes regardless. We can't just accept the current state of affairs and do nothing if there are still avenues of improvement that don't involve pretending like COVID is a mild disease or forcing quarantines whenever some worse variants shows up.
Whether it will jump back from deer or dogs (two animals aside from minks who i remember testing positive for sars-cov-2) back to humans is a huge if (hasn't happened so far as far as I remember, or if it did, it couldn't have been more than ballpark ~5 cases), but I don't disagree that it might happen once more, since I'm not a lab leak guy.
More information in this case is better outcomes regardless. We can't just accept the current state of affairs and do nothing if there are still avenues of improvement that don't involve pretending like COVID is a mild disease or forcing quarantines whenever some worse variants shows up.
Whether it will jump back from deer or dogs (two animals aside from minks who i remember testing positive for sars-cov-2) back to humans is a huge if (hasn't happened so far as far as I remember, or if it did, it couldn't have been more than ballpark ~5 cases), but I don't disagree that it might happen once more, since I'm not a lab leak guy.
> There is nothing that can help us "end" the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak.
We could massively mitigate its effects to the point we could actually live with the virus without risking the often debilitating effects it can have.
On a societal/systemic level: HEPA air filters in hospitals, care homes, public transport, schools, churches, generally any indoors place where large amounts of people gather would not just drastically cut down on transmission of pathogens of all kind, but also make the lives of people suffering from allergies so much easier. We put a lot of care into regulating our food, water, even our clothing to be free of pathogens and contaminants - but the air we breathe daily is barely regulated at all!
On an individual level, we could wash our goddamn hands more often (I'd be really interested in, but probably also really disgusted by a study on soap and towel consumption in large office buildings before, during and after the pandemic), wear masks in public transport, and stay the fuck home when sick - although I realize that this is all but impossible in the US with there not being a federal law that allows people to stay home when sick with anything without risking of getting fired. Here in Germany, it's no big deal.
Instead, our politicians seem to have completely given up any idea of dealing with covid.
We could massively mitigate its effects to the point we could actually live with the virus without risking the often debilitating effects it can have.
On a societal/systemic level: HEPA air filters in hospitals, care homes, public transport, schools, churches, generally any indoors place where large amounts of people gather would not just drastically cut down on transmission of pathogens of all kind, but also make the lives of people suffering from allergies so much easier. We put a lot of care into regulating our food, water, even our clothing to be free of pathogens and contaminants - but the air we breathe daily is barely regulated at all!
On an individual level, we could wash our goddamn hands more often (I'd be really interested in, but probably also really disgusted by a study on soap and towel consumption in large office buildings before, during and after the pandemic), wear masks in public transport, and stay the fuck home when sick - although I realize that this is all but impossible in the US with there not being a federal law that allows people to stay home when sick with anything without risking of getting fired. Here in Germany, it's no big deal.
Instead, our politicians seem to have completely given up any idea of dealing with covid.
It seems clear at this point that Covid (the latest variants in the wild, at any rate) does not cause "often debilitating effects", and so any mitigation must have its costs, which are very high for any easily-transmissible respiratory illness, weighed against its benefits, which are pretty low.
Remember: "there are no solutions, only tradeoffs." Otherwise, we should just plug everyone into VR pods a la The Matrix and be done with disease once and for all.
Remember: "there are no solutions, only tradeoffs." Otherwise, we should just plug everyone into VR pods a la The Matrix and be done with disease once and for all.
> It seems clear at this point that Covid (the latest variants in the wild, at any rate) does not cause "often debilitating effects"
Depending on the study, you have up to 45% of people experiencing covid symptoms (aka Long Covid) almost four months past infection, and around 10% that experience symptoms 18 months past infection [1].
The amount of people so massively impacted by Long Covid that they can't work any more or have to significantly reduce their labor hours is so large that it's been theorized to be a significant contributor to current labor shortages [2]. So yes, it does classify as "often" IMHO.
> and so any mitigation must have its costs, which are very high for any easily-transmissible respiratory illness, weighed against its benefits, which are pretty low.
Just the 2023/24 covid+rsv+influenza wave is suspected to have cost the German economy alone 36 billion euros in lost income and sick day payments [3].
We need pathogen mitigation concepts, the sooner the better.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43661-w
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-long-covid-worsening-t...
[3] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/ifw-grippewelle-koennte-die-d...
Depending on the study, you have up to 45% of people experiencing covid symptoms (aka Long Covid) almost four months past infection, and around 10% that experience symptoms 18 months past infection [1].
