COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Viral researchers believe someone in central Ohio has been infected with COVID-19 for at least two years, and they want to find that person.
While the researchers believe there is no threat to public health, they hope this case holds much-needed answers to treating long COVID.
[...]
Johnson stressed that this is not a threat to public health, explaining that the virus is inactive once it passes through the gastrointestinal tract.
A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Health said health officials are not fully convinced that the cryptic strain is linked to only one person, but they are not investigating it because it poses no threat to public health.
I think he has it backwards where this person lives and commutes. I spent 15 years living in Columbus and the idea that you would live in the very heart of the city and commute out to Washington Courthouse, a very small drive-by town (population of only 14k people!) in the huge rural expanse outside Columbus, is kind of bonkers. Columbus cost of living (especially in the heart of it) is much, much higher than WC so you'd be spending tons of money and commuting a couple hours a day for no good reason.
I suspect this person lives in WC and works in downtown Columbus, like at Nationwide Insurance or one of other big corporate employers there, or perhaps they even work at the statehouse for the state government located there. They're probably doing their business in the office every day since they're spending most waking hours there during the week (and naturally get into a regular schedule).
This would make a LOT more sense as the cost to live outside Columbus is significantly cheaper while commuting in isn't that bad (there are tons of highways all around and into the city). Perhaps this person even works a lower wage or benefit service job there and has no real healthcare benefits, paid time off, etc. to help them take care of health issues they might be suffering from a persistent COVID infection--more reason why they'd be living in a cheap town on the outskirts of the city and commuting in to their job downtown.
Should this title be updated to "Tracking a single person through wastewater viral RNA"? The SARS-CoV-2 genome is RNA [1], and this is presumably what's being measured by this virology researcher. The tweets don't specify DNA or RNA, but from context it seems they are tracking the viral RNA.
This also removes some of the spooky surveillance overtones, since the genetic material being tracked originates from a virus, not a human genome.
OK, I've changed the title to that above, at least until someone suggests a better one.
Edit: on second thought, probably the original title is better (in keeping with the site guidelines). Better to let the comments hash out what it actually means.
They estimate the person is shedding ~2e12 genomes daily [1]. If this person were in Boston, one of ~3M people shedding into Deer Island sewershed, then their stool would be diluted with an average of 4e8 gal/d [2] from other people. This would give an average of 5e3 (2e12/4e8) copies from this person in every gallon of sewage going through the plant, or ~2 copies per mL of sewage. That's about 1% of what biobot finds in a typical mL of sewage these days. [3]
Which is good news, really. Before I did the calculation I was worried that a single highly-infected person might be enough to skew the numbers all by themselves even in a large city.
On the other hand, in a sewershed of 15k instead of 3M, this person's contribution would be enough to 4x the measured concentration.
Wastewater surveillance is definitely highly useful and well-intended, but this brings up some troubling questions.
The obvious one being: To what extent could an arbitrary (non-infected) person's general whereabouts be tracked through municipal wastewater surveillance, given a large amount of resources?
Essentially not at all, unless they have a weird enough mutation that they produce some protein unique to them. They're tracking this person because the only thing they know about them is the strain of covid they have. If you have a target in mind, literally any other method would be better than getting close enough to sample their shit and then running away and only tracking them on a long delay.
Much easier to track them via their smartphone, which already gives approximate location, and which is already collected in bulk by carriers and accessible 24/7 without a warrant by federal spies. They also have all the historical data so even if your phone is off or not with you they can estimate with a high degree of probability which city you are in at a given time.
brb writing a dystopian fiction where members of the criminal underworld pee in bottles and do... other things... to evade the state. and then there's a sherlock-type investigator who's chasing a character through the sewers, etc.
I've seen similar claims made on the Internet about the U.S. president and the French president, although these ones aren't proven. Macron did refuse a COVID test on his trip to Russia in early 2022 presumably due to concerns about DNA collection.
I'm a bit worried about this. Sometimes people on the internet get a bit... intense about solving a thing and finding someone. They don't always get it right either.
> If you do get a positive reading, I would suggest having someone else try with the same kind of test with their feces to be sure it isn’t a false positive. Weird shit happens.
Not highly infectious, but the opposite. A person with a high viral load and a very long-lived infection, who is not infecting others. (If they were infecting others, they'd be finding the samples elsewhere over time.)
Highly infectious and with an unusual strain. Not sure how they can confirm that it’s just 1 person infected vs. a group.
