Here are the results. By far the most prevalent was cocaine, followed by the cocaine metabolite. I assume the high amount has much to do with how cocaine is consumed. Snort -> touch nose -> touch money. 1/

Results are in. Guess what we detected the most of on money? 1. fentanyl 2. Norfentanyl (fentanyl metabolite) 3. Synthetic opioid (we tested several) 4. Cocaine 5. Benzoylecgonine (cocain metabolite) 6. Naloxone 7. Cotinine (nicotine analog) 8. caffeine

Guess what experiment I'm doing now.

This is behind a pay wall, but if you have a subscription there is a great picture of the literal jungle that is my office. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Cryptic update. 2 this week. Little Rock cryptic back for a second week. I think its a BA.2 derivative (4 years ago). It was pretty much the only virus in the sample, but low coverage. RBD is about the same as last week. 1/

Fun visit.

Guess what experiment I'm doing now.

One of the things that has surprised me from wastewater surveillance is just how much cocaine Americans are still consuming. It's everywhere, and there is a lot of it. No real decrease with all of the increased border security either. Who knew?

BA.3.2 is such a creeper. Here are the wastewater detections from roughly the last month. It's still mostly in the Northeast. I hope this data source doesn't go away, but I'm afraid it probably will.

I think the highlight of my career was the day that Stephen Colbert quoted one of my papers in his opening monologue (I almost wet myself). I'm really going to miss his show.

This cryptic has been playing peek-a-boo with me for a while, but I finally got a good look at its RBD. Little Rock, AK: 5/4/26 Some kind of early Omicron. 417T-440R-445P-450R-452M-455F-456L-460K-462R-475V-477N-478K-484A-496S-498R-501Y-505H-516Q

Second plate done. Still no Ebola or Hanta. The only Measles we detected on this plate was the vaccine (not the first time). That's a nice change of pace.

First plate is done. No Hanta, no Ebola. Flu season is over, and COVID is 100-times lower than it has been. The only respiratory viruses on the rise are Rhinoviruses and Parainfluenzavirus 3, but they always surge in late Spring and I have no idea why.

2 more Novaseq 25B plates about to finish. 55 wastewater samples, ~30 million people, 3 coasts. Before anyone asks - yes, we would be able to detect Ebola Bundibugyo. If it has an RNA or DNA genome, we can detect it. www.afro.who.int/countries/de...

The wastewater results from last week are in. 2,075,028 unique reads of vertebrate infecting viruses. Lots of rodent viruses from combined sewersystems (Rocahepevirus ratti, Lucheng Rn rat coronavirus, etc). No hantavirus. We'll keep watching with @securebio.org

And it's off. 49 wastewater samples from this week representing 10 states and over 30 million people. Maybe we'll seen Hantavirus, but I doubt it.

If anyone is interested, I updated the info on our 'species detected from wastewater' dashboard. 1/

Please don't use ivermectin to treat viral infections. It's great against parasites, but the levels required to inhibit the viral replication are toxic. I did some tests myself when it first came out. I can't believe this is still a thing.

FYI, we haven't seen any Hantavirus in US wastewater, but we'll be watching for it. www.who.int/emergencies/...

This is crazy. Imagine a hole the size of a football field that is 700 feet deep. Now fill it up with wastewater, and remove a tablespoon. That was our starting material for this study. 1/

This week's BA.3.2 detections from wastewater. The numerator is the number of samples where it was detected, but it wasn't necessarily the only lineage detected. Still focused on the NorthEast.

As I have said before. There are 3 things left that most Americans have a favorable opinion of: rockets to the moon, Dolly Parton, and wastewater testing. www.postandcourier.com/news/local_s...

BA.3.2 is strange is so many ways. It's now 17 months old, which is really quite old for a COVID lineage. Every so often there is a sweeping lineage that displaces everything in circulation, but when that doesn't happen the existing 'clans' fight it out with each other. 1/

Here are the BA.3.2 wastewater detections (just the ones submitted in the last week).

The Cleveland cryptic is back. It's a BA.1-derivative, so the infection probably just celebrated its 4th birthday.

