They do not mention which cities due to requests from officials. So they masked them like “West Texas City A” and list the exact population count. I’m assuming would be pretty trivial to tie back to the actual city.
Another interesting point is that it was 10 out of 10 cities they’ve tested. So the amount of Texas cities is likely way higher.
They do provide enough information to identify the cities. You just have to read the actual paper and check their disclosures. I found it relatively easy to determine which two cities in my region were sampled.
I agree that 10 out of 10 allows the conclusion that it is pretty much everywhere. It also supports the conclusion that it is not actively transmissible between humans, yet.
These numbers actually only cover the period from March to July so current data could be different.
Most likely cities based on my reading of the report and then asking a computer model to verify (I grew up in TX)
Houston – Largest city in Texas (South Texas)
Dallas – Major city in North Texas
El Paso – Major city in West Texas
San Antonio – Major city in South Texas
Austin – Central Texas hub
Fort Worth – Large city in North Texas, close to Dallas
Corpus Christi – Major coastal city (South Texas)
Lubbock – Large city in West Texas
McAllen – Important city in South Texas (Rio Grande Valley)
Arlington – Substantial city in North Texas, near Dallas> It also supports the conclusion that it is not actively transmissible between humans, yet.
Sorry, I'm not following. How does a high level of prevalence show a lack of virality?
The article suggests it's likely from cattle. A small number of people exposed to cattle have been reported as having gotten sick with it but the opinion in the article is there isn't evidence of substantial numbers of people being sick with it.
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. It's an inconclusive piece that seems to be trying to reassure the public that "Everything's fine!" even though no one knows if it's fine or not.
I think it's really interesting that wastewater is a source of so much sheer information. I never knew before Covid that you could do public health surveillance against wastewater contents. I wonder how local you can make it — like does the data collection and analysis have to be "per city" or can it be "per neighborhood".
It's been used in Australia for decades, for public health monitoring (various pathogens) and estimating drug use etc.
It can be refined to "upstream of collection point" - what that means depends upon the wastewater sewerage map of the region in question, often estate developments will all pipe to a common outflow from that estate that then joins a larger wastepipe.
How that plays out in any specific city will depend on the utility map.
I think it can be done per waste water treatment plant.
One man’s trash is another man’s (data) treasure :-)
Would it end up in the waste water eventually even if it was only going around in birds?
Municipal water systems have a "sanitary sewer" line in addition to a stormwater line. I've no idea how this method of virus testing works, but I beleive you would take samples from the sanitary sewer.
That depends on system design. Older systems tend to have combined systems, unless they've been reworked to separate stormwater. If you live in or near somewhere that often has sewage outflows in heavy rains, chances are it's a city that urbanized before WW2 and had combined sewers.
Sanitary sewers also tend to be leaky, rain will result in surface water entering the sanitary sewers and larger flows into the treatment plants even if storm drains are routed elsewhere. You might get some filtration from soil though. If your city only very occasionally has sewage outflows in heavy rains, it's probably from ground inflows rather than combined sewers and there may also need to be a second trigger such as power loss.
To quote Seinfeld, "It's all pipes!"
I guess it depends which wastewater stream was monitored, and if the municipality has different pipes for rainwater drainage Vs home sewage.
I'm assuming that would be somewhat unusual, I doubt that any of the water that gets in contact with farm animals is supposed to drain into the municipal water system.
I may be over-cautious but I'm avoiding US domestic dairy products, apart from some milk that has been ultra-pasteurized
do you honestly think pasteurization does anything to prevent viral transmission
Yes, that's part of the whole purpose of pasteurization, there is ample proof that it is generally useful at that, and there is specific research showing that it is effective for avian flu. And that's just normal pasteurization, when GP said his potentially over-cautious approach is to only consume ultra-pasteurized milk if it sourced from the US.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-informatio...
Let me introduce you to the "germ theory" of disease. It makes more accurate predictions about the world than other disease theories!
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/08/history-pas...
I'm struggling to think of definitions of these terms where this sentiment might seem coherent
Back in June some testing was done in UK based on samples from US.
Yes, as per the FDA's own website[0]
[0]https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-informatio...
In samples from March-July. Wonder why they just published this now?
"A report yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine details detection of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu virus in wastewater from 10 Texas cities during the same time period the virus was detected in Texas cattle herds."
Here's the letter to the Editor https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2405937