I think Weiland has good insight and isn't trying to put his thumb on the scale (Hoerger is). But Weiland made the same mistake of thinking CDC's WVAL was a measure of concentration, and didn't account for the baseline correction. bsky.app/profile/mich...
Wastewater RNA concentration is also temperature dependent and thus seasonally dependent. It depends very strongly on disease severity in ways we don't know how to model. There's evidence it depends on variant. bsky.app/profile/mich...
But the biggest problem is that Weiland is claiming to calculate and publish a number that people want to know, and that the CDC isn't publishing. To those who believe that he is trustworthy, the strong implication is that the CDC is *not* trustworthy. This tears down trust in public health.
Let me ask you a sincere question (FOA, I do not have any expertise on the subject, but I understood what u've said above, all thread): do you think @jpweiland.bsky.social is not in good faith in doing what u call misrepresentation?
I think only he can answer that. I suspect he started off by providing what he thought was a useful, if amateur, estimate of covid infections. His work got misinterpreted as expert analysis by some media outlets, and he hasn't disabused them of that notion.
What do you think @jpweiland.bsky.social ? ..here in Italy I've asked to some regional labs that only make qualitative WW analysis (% of main variants) if would be possible (I mean both technically and scientifically reasonable) to do quantitative ones to better check the possible prevalence.
But now, I understood it was a stupid question by my side. Tkx
Not a stupid question. Many would like to know how many people are getting infected with covid, and it seems like wastewater could provide the answers. And maybe one day it will! But the science hasn't gotten that far yet.
Just FYI, as the quote in the top post indicates, wastewater is very good for tracking *trends* in prevalence. The CDC's WVAL is designed to do precisely this, and they publish data weekly so people can track national and local trends. www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVI...
The question here is whether wastewater can be used to estimate the number of infections in a community. The scientific consensus is a resounding "no" (see top post). This is why the CDC doe snot publish such estimates based on wastewater.
What is the harm if Weiland decides to multiply the CDC's WVAL by a number and calling it "daily infections"? The harm comes because some people (including mainstream media) will mistake it for science.
Worse, the implication is that there is a simple answer to "how many people are getting infected with covid each day?" which the CDC could provide, but doesn't. (This is incorrect; they can't provide a scientific answer to this.)
Got it. Never checked his credentials.
So the result is that amateurs like Weiland, who masquerade as scientists, end up destroying trust in public health.
I am fairly certain that he is aware that he has made a serious error in misinterpreting the CDC WVAL as proportional to RNA concentration, which is a central assumption of his analysis. Given that he persists in publishing his estimates, I'd say that's some evidence of probable bad faith.
Did you ask him about this? And how long is the CDC with its current administration trustworthy anyway? Thank you anyway for your explanations. I can need them for my blog.
He has blocked me. But he's been tagged in a few dozen posts on this over the last year on X and Bluesky, so I presume he knows.
The CDC is still publishing the same products with the same methodology as they did in the Biden administration. Sure, we should be skeptical, but there's no sign that there's been a change to how covid data are reported.