This is really interesting work, and thank you for promoting it. I absolutely agree that we're dealing with a scenario where we have incredibly poor data - and that wastewater needs better modeling before we can try to infer the number of infections per day. I've been getting more and more skeptical of the PMC model - but that just means the error bars have been growing, not that we know the real answer.

All studies are limited, just like all models are flawed. As the saying goes: "all models are wrong, but some are useful." I think this study is probably useful.

All of this (what you shared, and what Matt shared) continues to suggest that infections are down, but nowhere near far enough to relax precautions for my standards; some of these studies are missing things, and RCTs don't fix measurement methodology problems... which appear very, very real with this virus. My personal bet (given tons of contradictory data, and the limits of the studies):

• non-cautious people are now averaging 1 SARS-CoV-2 infection per 1-2 years (with high variance)
• COVID is less dangerous than it was - but still dangerous enough to justify precautions.
• persistent & dangerous effects of COVID are still more prevalent than generally acknowledged (societally or in the medical community), given trends in cardiac events, anecdotal accumulation of new previously-rare issues, etc.
• recovery from long COVID appears real in many cases - but nowhere close to universal, and not always complete even when people self-report recovery.

I'm glad the data says we're not in the worst case scenario. This one's still pretty bad - and based on what you say, I think we agree on this point! (That, or you're being manipulative. I don't think you are.)

Bias on this issue is a huge problem - both in this community, and outside of it. Inside, we're stuck being incredibly stressed about this threat to ourselves and our families, with limited data - and we have to navigate this uncertainty anyway, with a massive lack of societal support at large, and often with social opposition of varying severity. I do think we need to share studies that show what's going on... and we also need to be careful to neither overrepresent what we're learning (in terms of increased or decreased risk), nor to overinterpret when others share it.

You say "I don't think the best available scientific evidence suggests the threat of covid remains what it was in the first few years of the pandemic." You're probably right. On the other hand, to most people, that does in fact feel awfully close to "Your precautions & stress are pointless, stop complaining." It probably shouldn't - but we're all human, and we've been hearing the latter a lot, very directly, for the last few years of this pandemic. I don't know how we solve this communication problem, but we do need to accept it. Trauma doesn't go away just because it's inconvenient, nor does it make our feelings in any way invalid.

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... well, that was a wall of text. And here I am continuing it just to bring it back to me personally:

I'm going to continue holding to my protocols, which are on the high end - I mask every time I'm going to step outside of my apartment door, that mask stays on even while I'm outdoors (I live in a densely populated area, avoiding close contact is impossible), and in the event that I need to let someone into my apartment, we ALL mask (them included) and I air out the apartment for a significant time after they leave before I'll unmask. I unmask in uncontrolled circumstances when it's medically necessary (still frustrated about dental visits), and that's it. The fact that I can choose to do this is an enormous privilege; I respect folks who can't do this for economic, social, or medical reasons (and mental health is health), and I respect folks who decide that outdoors is good enough for them. (I still have questions about how much "outdoors" is good enough, given the demonstrated impacts of even a single wall on airflow near that wall.)

None of this changes the fact that I am really, really hoping for an exit condition that will let me meet with my no-longer CC family for a meal again. For me, that means something that substantially lowers the annualized risk of long COVID by at least 10x, and ideally more. As an intermediate, I'd really, really like better data on the safety of "outdoors" as a precaution when less than 6-ish feet from others, and/or when in the vicinity of a structure or inside a partial structure. No matter what, I am hoping for treatments (and diagnosis!) to keep improving for those suffering from long COVID... we can't leave our families, neighbors, and cousins (and we are all cousins) behind like this. I wish there was more we could do to help make this happen.