<ul><li>A cyborg cockroach has been created by Japanese scientists that is powered by a solar cell on its back.</li><li>Its leg-moving components and battery are fitted into a 'backpack' on the thorax of a cockroach.</li><li>The <keyword id="23925" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="cockroaches" source="Orion">cockroaches</keyword> might be used in search and rescue missions along with environmental monitoring in the future.</li></ul>It may sound like something has crawled out of your nightmares, <keyword id="1254552" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="cyborg-cockroaches" source="Orion">cyborg cockroaches</keyword> have arrived as friends rather than enemies.<br />Japanese scientists have engineered a system for creating remote-controlled cyborg cockroaches. Cyborg cockroaches are equipped with a tiny wireless control module powered by a rechargeable battery attached to a solar cell. Despite the mechanical devices, flexible and ultrathin electronics allow cockroaches to move freely. The team of scientists at the <keyword id="14909932" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="RIKEN-Cluster" source="Orion">RIKEN Cluster</keyword> for Pioneering Research (CPR) has reported the result in the scientific<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41528-022-00207-2"> journal npj Flexible Electronics.</a><br />The cyborg cockroaches, which are part insect and part machine, are intended to enter hazardous areas, monitor the environment or undertake search and rescue missions without needing to be recharged.<br /><div type="image" title="cyborg cockroaches" msid="94022456" hostid="261" sizebytes="22384"></div>The body-mounted ultrathin organic solar cell achieves a power output of 17.2mW. Also, researchers have claimed that these ultrathin and flexible solar cell doesn’t come in the way of the cockroach’s movement.<br />Kenjiro Fukuda researcher at RIKEN CPR leads the experiment. The team used Madagascar cockroaches which are approximately 6cm (2.4- inches) long. They attached the wireless leg-control module and lithium polymer battery to the top of the cockroach by using a specially designed backpack. This was modelled after creating a 3D body model of a cockroach allowing researchers to create a stable and thin module.<br /><a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11180959/Scientists-create-cyborg-COCKROACH-solar-powered-backpack-steered-remotely.html#v-7936541137059494987" data-type="tilCustomLink">Watch video here</a><br />The solar cell module is just 0.004mm thick and produces 50 times more energy than can be harvested from living insects, said Fukuda.<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Cockroaches to robo-roach" comment="subhead" text="Cockroaches to robo-roach"><span data-til="noop">Cockroaches to robo-roach</span></cmsannotation><br />Famously able to survive nuclear war, cockroaches have been an inspiration for several technologies in recent years.<br />During the experiment, scientists attached wires to the sensory organs of cockroaches on the end of their abdomens. They send electrical impulses that cause the insect to move left or right. A unit of the battery was necessary for sending and receiving these electrical signals therefore RIKEN team built a solar-powered module so that they did not need to return to a docking station or its handler when it ran out of power.<br />The solar-powered module was attached to the top of the insect’s thorax, perfectly fitting the Madagascar cockroach’s curved surface. Further, the system was stable on the insect for over a month.<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="How could cyborg cockroaches help in disaster zones?" comment="subhead" text="How could cyborg cockroaches help in disaster zones?"><span data-til="noop">How could cyborg cockroaches help in disaster zones?</span></cmsannotation><br />Back in November 2014, the researchers at North Carolina State University fitted cockroaches with electrical backpacks complete with tiny microphones capable of detecting faint sounds.<br />The idea behind the experiment was that cyborg cockroaches enter the crumpled buildings hit by earthquakes or any other natural disaster and help in find the survivors.<br />According to Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, the sound is the best way to find the survivors in the crumpled building. Further, he added, “The goal is to use the <keyword id="2485262" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="biobots" source="Orion">biobots</keyword> with high-resolution microphones to differentiate between sounds that matter - like people calling for help - from sounds that don't matter - like a leaking pipe.” “Once we've identified sounds that matter, we can use the biobots equipped with microphone arrays to zero in on where those sounds are coming from.”<br />By electrically stimulating the cyborg cockroaches, they are prompted to move in a certain direction. Also, the module is equipped with three directional microphones to detect the direction of the sound more efficiently and steer the cyborg cockroaches in the right direction.