The amount of people so massively impacted by Long Covid that they can't work any more or have to significantly reduce their labor hours is so large that it's been theorized to be a significant contributor to current labor shortages [2]. So yes, it does classify as "often" IMHO.
> and so any mitigation must have its costs, which are very high for any easily-transmissible respiratory illness, weighed against its benefits, which are pretty low.
Just the 2023/24 covid+rsv+influenza wave is suspected to have cost the German economy alone 36 billion euros in lost income and sick day payments [3].
We need pathogen mitigation concepts, the sooner the better.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43661-w
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-long-covid-worsening-t...
[3] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/ifw-grippewelle-koennte-die-d...
> It seems clear at this point that Covid (the latest variants in the wild, at any rate) does not cause "often debilitating effects"
“Patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present increased risk for ischemic cardiovascular complications up to 1 year after infection.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-023-00336-5
“Approximately 1 in 5 individuals exhibited cognitive impairment 12 or more weeks following COVID-19 diagnosis.“
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915912...
“Patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present increased risk for ischemic cardiovascular complications up to 1 year after infection.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-023-00336-5
“Approximately 1 in 5 individuals exhibited cognitive impairment 12 or more weeks following COVID-19 diagnosis.“
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915912...
How does this compare to other viral infections?
And neither of those sound debilitating by the way.
And neither of those sound debilitating by the way.
If it isn't different, that's a stronger arguement that the tradeoffs are worthwhile.
From the second link:
> COVID-19 is associated with clinically significant symptoms despite resolution of the acute infection (i.e., post-COVID-19 syndrome). Fatigue and cognitive impairment are amongst the most common and debilitating symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome.
> COVID-19 is associated with clinically significant symptoms despite resolution of the acute infection (i.e., post-COVID-19 syndrome). Fatigue and cognitive impairment are amongst the most common and debilitating symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome.
That's comparing to no infection and doesn't answer their question.
Your comment doesn’t make any sense because how would the absence of an infection ever arrive at a debilitating outcome and thus be a point of comparison? The parent claimed COVID doesn’t cause debilitating outcomes. I provided evidence it does, including specific use of the exact term by medical researchers. When they couldn’t refute that, they made an ambiguous appeal to other infections to distract from being wrong, trying to shift attention from their original, unsupported claim to a new claim (COVID is the same as other viruses), and demanding that I provide evidence contrary to that. But that’s separate from the truth or falsity of the original claim, and thus irrelevant.
> Your comment doesn’t make any sense because how would the absence of an infection ever arrive at a debilitating outcome and thus be a point of comparison?
Base rate in the population in general, which would be a mix of various infections and not. For the no-infection part: those particular ones, for example, could be caused by aging.
> When they couldn’t refute that, they made an ambiguous appeal to other infections to distract from being wrong
Those were two different people.
Base rate in the population in general, which would be a mix of various infections and not. For the no-infection part: those particular ones, for example, could be caused by aging.
> When they couldn’t refute that, they made an ambiguous appeal to other infections to distract from being wrong
Those were two different people.
This is controlled for by the NOS ranking of the studies in the meta analysis, but since you didn’t actually read it and are arguing from your priors, I guess you wouldn’t have observed that.
Yeah, I responded to what you quoted, which isn't comparing to other viruses. Which is why I said it doesn't answer their question.
i think applying software engineering logic to diseases is fallacious. anyway, the reason you can say that is because there is basically no one left who doesn't have some sort of immunity against the virus. no immunologically naive people means better outcomes.
An interesting point from a family member who works in residential / commercial HVAC - there's enough of an improvement from installing high efficiency air filters that they can pay for themselves in increased student attendance.
> could help us end this never-ending outbreak altogether.
it has jumped to so many other species where it has established reservoirs that it'll never be gone.
this virus is going to be with the human race for at least the next hundred years.
it may very well spill back from other species into new pandemics (although those pandemics are likely to look more like the 2009 swine flu pandemic since everyone will have cross reactive T-cells).
there's nothing we do to stop this with any known or really plausibly imagined technology.
even if you could snap your fingers and wipe it out of the human race, then the problem is that the longer it goes with humans not establishing immunity to it, the worse the pandemic will be when it jumps back from the deer or mice or whatever (although that likely wouldn't take very long at all).
it has jumped to so many other species where it has established reservoirs that it'll never be gone.
this virus is going to be with the human race for at least the next hundred years.
it may very well spill back from other species into new pandemics (although those pandemics are likely to look more like the 2009 swine flu pandemic since everyone will have cross reactive T-cells).
there's nothing we do to stop this with any known or really plausibly imagined technology.
