CPCSupport:How screwed am I? Sites

As the margin of error shrinks as a result of absolutely no measures being taken, you may be wondering: how screwed are we? Now, this is no excuse to stop wearing a mask...

...especially since the current "wave" is probably going to be higher than the one from two years ago.

The decision as to whether to wear a respirator has long passed; at this point it's more a question of: Should I be burning Debian DVDs right now? Cause, wow, this probably isn't going to be sustainable.

Here's some info on how you can track the ongoing pandemic:

What isn't reliable anymore

• Death rates don't appear to be reliable anymore past May 2024, due to reasons cited in this video.

• For the same reason, COVID hospitalization rates are not reliable.

• And of course, nobody reports their positive rapid-test to their public health authority anymore.

• Heck, even if you do report it, who knows if anyone is even bothering to note it down...

• PCR positivity rates (and other administered viral tests) suffer from self-selection bias.

• If you know how to go onto LabCorp OnDemand to order an $80 PCR kit, you're probably more aware of the pandemic, and are probably less likely to be infected.

This effectively leaves only one source of reliable COVID data: wastewater.

However:

• The CDC has switched wastewater providers. Politico.
• The amount of tested sites keeps decreasing.
• And finally, wastewater is not necessarily correlated with the amount of people infected.

• Certain variants generate more copies in the gut, for instance. [1]
• Outliers from cryptic lineages, that is, people presumed chronically infected with SARS-CoV-2.
• And, of course, the amount of sampling wastewater sites can potentially affect the data.

External link sources (United States)

Hmm... just looking at wastewater isn't too great. Regardless, here are some sources where you can obtain SARS-CoV-2 data...

First-party

• The CDC
• Wastewater scan

Testing

• Walgreens testing - Treat this with a big grain of salt, due to self-selection bias

Second-party

Sequencing

• GISAID
• NextStrain

Third-party

• Iowa COVID-19 tracker - Be aware that data towards the bottom dates back to 2023, over a year ago!

External link sources (Canada)

First-party

• Canadian wastewater, government