<br />Further, cyborg cockroaches can be fitted with a single microphone to capture sound from any direction, which can be wirelessly transmitted, perhaps in the future to emergency workers.<br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/an-87-year-old-woman-pulls-a-tony-stark-by-giving-a-speech-at-her-funeral-via-ai-powered-holograph/articleshow/93609426.cms">An 87-year-old woman pulls a Tony Stark by giving a speech at her funeral via AI-powered holograph</a><br /></strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/health/news/surgeons-use-virtual-reality-to-separate-twins-with-conjoined-heads-in-a-27-hour-long-surgery/articleshow/93314424.cms"><strong>Surgeons use virtual reality to separate twins with conjoined heads in a 27-hour-long surgery</strong></a><br />

Scientists create remote-controlled cyborg cockroaches that can go under search and rescue missions

<ul class="summary-list"><li>New Castle County, <keyword id="310769" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Delaware">Delaware</keyword>, is working to find the undetected spread of the <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> in its community — by examining wastewater in its sewers.</li><li><keyword id="9138229" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="biobot-analytics">BioBot Analytics</keyword>, an AI startup made in collaboration between MIT and Harvard, is assisting communities by analyzing sewage samples for coronavirus. If detected, it uses AI to predict where the virus may have spread.</li><li>"It's both a little scary to realize there's more there than we thought, but also a little hopeful because it may indicate there are a lot more antibodies than we realize," New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer told WPVI.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>A county in Delaware is analyzing coronavirus spread in the community by examining wastewater after studies have shown the virus can be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-particles-live-in-phlegm-poop-after-negative-diagnosis-2020-3">detected in excrement</a>.</p><p>A Massachusetts-based AI startup <a href="https://www.biobot.io/">BioBot Analytics</a> estimates that more than 15,000 people were infected with COVID-19 in New Castle County, Delaware — 10 times more cases than those revealed by coronavirus tests.</p><p>BioBot, a collaboration between MIT and Harvard, will analyze sewage samples and, if detected, use AI to predict where the coronavirus may have spread. The startup is currently doing the work pro bono, "asking only that communities cover the costs of the sampling kit and shipping," <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biobot-mit-covid19-sewers-testing-2020-3">Business Insider's Jeff Elder</a> reported.</p><p>"It's both a little scary to realize there's more there than we thought, but also a little hopeful because it may indicate there are a lot more antibodies than we realize," New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer told local news station <a href="https://6abc.com/coronavirus-covid-19-viruses-new-castle-county/6133525/">WPVI</a>.</p><p>The sewer examinations are the latest push to find the undetected spread of the coronavirus, as lack of initial nasal testing kits has led to unreported cases.</p><p>Meyer told WPVI the wastewater testing could show hotspots in the county to show where to concentrate testing.</p><p>"You can get tests from different substations," Meyer said. "You can then say, 'OK, these are where our top three hotspots are, and we should focus our testing there.'"</p>Read the original article on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/delaware-countyexamining-wastewater-to-predict-coronavirus-spread-2020-4">Business Insider</a>

A Delaware county is taking an underground approach to the spread of coronavirus — by examining the county's sewers

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57aba8e2ce38f252008b5fe1-668/biobot.jpg" alt="biobot" data-mce-source="Karaghen Hudson and Michael Rosnach, CC BY-ND" data-mce-caption="Tissue-engineered soft robotic ray that's controlled with light." /><p class="source"><span>Karaghen Hudson and Michael Rosnach, CC BY-ND</span></p><p class="caption">Tissue-engineered soft robotic ray that's controlled with light.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Think of a traditional robot and you probably imagine something made from metal and plastic.</p><p>Such "nuts-and-bolts" robots are made of hard materials.</p><p>As robots take on more roles beyond the lab, such rigid systems can present safety risks to the people they interact with.</p><p>For example, if an industrial robot swings into a person, there is the risk of bruises or bone damage.</p><p>Researchers are increasingly looking for solutions to make robots softer or more compliant - less like rigid machines, more like animals.</p><p>With traditional actuators - such as motors - this can mean using <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/BIOROB.2006.1639201">air muscles</a>or adding springs in parallel with motors.