• barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.netM
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    5 months ago

    Stuff like this shutting down is always awful. As time goes on, there will be less and less evidence to point normies to as an explanation for why COVID is still real, and all of us will seem just that little bit crazier to them.

    • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      5 months ago

      I don’t think data is what’s gonna convince people anymore, tbh. There are some people out there who simply respond to authority “figures” whether that be presidents or news sources.

      But actual wastewater data, as opposed to the cdc’s kinda useless map, is one of the few points of data that gave me an idea of what’s going on. Now we basically gotta go by vibes.

  • sovietknuckles [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    The CDC’s Wastewater Surveillance dashboard can answer simple questions like whether whether line go up nationally or in specific counties, but some graphs don’t have direct replacements. The year-over-year dashboard could not predict future spikes, but it was helpful predicting rate of decline:

    Year-over-year chart

    That one can be remade using existing data, though it lacks variant data.

    The one that I paid more attention to was the COVID-19 Variant Trends over Time chart, which illustrates transmission advantage of different variants by how quickly they become dominant:

    COVID variants dashboard

    CoVariants.org maybe has a comparable chart (It doesn’t show KP.2 yet, but neither did Biobot). Unlike Biobot, they have variant charts for other countries and individual US states.

    CoVariants.org US chart

    The CDC’s 2-week variant chart does include KP.2/KP.3, but because it doesn’t group sublineages like Biobot did, it might not not be as coherent over a larger period than 2 weeks.

    CDC 2-week variant chart

  • sovietknuckles [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    People are leaving replies asking them to reconsider. Hopefully they do.

    It’s not that they wanted to shut it down. The CDC ended their contract with Biobot in September 2023 in favor of Verily, and Biobot filed an appeal. If Biobot is now sunsetting their wastewater dashboard, they must have lost the appeal.

  • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Sites like biobot were basically the only way I’d ever consider unmasking in the future - sustained low levels for months at a time with graphs I could check every week to decide whether I need to mask again.

    Without these tools I’ll need to either hope there are summaries of some kind published every so often or just give up and assume I’ll need to hold out for like a decade or something.