The wastewater viral load graphs are at https://biobot.io/data/ .
A few weeks ago, I thought that the current surge was at or near the peak. Unfortunately, the wastewater viral load has increased further.
For the nation as a whole, the wastewater viral load is 7 times higher than that of the March low and 10 times higher than that of this time last year.
The current wastewater viral load is at the highest level since early February and is even with that of last November. The current wastewater viral load is closing in on the levels prevailing at the peak of late August/early September of last year, the peak of December 2020/January 2021, and the peak of April 2020.
Yet everyone is behaving as if the pandemic is over.
Remember, you cannot count on the official case counts given the cutbacks in official testing. Even if you could, case counts are a lagging indicator. Hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths lag even further behind.
Most importantly of all, there is no reliable data on Long COVID, which seems to be much more common than hospitalizations. So far, the medical establishment has not figured out the mechanisms behind Long COVID, which means that it cannot tell us how to stop COVID from becoming Long COVID or cure Long COVID.
Last summer, I went to see fireworks with friends, played sports, went to a parade, and went to a county fair. (I was masked up, however.) I wouldn’t do these things under today’s wastewater viral load unless there were a way to stop the mechanisms that turn COVID into Long COVID.