</p><p>For example, on a <a href="http://biorobots.case.edu/projects/whegs/usar-whegs/">Whegs robot</a>, having a spring between a motor and the wheel leg (Wheg) means that if the robot runs into something (like a person), the spring absorbs some of the energy so the person isn't hurt. The bumper on a Roomba vacuuming robot is another example; it's spring-loaded so the Roomba doesn't damage the things it bumps into.</p><p>But there's a growing area of research that's taking a different approach. By combining robotics with tissue engineering, we're starting to build robots powered by living muscle tissue or cells. These devices can be stimulated electrically or with light to make the cells contract to bend their skeletons, causing the robot to swim or crawl.</p><p>The resulting biobots can move around and are soft like animals. They're safer around people and typically less harmful to the environment they work in than a traditional robot might be. And since, like animals, they need nutrients to power their muscles, not batteries, biohybrid robots tend to be lighter too.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57abab94db5ce9ad018b5f73-1911/helpful robots.jpg" alt="Helpful robots" data-mce-source="Andrew Stern" /><p class="source"><span>Andrew Stern</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Building a biobot</h2><p>Researchers fabricate biobots by growing living cells, usually from heart or skeletal muscle of rats or chickens, on scaffolds that are nontoxic to the cells. If the substrate is a polymer, the device created is a biohybrid robot - a hybrid between natural and human-made materials.</p><p>If you just place cells on a molded skeleton without any guidance, they wind up in random orientations. That means when researchers apply electricity to make them move, the cells' contraction forces will be applied in all directions, making the device inefficient at best.</p><p>So to better harness the cells' power, researchers turn to micropatterning. We stamp or print microscale lines on the skeleton made of substances that the cells prefer to attach to. These lines guide the cells so that as they grow, they align along the printed pattern.</p><p>With the cells all lined up, researchers can direct how their contraction force is applied to the substrate. So rather than just a mess of firing cells, they can all work in unison to move a leg or fin of the device.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57ababc2db5ce952008b5f9c-1913/screen shot 2016-03-01 at 9.41.58 am.png" alt="Google Robot Dog" data-mce-source="YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7nhygaGOmo" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7nhygaGOmo">YouTube</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Biohybrid robots inspired by animals</h2><p>Beyond a wide array of biohybrid robots, researchers have even created some completely organic robots using natural materials, like the collagen in skin, rather than polymers for the body of the device. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/11/3/036012">Some can crawl or swim</a> when stimulated by an electric field. Some take inspiration from <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ac0507800">medical tissue engineering techniques</a> and use <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00857">long rectangular arms</a> (or cantilevers) to pull themselves forward.</p><p>Others have taken their cues from nature, creating biologically inspired biohybrids. For example, a group led by researchers at California Institute of Technology developed a biohybrid robot <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2269">inspired by jellyfish</a>. This device, which they call a medusoid, has arms arranged in a circle. Each arm is micropatterned with protein lines so that cells grow in patterns similar to the muscles in a living jellyfish. When the cells contract, the arms bend inwards, propelling the biohybrid robot forward in nutrient-rich liquid.</p><p>More recently, researchers have demonstrated how to steer their biohybrid creations. A group at Harvard used genetically modified heart cells to make a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf4292">biologically inspired manta ray-shaped robot</a> swim. The heart cells were altered to contract in response to specific frequencies of light - one side of the ray had cells that would respond to one frequency, the other side's cells responded to another.</p><p>When the researchers shone light on the front of the robot, the cells there contracted and sent electrical signals to the cells further along the manta ray's body. The contraction would propagate down the robot's body, moving the device forward. The researchers could make the robot turn to the right or left by varying the frequency of the light they used. If they shone more light of the frequency the cells on one side would respond to, the contractions on that side of the manta ray would be stronger, allowing the researchers to steer the robot's movement.