But with common or typical strains, it wouldn’t be easy to determine if you have a few highly shedding individuals or a lot of lightly shedding ones. That’s one issue with wastewater sampling for infectious diseases, versus what the technique was developed for: detecting pharma/recreational drug use in a population.
What an amazing thing this is. They can tell from genomic analysis in sewage that, out of a 10k-20k population, an individual has a novel, persistent viral infection.
Please read the thread. They're not tracking a particular individual; if they were capable of doing that, they would have reached out to the individual and there wouldn't be a thread at all.
The lineage in just two sewersheds. The sequence drifts over time, but the sequence in the two sewersheds drift together. If it were multiple people the sequence would form distinct branches. We don't have proof it's one person, but it is the most likely explanation.
- "As academically interesting that this is, I think there are SERIOUS privacy concerns you're flirting with."
- "Yeah, it gets complicated."
It doesn't look complicated to me at all — you just want reputation points with your professional peers, and to hell with the patient.
This internet-mob victim has been completely doxxed to the general public: {place of work; place of residence; chronically immunocompromised (probably)}. That's an N=1 almost certainly.
> COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Viral researchers believe someone in central Ohio has been infected with COVID-19 for at least two years, and they want to find that person.
I believe this is why various lockdown strategies didn't work to eliminate COVID, even in very authoritarian places which can effectively enforce the lockdowns.
All it takes is one person to have a persistent 'forever infection' like this, and you will never eliminate the disease from your country. Even if you lock down with no person to person contact for months, as soon as you end the lockdown the disease will appear.
The only way to eliminate the disease would have been to lockdown for a while, identify all 'forever infected' people and imprison them for life, and close your borders to outsiders forever.
I'm always amazed at the diversity of opinions about lockdowns. In this case, I'm flabbergasted anyone ever thought that lockdowns alone would eliminate the disease, or that elimination was the goal of lockdowns. Are either of these common beliefs?
Let alone that that lockdowns + prison + tracking those with persistent infections was the next logical step in the case of TFA
> identify all 'forever infected' people and imprison them for life
Presumably this "forever infection" is due to the person lacking an immune response to overcome the disease. You probably just need to treat their HIV or whatever it is that's causing that, and they'll stop having COVID.
They're infected, but are they contagious? How contagious?
> The only way to eliminate the disease would have been to lockdown for a while, identify all 'forever infected' people and imprison them for life, and close your borders to outsiders forever.
It seems like you could identify them and then treat them so they wouldn't need to be locked up forever, but there'd be no reason to close your borders as long as you quarantined and tested everyone on entry.
Couldn't you instead test outsiders, and cure 'forever infected' people probably sometime within their life? The tradeoffs aren't worth it with effective vaccines, but if it was something as deadly as the original SARS with a long incubation time I'm sure we'd still be doing strict measures like that.
[+] [-] mmastrac|2 years ago|reply
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Viral researchers believe someone in central Ohio has been infected with COVID-19 for at least two years, and they want to find that person.
While the researchers believe there is no threat to public health, they hope this case holds much-needed answers to treating long COVID.
[...]
Johnson stressed that this is not a threat to public health, explaining that the virus is inactive once it passes through the gastrointestinal tract.
A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Health said health officials are not fully convinced that the cryptic strain is linked to only one person, but they are not investigating it because it poses no threat to public health.
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|2 years ago|reply
How do they know that only the gastrointestinal tract is infected in this person?
[+] [-] rollulus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adastra22|2 years ago|reply
How can they possibly know this? This person has a novel COVID strain that could be more or less virulent--we just have no way of knowing.
[+] [-] qbasic_forever|2 years ago|reply
I suspect this person lives in WC and works in downtown Columbus, like at Nationwide Insurance or one of other big corporate employers there, or perhaps they even work at the statehouse for the state government located there. They're probably doing their business in the office every day since they're spending most waking hours there during the week (and naturally get into a regular schedule).
This would make a LOT more sense as the cost to live outside Columbus is significantly cheaper while commuting in isn't that bad (there are tons of highways all around and into the city). Perhaps this person even works a lower wage or benefit service job there and has no real healthcare benefits, paid time off, etc. to help them take care of health issues they might be suffering from a persistent COVID infection--more reason why they'd be living in a cheap town on the outskirts of the city and commuting in to their job downtown.
[+] [-] IanCal|2 years ago|reply
However, the person may have a strong preference for poopin' on the clock.
[+] [-] bnprks|2 years ago|reply
This also removes some of the spooky surveillance overtones, since the genetic material being tracked originates from a virus, not a human genome.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293463/
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
Edit: on second thought, probably the original title is better (in keeping with the site guidelines). Better to let the comments hash out what it actually means.
