| Poop alert: Sewage could signal impending burst of COVID-19 cases
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 Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty) Around the country and the world, coronavirus lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are being lifted as the rate of new infections begins to slow. That shouldn't be interpreted as humans having suddenly beaten the virus; local outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 are going to be something we contend with until there's an effective vaccine or widespread immunity. For public health officials, having as much notice as possible about those outbreaks will be vital. And it's possible that sewage sludge might be able to provide that notice. The idea is pretty simple. We know that infected humans shed SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in feces, so you can take samples of sewage sludge, look for the virus's genetic materials, and thereby get an idea of the viral load of the pooping population. In fact, the idea of using our sewers for biosurveillance isn't a new one. I first heard the concept at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting in 2011, when biotechnology companies like PacBio and ...
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| Zuckerberg dismisses fact-checking after bragging about fact-checking
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 Enlarge / Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress in April 2018. It wasn't his only appearance in DC this decade. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images) Almost exactly two weeks ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was touting the success his platform has had with fact-checking and false-content warnings on posts. This week, however, Zuckerberg told Fox News that, really, he doesn't think Facebook should be in the fact-checking business at all. "I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Zuckerberg said in an interview with Dana Perino. "Private companies probably shouldn't be, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that." The comments come amid a renewed debate about fact-checking on social media as Twitter and its most famous user, President Donald Trump, find themselves at odds. Twitter appended a fact-check notice—its first—to two Trump tweets relating to mail-in ballot fraud. In ...
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, all countries ( USA, Great Britain, India, Australia, New Zealand ) (sources)