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57ababfbdb5ce952008b5f9d-2400/163133206.jpg" alt="artificial intelligence robot" data-mce-source="Sean Gallup/Getty Images" data-mce-caption="AILA, or Artificial Intelligence Lightweight Android, presses switches on a panel it recognizes during a demonstration at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH (Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH) stand at the 2013 CeBIT technology trade fair on March 5, 2013 in Hanover, Germany. CeBIT will be open March 5-9." /><p class="source"><span>Sean Gallup/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">AILA, or Artificial Intelligence Lightweight Android, presses switches on a panel it recognizes during a demonstration at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH (Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH) stand at the 2013 CeBIT technology trade fair on March 5, 2013 in Hanover, Germany. CeBIT will be open March 5-9.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Toughening up the biobots</h2><p>While exciting developments have been made in the field of biohybrid robotics, there's still significant work to be done to get the devices out of the lab. Devices currently have limited lifespans and low force outputs, limiting their speed and ability to complete tasks. Robots made from mammalian or avian cells are very picky about their environmental conditions.</p><p>For example, the ambient temperature must be near biological body temperature and the cells require regular feeding with nutrient-rich liquid. One possible remedy is to package the devices so that the muscle is protected from the external environment and constantly bathed in nutrients.</p><p><span>Another option is to use more robust cells as actuators. Here at Case Western Reserve University, we've recently begun to investigate this possibility by turning to the hardy marine sea slug </span><em>Aplysia californica</em><span>. Since </span><em>A. californica</em><span> lives in the intertidal region, it can experience big changes in temperature and environmental salinity over the course of a day. </span></p><p><span>When the tide goes out, the sea slugs can get trapped in tide pools. As the sun beats down, water can evaporate and the temperature will rise. Conversely in the event of rain, the saltiness of the surrounding water can decrease. When the tide eventually comes in, the sea slugs are freed from the tidal pools. Sea slugs have evolved very hardy cells to endure this changeable habitat.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57aba9ccce38f234008b5fdc-721/biobot2.jpg" alt="biobot" data-mce-source="Karaghen Hudson and Sung-Jin Park, CC BY-ND" data-mce-caption="Tissue-engineered biobots on titanium molds." /><p class="source"><span>Karaghen Hudson and Sung-Jin Park, CC BY-ND</span></p><p class="caption">Tissue-engineered biobots on titanium molds.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p>We've been able to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_33">use <em>Aplysia</em> tissue to actuate a biohybrid robot</a>, suggesting that we can manufacture tougher biobots using these resilient tissues. The devices are large enough to carry a small payload - approximately 1.5 inches long and one inch wide.</p><p>A further challenge in developing biobots is that currently the devices lack any sort of on-board control system. Instead, engineers control them via external electrical fields or light. In order to develop completely autonomous biohybrid devices, we'll need controllers that interface directly with the muscle and provide sensory inputs to the biohybrid robot itself. One possibility is to use neurons or clusters of neurons called ganglia as organic controllers.</p><p>That's another reason we're excited about using <em>Aplysia</em> in our lab. This sea slug has been a model system for <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Model-Systems-and-the-Neurobiology-of-Associative-Learning-A-Festschrift/Steinmetz-Gluck-Solomon/p/book/9780415650229">neurobiology research for decades</a>. A great deal is already known about the relationships between its neural system and its muscles - opening the possibility that we could use its neurons as organic controllers that could tell the robot which way to move and help it perform tasks, such as finding toxins or following a light.</p><p>While the field is still in its infancy, researchers envision many intriguing applications for biohybrid robots. For example, our tiny devices using slug tissue could be released as swarms into water supplies or the ocean to seek out toxins or leaking pipes. Due to the biocompatibility of the devices, if they break down or are eaten by wildlife these environmental sensors theoretically wouldn't pose the same threat to the environment traditional nuts-and-bolts robots would.</p><p>One day, devices could be fabricated from human cells and used for medical applications. Biobots could provide targeted drug delivery, clean up clots or serve as compliant actuatable stents. By using organic substrates rather than polymers, such stents could be used to strengthen weak blood vessels to prevent aneurysms - and over time the device would be remodeled and integrated into the body.