even if you could snap your fingers and wipe it out of the human race, then the problem is that the longer it goes with humans not establishing immunity to it, the worse the pandemic will be when it jumps back from the deer or mice or whatever (although that likely wouldn't take very long at all).
my point was not to make it disappear, but to develop better targets for antivirals, which effectively make it end by just shortening the disease course to 1-2 days. Right now, the rebounds that happen are mostly due to virus reservoirs within the body that aren't completely eradicated by 5 day course. More effective targeting within the body could be key. Either way, saying "nothing can be done" and just throwing in the towel when valuable info could be obtained is not the way to go. Personally, I have a general interest in the virus (though I'd never work as a virologist due to my germaphobia) so I think it's worth investigating for its own sake.
I was really hoping this would be the Ohio cryptic lineage, which was being tracked by the same team https://x.com/SolidEvidence/status/1665444603829407746?s=20
> could it mean that the massive covid infection in the gut didn’t show up on a nasal swab?
Shouldn’t they have known that beforehand? Isn’t that a big red flag in this entire endeavor?
Shouldn’t they have known that beforehand? Isn’t that a big red flag in this entire endeavor?
Covid is supposedly a respiratory tract infection, so who'd be expecting it to only show up in the gut? It seems they still don't know whether that is in fact the explanation.
It's been published since roughly May 2020 that COVID infects gut epithelium. It's not much of a stretch that it's transmissible that way as well.
> Covid is supposedly a respiratory tract infection, so who'd be expecting it to only show up in the gut?
That's the thing with SARS-CoV-2.
It's primarily transmitted by aerosols, but it has also been shown to be transmitted via smearing. It's primarily a respiratory tract infection, but it has also been shown to have intestinal, cardiovascular and neurological impact as well as persistence in these tissues [1].
And yet, despite 7 millions of people dead and dozens of millions of people suffering from long covid, there's almost no prevention mechanisms in force anywhere on this planet, even vaccine development and rollout have all but ground to a halt. It's like we learned nothing at all from the pandemic, our politicians just wanted to make it go away by pretending it went away.
[1] https://elifesciences.org/articles/86015
That's the thing with SARS-CoV-2.
It's primarily transmitted by aerosols, but it has also been shown to be transmitted via smearing. It's primarily a respiratory tract infection, but it has also been shown to have intestinal, cardiovascular and neurological impact as well as persistence in these tissues [1].
And yet, despite 7 millions of people dead and dozens of millions of people suffering from long covid, there's almost no prevention mechanisms in force anywhere on this planet, even vaccine development and rollout have all but ground to a halt. It's like we learned nothing at all from the pandemic, our politicians just wanted to make it go away by pretending it went away.
[1] https://elifesciences.org/articles/86015
7 million people is 0.1% of the population.
Approximately 1% of the population die per year.
You think that's a big number, but it's not. People die.
Approximately 1% of the population die per year.
You think that's a big number, but it's not. People die.
Death is a much easier statistic to track than dehabiltiation. The tens of millions of people who have long covid are statistically significant over the fewer dead.
[deleted]
But we do a lot to prevent that number from being higher.
> You think that's a big number, but it's not.
Yeah, but generally, your standard flu doesn't end the careers of about 6% of athletes who manage to catch it [1]. Covid is worse than the flu.
> People die.
Old people, yes. Young, healthy people in the midst of their careers? No. That's quite the misconception that has always stuck with covid, particularly as politicians focused on protecting primarily the elderly - the reality is, of all the US covid deaths, a quarter were people below pension age [2].
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/https-wwwdwcom-en-life-with-long-covid...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
Yeah, but generally, your standard flu doesn't end the careers of about 6% of athletes who manage to catch it [1]. Covid is worse than the flu.
> People die.
Old people, yes. Young, healthy people in the midst of their careers? No. That's quite the misconception that has always stuck with covid, particularly as politicians focused on protecting primarily the elderly - the reality is, of all the US covid deaths, a quarter were people below pension age [2].
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/https-wwwdwcom-en-life-with-long-covid...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
Rather abrupt end to the article. Lots of ethical questions left unanswered .... which i guess is the point.
[deleted]
jackfoxy(1)
egberts1(2)
willmadden(1)
always close the toilet lid before you flush...
https://akm-img-a-in.tosshub.com/indiatoday/2022-12/ezgif-3-...
94 and 95 masks and true Hepa filters are the best methods vs COVID. Hepa helps a lot against all respiratory viruses to slow spread in families, workplaces and communal spaces.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/water-water-everywhere-but-...