🚽 Wastewater Alert: Scranton Pennsylvania 🎲🎲
A letter to local officials on the dangers of lack of testing & gambling pitfalls when rolling the dice with SARS-CoV-2 when the S stands for "Severe" & data is lacking.
The data from wastewater monitoring in Lackawanna County seems to have “decoupled” from PCR testing data. It’s clear there’s a lot more SARSCOV2 spread in Scranton, compared to what is being reported in the case count numbers.
I recommend checking to see if there’s wastewater monitoring in your region, and not relying only on case counts to determine the pandemic risk situation. https://biobot.io/data/
Below is a letter I sent, to a Lackawanna County Commissioner, and other representatives with some references. Also sending again the Essential Services Need Mask Requirements letter.
7 September 2022
Dear Commissioner,
I’m worried about our health risks in Scranton, Pennsylvania. SARS-CoV-2 remains a significant threat to public safety in our region, yet I’m not seeing the appropriate call to action to protect our community.
At the beginning of 2022, the patient case counts were at least alerting us — it tracked with wastewater monitoring in Lackawanna County. But now wastewater reveals peaks this summer missed by testing.1 This is further shown by the test positivity rate2 which has remained very high — 15% or higher.3
Earlier waves Covid-19 took many of our most vulnerable disabled & seniors in droves, creating a survivorship bias for current death counts4 — but there are many of us still here & still at risk.5 Another large looming threat is the dice roll for Long Covid disability, even for previously healthy youths.6 If every infection comes with a 1 in 5 chance of complications for adults7, and this is only reduced somewhat by vaccination8, Gambler’s Ruin9, Gambler's Conceit10, and Gambler’s Fallacy11 means Long Covid will affect everyone who gets infected after some amount of reinfections which are not rare.12 Those recovered before will eventually roll snake eyes on a future infection.
Nearly everyone on my Christmas card list has an “underlying condition” on the CDC risk list.13 I already have post-sepsis conditions since I almost died from infection in 2016, I don’t need any more long-term problems.
Leaders need to face the music and do what needs to be done for us to protect each other. At bare minimum N95 masks should be recommended, and at least government & essential services need mask requirements to keep them safely accessible to disabled & elderly who are relying on community leaders to show up for us.
References:
The Biobot Network of Wastewater Treatment Plants - Lackawanna County
Johns Hopkins: COVID-19 Testing: Understanding the “Percent Positive”
“The higher the percent positive is, the more concerning it is. As a rule of thumb, however, one threshold for the percent positive being “too high” is 5%.”
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2020/covid-19-testing-understanding-the-percent-positive
The New York Times: Tracking Coronavirus in Lackawanna County, Pa.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/lackawanna-pennsylvania-covid-cases.html
Eddie Woo: Survivorship bias
Bullet damage on aircraft returning to WWII air force base showed the planes were coming back having been shot on the wings and the tail wings. There’s suspiciously no gunfire recorded on the cockpit, the engines, or the narrow part of the airplane. Why is that? You get shot in any of these places, you don’t come back to be a data point.
CDC: Underlying Medical Conditions Associated with Higher Risk for Severe COVID-19: Information for Healthcare Professionals
Severe outcomes of COVID-19 are defined as hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), intubation or mechanical ventilation, or death. This page summarizes data from published reports, scientific articles in press, unreviewed pre-prints, and internal data that were included in a literature review conducted by subject matter experts as of October 2021. The information reflects current evidence regarding underlying medical conditions and is intended to help healthcare professionals make informed decisions about patient care and increasing the awareness of risk among their patients.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/underlyingconditions.html
John Hopkins: Long COVID: Long-Term Effects of COVID-19
She says it isn't clear why long COVID-19 symptoms affect some children and not others. “We are seeing patients who are often very high-functioning, healthy children who did not have any previous illnesses or medical conditions,” she says, noting that many of the kids being treated at the clinic only had mild bouts of COVID-19.
CDC: Nearly One in Five American Adults Who Have Had COVID-19 Still Have “Long COVID”
New data from the Household Pulse Survey show that more than 40% of adults in the United States reported having COVID-19 in the past, and nearly one in five of those (19%) are currently still having symptoms of “long COVID.”
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220622.htm
Nature: Long COVID risk falls only slightly after vaccination, huge study shows
“Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 lowers the risk of long COVID after infection by only about 15%, according to a study of more than 13 million people.”
Wikipedia: Gambler's ruin
The gambler's ruin is a concept in statistics. It is most commonly expressed as follows: A gambler playing a game with negative expected value will eventually go broke, regardless of their betting system.
Wikipedia: Gambler's conceit
The gambler believes they will be a net winner at the game, and thus able to avoid going broke by exerting the self-control necessary to stop playing while still ahead in winnings. This is often expressed as “I’ll quit when I’m ahead.” Quitting while ahead is unlikely, though, since a gambler who is winning has little incentive to quit, and is instead encouraged to continue to gamble by their winning.
Wikipedia: Gambler's fallacy
The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the incorrect belief that, if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past, it is less likely to happen in the future (or vice versa), when it has otherwise been established that the probability of such events does not depend on what has happened in the past.
Time: COVID-19 Reinfections May Be Common—But They're Not Harmless
Triple-vaccinated, previously infected health care workers gained almost no immune benefits (as measured by antibodies, T cells, and other immune responses) after being reinfected by Omicron, according to a study published in the journal Science in June.
https://time.com/6196814/covid-19-reinfections-omicron-risks/
CDC - COVID-19 - People with Certain Medical Conditions - Updated May 2, 2022 - (The Internet Archive Wayback Machine, Archived July 2022)
A person with any of the medical conditions listed below is more likely to get very sick with COVID-19. If you have one of these conditions, talk with your healthcare provider about how best to protect yourself from severe illness from COVID-19. The list below does not include all possible conditions that put you at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19.