</p><p>Beyond the small-scale biohybrid robots currently being developed, ongoing research in tissue engineering, such as attempts to grow vascular systems, may open the possibility of growing large-scale robots actuated by muscle.</p><script async="async" data-counter="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/62759/count" id="theconversation_tracker_hook" src="https://theconversation.com/javascripts/lib/content_tracker_hook.js" type="text/javascript"></script>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-debunked-myth-weightlifting-2016-7">Scientists just debunked a major myth about weightlifting</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="R5cDV5NDE6PIGznqt0rIgXC_wjThBHF2" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'R5cDV5NDE6PIGznqt0rIgXC_wjThBHF2',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Researchers are trying to build a biobot - a robot made from living tissue and cells

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Scientists from Tufts and Harvard created microscopic robots from human cells. </li><li>They say the "biobots" can self-assemble and have a remarkable healing effect on other cells.   </li></ul><p>Scientists have created tiny biological "robots" from lung cells that they hope could one day travel around our bodies, regenerating damaged tissues and treating disease.</p><p>The robots, called anthrobots, range in size from the width of a human hair to the point of a sharpened pencil and can self-assemble, <a target="_blank" href="https://now.tufts.edu/2023/11/30/scientists-build-tiny-biological-robots-human-cells#:~:text=Researchers%20at%20Tufts%20have%20created,damage%20in%20a%20lab%20dish.">TuftsNow</a> reported.</p><p>They were created by a team of scientists from Tufts and Harvard universities who altered the chemical composition of anonymously-donated lung cells.</p><p>The scientists discovered that when they made cilia – tiny hair-like structures on the surface of cells <strong>– </strong>face outwards, they began moving. And when a cluster of anthrobots, known as a "superbot," was placed with damaged neuron cells it was able to encourage new growth.</p><p>They don't yet know how the cell regeneration occurs, but believe that the anthrobots could once day be used to clear blocked arteries, repair spinal cords, identify cancer cells, or deliver drugs to specific parts of the body, per TuftsNow.</p><p>Their research, published Thursday in the journal <a target="_blank" href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202303575">Advanced Science</a>, raises new questions about how human cells assemble and work together.</p><p>The same research team had previously created similar tiny robots, or xenobots, from cells sourced from embryos of the African clawed frog. But the anthrobots prove that cells don't have to be amphibian or embryonic to regenerate.</p><p>Coauthor Michael Levin told <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/world/living-robots-from-human-cells-scn/index.html">CNN:</a> "I don't think this has anything to do with being an embryo. This has nothing to do with being a frog. I think this is a much more general property of living things."</p><p>Alhough they're created from human cells, Levin said the anthrobots didn't have a full life cycle and so aren't considered as fully-fledged organisms.</p><p>"It reminds us that these harsh binary categories that we've operated with – is that a robot, is that an animal, is that a machine?<strong> –</strong> don't serve us very well. We need to get beyond that," Levin told CNN.</p><p>While doctors may not be using anthrobots in the near future, they're another example of advancements in medical technology.</p><p>The US Food and Drug Administration has already approved more than 500 <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-genetic-analysis-personalizing-medicine-in-the-clinic-2023-10">medical AI algorithms </a>that are helping to diagnose and treat patients.</p>

Scientists made tiny living 'robots' from human cells that may one day help treat diseases

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Billionaire philantrophist <keyword id="45830" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="bill-gates" source="Orion">Bill Gates</keyword> sees a potential end to the <keyword id="11893994" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="covid-19" source="Orion">COVID-19</keyword> pandemic.</li><li>With cases spiking due to the highly transmissible <keyword id="12616996" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="omicron" source="Orion">Omicron</keyword> variant, the pandemic may be transitioning to an endemic.</li></ul><p>As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-covid-hospitalizations-shatter-pandemic-record-2022-1">case numbers break previous record highs</a>, billionaire Microsoft cofounder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates sees a potential end in the near future.