Ancestors

Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-19 at 03:06

I've now seen several people, trusted sources of information about #COVID, dramatically misrepresent the CDC's new wastewater baselining methodology.

The misinformation has to stop.

This page explains what they are doing:

https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/about-data.html#wastewater

If you don't understand what they're doing after reading that, then you're not qualified to comment on it and you should STFU.

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Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-19 at 03:12

What the CDC is doing is using the 10th percentile of the past 12 months of data for each wastewater measurement site as the baseline for measurements from that site. The baseline is recalculated every 6 months.

The purpose of this is to normalize measurements across testing sites.

It is a reasonable methodology. It is not going to suddenly result in the CDC graphs showing "no COVID" as people are claiming.

Again, go read the page if you don't believe me:

https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/about-data.html#wastewater

[#]COVID

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Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-19 at 03:14

Please boost the first post in this thread to counter the misinformation, which is spreading very quickly. If you boosted the misinformation before realizing it was wrong, please unboost it.

:boostRequest:

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Written by Julie Webgirl - Just Your Luck on 2025-01-19 at 17:18

@jik

1. Telling people to "STFU" is not going to help in any way, shape or form, except among other self-proclaimed experts like yourself (who think people should STFU)

2. I've read through this thread and your comments are full of suppositions on your part, not fact:

"I don't think they're doing this to..."

"I doubt the CDC..."

"The CDC has decided..."

"I think they're trying to..."

So... trust the CDC because you say so? That's not going to go far with the crowd you're targeting...

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Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-19 at 17:52

@justyourluck My goal isn't to get people to trust the CDC. It's to get people to stop spreading misinformation.

You raise good questions about what the impact of this change will be. I've offered my opinion, but you're right that I could be wrong. I am not, however, wrong about the fact the what people were claiming last night about the new methodology was 100% bogus, and trusted sources with large followings have a higher obligation to get things right and verify before boosting.

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Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-19 at 17:55

@justyourluck I have tried to be quite clear in this thread about what is my opinion vs. what facts I am asserting. If I've failed in some of my posts to do that, I'm sorry.

I do not agree with the point you seem to be trying to make that it's not OK for me to express opinions in a thread in which I'm also pointing out facts. Sorry, but no.

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Written by Julie Webgirl - Just Your Luck on 2025-01-19 at 18:18

@jik

You absolutely can have an opinion and say so. I was reading the thread trying to get clarification and kept running into your opinions which started to feel like to ME as if you were trying to speak for the CDC as to why they are doing what they're doing and their intent. Kind of a trigger for me so apologies if that was just a me thing. And honestly, I no longer trust the CDC's intent at all, no matter what it is & I know I'm not alone.

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Toot

Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-19 at 18:21

@justyourluck I trust the CDC to do what I think they're trying to do, which is to minimize harm as best they can to people who aren't being COVID-cautious and won't be no matter what the CDC tells them.

I don't trust the CDC to be honest about the risks of getting COVID or to overtly give advice that is useful to COVID-cautious people, because doing those things would sabotage their efforts to help COVID-careless people, and also unfortunately isn't politically viable.

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Descendants

Written by Jonathan Kamens on 2025-01-19 at 18:26

@justyourluck Having worked for the federal government for about a year and a half, I now have a far better and more visceral understanding of three things:

1. politics continuously interferes with federal agencies' ability to do the right thing;

2. it's illegal for agencies to spend money on things Congress doesn't authorize them to spend money on; and

3. it's impossible for agencies to get people to do things they don't want to do unless Congress passes a law making it illegal for them not to.

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Written by Julie Webgirl - Just Your Luck on 2025-01-19 at 18:51

@jik

Yep. I'll add:

4. They are not coming to save John Q. Public. They are concerned over society as a whole not individuals, and we're all individuals who have grown up with the belief that they are duty-bound to rescue each and every last one of us.

It's one of the toughest pills to swallow and we see it in the news with pandemics and other disasters all the time.

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Written by Julie Webgirl - Just Your Luck on 2025-01-19 at 18:44

@jik

Fair enough. The last 2 words are pretty key.

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