Who can tell me about snakes? We monitor WW for Arenaviruses, because they can be scary. On several occasions we've detected Reptarenavirus sequences, sometimes a lot of it. They only seem to infect boa constrictors and pythons. How's it getting in WW?

I hate to say I told you so but... Since I posted this (3 days ago) there have been over 130 BA.3.2 sequences released (more than doubling the US total). Every one of them was from NY, MD, NJ, and MA Shit don't lie.

BA.3.2 update. In the last week BA.3.2 showed up in over 70 wastewater samples, but they were not evenly distributed. Over half of them came for NY (all NYC), CT, MD and PA. In NY, PA and CT it was almost every sample (29/31) In MD it was just over half. 1/

I'm no sailor, but this doesn't look open to me.

This is weird. In the last week of US wastewater sampling BA.3.2 was in half of the samples. But in the same period it was only in 1% of patient sequences. Maybe this is good; maybe it's so mild they aren't testing. Or maybe they aren't testing kids.

Summary about BA.3.2 disproportionately infecting kids. My first ever blog. lungfish-science.github.io/blog/2026-04...

There are 3 things left that most Americans have a favorable opinion of: rockets to the moon, Dolly Parton, and wastewater testing. hcrl.wustl.edu/wastewater-t...

@ryanhisner.bsky.social convinced me. It's the Orf7-8 deletion. This is GW.5.1.1 which had a similar deletion compared to HV.1.1, which circulated at the same time.

I had a hypothesis, and decided to test it. Here's the hypothesis. Kids just a few years old have probably been exposed to COVID, but the only lineage circulating has been JN.1-derivatives, so they are going to be more resistant to JN.1 than anything else. 1/

I’m amazed. It’s really true: BA.3.2 (new COVID lineage) is infecting children at a much higher rate than previous lineages. I’m late to this party, but I couldn’t really believe it was true until I did the analysis for myself. 1/

@ryanhisner.bsky.social @snpoehlm.bsky.social Are there relevant threads about the BA.3.2 age preference you can point me to on data other than the NY samples?

Always good when reporters talk to @ryanhisner.bsky.social too. www.cnn.com/2026/04/02/h...

Just like clockwork. It's paddlefish season again.

BA.3.2 is starting to pick up speed. We officially added it to our variant list; I assume CDC will add it to Nowcast at the next update. It's probably about 10% or more. I'm starting to be surprised there aren't more sequences.

Some cryptic lineages like to taunt me. I know they are there, but I can’t get a good look at them. This is about one of them from California. 1/ bsky.app/profile/soli...

This thread is a quick summary about cryptic lineages (for ongoing reference). In short, cryptic lineage are unique, anachronistic, evolutionarily advanced, SARS-CoV-2 lineages detected from wastewater from an unknown source. 1/

I hope no one needs an MRI this year. The world's largest producer of liquified helium is in Qatar and is shut off. We just got a notice that our supply for the year will be at least cut in half. No one could have predicted this (unless they thought about it).

Cool to see our MMWR paper published so quickly. This paper really illustrates the power of wastewater surveillance. 1/ www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

A new cryptic lineage popped up in St Louis a few weeks ago. I’ve been sampling this sewershed (500k people) twice a week for years and the first time I see this cryptic lineage it is 5 years old and makes up 50% of the sample. 1/

If you had a nasty cold recently, it's probably HKU1 or 229E (two of the other human coronaviruses). Both have been surging in wastewater all over the place. Pretty sure that's what I had.

We added St Louis to our dashboards this week. The St Louis zoo clearly has Hippos. 1/

New cryptic from Little Rock, Arkansas this week. Not enough info to make the big board yet, but it's clearly an XBB.1.5 derivative (over 2 year infection) that has started picking up new mutations.

BA.3.2 is starting to show traction.

The most prominent cryptic lineage in the world right now is from Lincoln, Nebraska. It's a B.1 infection (about 5 years old) that has been detected in their wastewater every week for about the last 18 months. Sooo.... 1/

Happy to report that we submitted a new manuscript this week. The manuscript is abour our work untargeting wastewater sequencing as a technique for monitoring viral pathogens from wastewater. @lennijusten.bsky.social 1/ medrxiv.org/cgi/content/...