</p><p>"Once Omicron goes through a country, then the rest of the year should see far fewer cases," Gates told University of Edinburgh chair of global public <keyword id="11894571" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="health" source="Orion">health</keyword> <keyword id="12947827" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="devi-sridhar" source="Orion">Devi Sridhar</keyword> <a href="https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1480976747440984067">during a Twitter Q&amp;A this week</a>. "So <keyword id="8764262" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="covid" source="Orion">COVID</keyword> can be treated more like seasonal flu."</p><p>That would effectively turn the pandemic — which is defined as a disease that's spread throughout a country, continent, or whole planet — into an endemic, like the annual flu. That could mean annual shots, also like how we prepare for flu season, he said.</p><p>Gates' statement echoed that of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious-disease expert, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/omicron-will-find-just-about-everybody-fauci-says-covid-19-2022-1">who said this week</a> that the Omicron variant "will find just about everybody." </p><p>Between the natural immunity offered from having caught and survived COVID-19, the much higher vaccination rates (62.6% of the US population, <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations">according to the latest CDC data</a>), and the increasing availability of medicines to treat the most severe COVID cases, the US may be on the verge of the transition from pandemic to endemic.</p><p>"We may be on the threshold of that right now," Fauci said. "It's entirely possible."</p><p>The Omicron spike of COVID cases is expected to peak by the end of January, experts say, and one key indicator is already showing signs that the peak has passed: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-experts-poop-data-shows-omicron-peaking-in-the-us-2022-1">COVID levels in poop are on the decline</a>.</p><div type="image" title="a graph of covid-19 levels in wastewater from boston, showing a big spike for omicron, then decrease" height="718" width="1022" msid="88883246" hostid="261"></div><p>Data from Biobot Analytics, which measures COVID levels in more than 100 waste-treatment plants around the US, shows that "the level of the virus in the wastewater is at a record high," Biobot CEO and cofounder Mariana Matus told Insider. "It's the highest it's been throughout the pandemic, which indicates it's the most disease transmission that we have seen in the pandemic so far."</p><p>That said, the data also shows that levels are already on the decline — which could indicate that the Omicron spike is also on the decline. </p><p>But that doesn't mean we're in the clear just yet: Hospitalizations and deaths from COVID lag infection time by several weeks. "The next two weeks we should be very, very careful," Matus said.</p><p><em><strong>Got a tip?</strong> Contact Insider senior correspondent Ben Gilbert via email (<a href="mailto:bgilbert@insider.com">bgilbert@insider.com</a>),</em><em> or Twitter DM (<a href="https://twitter.com/RealBenGilbert">@realbengilbert</a>). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by email only, please.</em></p>

Bill Gates says 'COVID can be treated more like seasonal flu' after Omicron surge peaks

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A network of over 100 US wastewater-treatment plants is measuring <keyword id="11893994" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="covid-19" source="Orion">COVID-19</keyword> levels in our poop.</li><li>"The level of the virus in the wastewater is at a record high," one scientist said.</li></ul><p>When Mariana Matus wants to know how bad the COVID-19 rates are where she lives, she looks to the poop. </p><p>"It's crazy, but I do look at the wastewater data," the CEO and cofounder of <a href="https://biobot.io/data/">Biobot Analytics</a> told Insider. "That's what heavily informs the level of risk I'm willing to take, personally."</p><p>It may sound gross, but it's quite a sophisticated, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/communication/responder-stories/wastewater-surveillance.html">science-backed early-warning system</a> for infectious-disease surveillance. It's one that <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/surveillance/wastewater-surveillance/wastewater-surveillance.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcases-updates%2Fwastewater-surveillance.html">the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a> is trying to scale up nationwide.</p><p>Matus' company is monitoring COVID-19 rates at more than 100 waste-treatment plants around the US and keeping track of which variants are most prevalent where.</p><p>It's not a real-time warning system, but <a href="https://twitter.com/j_g_allen/status/1479775004359340032">leading</a> <a href="https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-10?