I love seeing posts from people making tangible progress towards preventing catastrophes—it’s very encouraging!
I know nothing about this area, so excuse me if my question doesn’t make sense or was addressed in your post. I’m curious what the returns are on spending more money on sequencing, e.g. running the machine more than one a week or running it on more samples. If we were spending $10M a year instead of $1.5M on sequencing, how much less than 0.2% of people would have to be infected before an alert was raised?
Some other questions:
How should I feel about 0.2%? Where is 0.2% on the value spectrum from no alert system and an alert system that triggered on a single infection?
How many people’s worth of wastewater can be tested with $1.5M of sequencing?
Thanks for the update; it was interesting even as a layperson.
If we were spending $10M a year instead of $1.5M on sequencing, how much less than 0.2% of people would have to be infected before an alert was raised?
How should I feel about 0.2%? Where is 0.2% on the value spectrum from no alert system and an alert system that triggered on a single infection?
That’s an important question that I don’t have the answer to, sorry!
How many people’s worth of wastewater can be tested with $1.5M of sequencing?
This isn’t a question of limits, but of diminishing returns to sampling from additional sewersheds. Which also depends a lot on how different the sewersheds are from each other.
I love seeing posts from people making tangible progress towards preventing catastrophes—it’s very encouraging!
I know nothing about this area, so excuse me if my question doesn’t make sense or was addressed in your post. I’m curious what the returns are on spending more money on sequencing, e.g. running the machine more than one a week or running it on more samples. If we were spending $10M a year instead of $1.5M on sequencing, how much less than 0.2% of people would have to be infected before an alert was raised?
Some other questions:
How should I feel about 0.2%? Where is 0.2% on the value spectrum from no alert system and an alert system that triggered on a single infection?
How many people’s worth of wastewater can be tested with $1.5M of sequencing?
Thanks for the update; it was interesting even as a layperson.
It’s pretty close to linear: do 10x more sequencing and it goes from 0.2% to 0.02%. You can play with our simulator here: https://data.securebio.org/simulator/
That’s an important question that I don’t have the answer to, sorry!
This isn’t a question of limits, but of diminishing returns to sampling from additional sewersheds. Which also depends a lot on how different the sewersheds are from each other.