[+] [-] jollyllama|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juve1996|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjohnson318|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jefftk|2 years ago|reply
Which is good news, really. Before I did the calculation I was worried that a single highly-infected person might be enough to skew the numbers all by themselves even in a large city.
On the other hand, in a sewershed of 15k instead of 3M, this person's contribution would be enough to 4x the measured concentration.
[1] https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1665444608921223169
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_Island_Waste_Water_Treatm...
[3] https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
[+] [-] cypherpunks01|2 years ago|reply
The obvious one being: To what extent could an arbitrary (non-infected) person's general whereabouts be tracked through municipal wastewater surveillance, given a large amount of resources?
[+] [-] ravi-delia|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perihelions|2 years ago|reply
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/human-genomic-bycatc... ("We can ID people from DNA that shows up in environmental studies")
[+] [-] tedunangst|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoZebra120vClip|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m4xm4n|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssnistfajen|2 years ago|reply
I've seen similar claims made on the Internet about the U.S. president and the French president, although these ones aren't proven. Macron did refuse a COVID test on his trip to Russia in early 2022 presumably due to concerns about DNA collection.
[+] [-] perihelions|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whinenot|2 years ago|reply
[0]https://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/Poutine-malade...
[+] [-] reureu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IanCal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lamontcg|2 years ago|reply
well played.
[+] [-] andrewstuart|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsnell|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scoundreller|2 years ago|reply
But with common or typical strains, it wouldn’t be easy to determine if you have a few highly shedding individuals or a lot of lightly shedding ones. That’s one issue with wastewater sampling for infectious diseases, versus what the technique was developed for: detecting pharma/recreational drug use in a population.
[+] [-] throwaway5752|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mparnisari|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrnichols|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1024core|2 years ago|reply
The hypothesis is that it's the same individual, based on the fact that the virus samples are drifting together. From another tweet by the same author https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1666411725527171072 :
The lineage in just two sewersheds. The sequence drifts over time, but the sequence in the two sewersheds drift together. If it were multiple people the sequence would form distinct branches. We don't have proof it's one person, but it is the most likely explanation.
[+] [-] ssnistfajen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tantalor|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EMCymatics|2 years ago|reply
This tweet alone could probably dox someone.
[+] [-] plegresl|2 years ago|reply
"Washington Court House is a town of 15k (not an actual courthouse)."
[+] [-] jedberg|2 years ago|reply
1600 people a day make that commute.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] perihelions|2 years ago|reply
- "Yeah, it gets complicated."
It doesn't look complicated to me at all — you just want reputation points with your professional peers, and to hell with the patient.
This internet-mob victim has been completely doxxed to the general public: {place of work; place of residence; chronically immunocompromised (probably)}. That's an N=1 almost certainly.
[+] [-] londons_explore|2 years ago|reply
I believe this is why various lockdown strategies didn't work to eliminate COVID, even in very authoritarian places which can effectively enforce the lockdowns.
All it takes is one person to have a persistent 'forever infection' like this, and you will never eliminate the disease from your country. Even if you lock down with no person to person contact for months, as soon as you end the lockdown the disease will appear.
The only way to eliminate the disease would have been to lockdown for a while, identify all 'forever infected' people and imprison them for life, and close your borders to outsiders forever.
[+] [-] jvanderbot|2 years ago|reply
Let alone that that lockdowns + prison + tracking those with persistent infections was the next logical step in the case of TFA
[+] [-] derefr|2 years ago|reply
Presumably this "forever infection" is due to the person lacking an immune response to overcome the disease. You probably just need to treat their HIV or whatever it is that's causing that, and they'll stop having COVID.
[+] [-] autoexec|2 years ago|reply
> The only way to eliminate the disease would have been to lockdown for a while, identify all 'forever infected' people and imprison them for life, and close your borders to outsiders forever.
It seems like you could identify them and then treat them so they wouldn't need to be locked up forever, but there'd be no reason to close your borders as long as you quarantined and tested everyone on entry.
[+] [-] perihelions|2 years ago|reply
- "The only way to eliminate the disease would have been to lockdown for a while, identify all 'forever infected' people and imprison them for life,"
Not a hypothetical. That was the initial reaction of several countries to HIV/AIDS, and Cuba actually implemented it [0].
[0] https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2019/11/29/are-public-healt...
[+] [-] cma|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Imnimo|2 years ago|reply