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo2MDU0OTM4LCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0Njc3MTY4OSwiXyI6InZuK0pRIiwiaWF0IjoxNjQyMDE5NTA1LCJleHAiOjE2NDIwMjMxMDUsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yODEyMTkiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.EGu1caR3qG-9qurwrLJGitAYP9w_6jKPVwz0uAuAjlU">disease watchers</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/notdred/status/1481022039167320082">across the country</a> are using the data as a reliable snapshot of how much virus people flushed down the toilet about one week ago. </p><p>That data, in turn, can give a good indication of how much <keyword id="11893194" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus" source="Orion">coronavirus</keyword> has been spreading. And right now, the poop is telling us there is more COVID-19 than ever getting passed around and we may be reaching an all-time <keyword id="12616996" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="omicron" source="Orion">Omicron</keyword> peak.</p><h2>Why poop is a good tool for measuring COVID-19 levels</h2><p>The reason wastewater is such a valuable pandemic tool is that people who have COVID-19 poop it out.</p><p>Their deposits are not infectious — but they do turn PCR tests positive, in a similar way that throat and nose swabs do.</p><p>Since <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-throat-swab-for-omicron-at-home-experts-2022-1">at-home COVID-19 tests</a> are not always done correctly, and the results are not often recorded, tracking poop samples on a populationwide scale is proving a much better tracking system.</p><p>To get the data, Matus' team conducts sampling at each treatment plant at least once a week, sampling nearly continuously over the course of a 24-hour period. ("We assume everybody will use the toilet at least once" during that time, she said.)</p><p>Then, they measure how much coronavirus is in the poop people have flushed over the course of a day compared with harmless viruses we excrete all the time.</p><p>"When the number of COVID-19-positive samples in sewage go up, three to seven days later, the number of reported cases go up," Mia Mattioli, a CDC environmental engineer, said in an <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/communication/responder-stories/wastewater-surveillance.html">October blog post about the process</a>. </p><p>Right now, the poop forecast is telling us there is COVID-19 everywhere, and a lot of it. </p><p>Nationally, "the level of the virus in the wastewater is at a record high," Matus said, adding: "It's the highest it's been throughout the pandemic, which indicates it's the most disease transmission that we have seen in the pandemic so far."</p><p>Matus lives in the Boston area, which has some of the most sophisticated publicly available poop data, courtesy of Biobot, her company. (The state of <a href="https://deq.utah.gov/water-quality/sars-cov-2-sewage-monitoring">Utah is another US leader</a> in the collection of COVID-19 poop data).</p><h2>Early signals that Omicron infections are starting to decline, courtesy of our poo</h2><p>In recent weeks, Boston's poop has been quite COVID-rich. In it, there are some early signals that infection rates are starting to decline from the recent record high:  </p><div type="image" title="a graph of covid-19 levels in wastewater from boston, showing a big spike for omicron, then decrease" height="718" width="1022" msid="88863967" hostid="261"></div><p>According to Matus, what's happening in Boston mirrors what's beginning to happen nationally. </p><p>If the trends continue, infection rates should decline sharply soon. </p><p>"I still expect another one to two weeks of very high disease activity," Matus said. "The next two weeks we should be very, very careful." </p><div type="image" title="graph of how much covid 19 is in poop nationwide, showing rapid increase since omicron, appearing to crest now-ish." height="547" width="1161" msid="88863968" hostid="261"></div><p>Hospitalizations lag about three weeks behind the infection trends and may not spike until February. </p><p>The poop projections back up what infectious-disease modelers from <a href="https://covid-19.tacc.utexas.edu/media/filer_public/dc/16/dc1685ad-4f56-4d63-a330-1d254dff54a0/omicron_projections_2_-_01062022_-_ut.pdf">Texas</a> to <a href="https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=infections-testing&amp;tab=trend&amp;test=infections">Washington</a> are starting to project: The Omicron wave is slowing down.  </p><p>"The intense part should probably be over in many places in the month of January," Christopher Murray, the lead modeler at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwuPgqtrIL0">said last week</a>.</p><p>Matus sees at-home tests, coupled with our poop data, as the future of comprehensive COVID-19 disease control.</p><p>"At-home tests are really important so people can make rapid decisions about themselves, their social activities, their level of social distancing and so on," she said. "And wastewater epidemiology data allows us to understand the true level of the pandemic."</p><p>What we flush away isn't just useful for tracking coronavirus infections; poop data could also offer insight into how widely influenza circulates each year or how much opioid use there is in a community. Our feces can <a href="https://www.insider.com/turned-poop-blue-check-up-gut-health-you-can-2021-6">show us quite a lot about how healthy we are</a>, which makes poop a rather useful public-health barometer.</p>

COVID-19 experts say Omicron is peaking in the US, citing data from poop samples

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5e74e2f8c4854034f44b5204-2400/biobot analytics founders.jpg" alt="Biobot analytics founders.JPG" /><ul class="summary-list"><li>New studies show that the coronavirus is shed in stool, meaning that it's collecting in city sewers around the country. </li><li>Biobot Analytics aims to take advantage of this distinctive data resource by testing samples from wastewater treatment plants and tracking the results on a real-time map.</li><li>The map, as well as AI-powered predictions on the virus' spread, could provide valuable information to city officials. </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>One of the great vulnerabilities America faces in fighting COVID-19 is a lack of tests, so researchers are working around that shortage by harnessing a resource that never runs out: Poop.</p><p>A Massachusetts AI startup called Biobot Analytics launched <a href="https://www.biobot.io/covid19/">a pro bono project</a> with MIT and Harvard University on Friday to try to track the virus across America by testing wastewater. </p><p><a href="https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85315">New studies</a> show that the virus causing COVID-19 is shed in stool, which means that it's collecting in city sewers. Biobot plans to use samples from wastewater treatment plants across the US to test for the virus and then track the results on a real-time map, applying predictive analytics to try to anticipate its spread. </p><p>The system allows cities to track the scope of the outbreak without depending on individual patient testing or hospital reporting, organizers say. </p><p>There is precedent for the project. In 2013, researchers in Israel detected an <a href="https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/9/383/eaaf6786" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">outbreak of poliovirus</a> through a wastewater epidemiology program before local clinics reported symptoms. Biobot has also previously applied its methods of combining wastewater testing and AI-powered mapping to another major US health threat: <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/tracking-opioids-beneath-the-streets/">opioid addiction.</a>  </p><p>"There is an untapped resource in wastewater that can teach us about public health to someday stop global epidemics," says Biobot Analytics cofounder Mariana Matus, who started researching these topics eight years ago as a first-year PhD student at MIT. The research grew into the <a href="http://underworlds.mit.edu/">MIT Underworlds Project</a> in 2015, and became a fully-fledged company, Biobot, in 2017.</p><p>"When the COVID-19 outbreak started accelerating around the world, we realized this was exactly why we started the company," says cofounder Newsha Ghaeli, who previously studied urban planning and architecture.</p><p>Here's how the project works: </p><ol><li>After city health officials sign up for the service, Biobot will ship a sampling kit to their local wastewater treatment plant. </li><li>Wastewater facilities will collect 24-hour composite samples and then ship the samples back to Biobot. </li><li>Biobot will process the sewage samples in its lab to concentrate and inactivate viruses, removing key proteins so that they're no longer contagious. </li><li>MIT will apply a test to detect the virus and relay results to Biobot. </li><li>Biobot will map test results for all participating communities and use AI-powered analytics to predict where the virus could spread.</li></ol><p>Right now, teams at Biobot, Harvard, and MIT are doing the work pro bono, asking only that communities cover the costs of the sampling kit and shipping. Interested cities can fill out <a href="https://www.biobot.io/covid19/">this form</a>.</p><p>And if something about this distinctive resource being harnessed for research smells a little funny to you, the company has a <a href="https://medium.com/@biobotanalytics/testing-for-covid-19-beyond-the-clinic-using-wastewater-epidemiology-to-proactively-detect-ede0cbf81e49">simple message</a>: "Sewage contains valuable information."  </p><p class="tagline"><a href="/intelligence/digital-health?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=ctgr_bii&amp;itm_term=ctgr_subscription&amp;itm_content=health&amp;itm_campaign=digital-health"><img src="https://static.businessinsider.com/image/5cf6b11111e205471c5718a4" alt="Digital Health Pro" style="width: 100% !important" /></a></p><p>Featured Digital Health Articles:<br />- <a href="/telehealth-industry-explained">Telehealth Industry: Benefits, Services &amp; Examples</a><br />- <a href="/value-based-care-pay-for-performance-healthcare-model">Value-Based Care Model: Pay-for-Performance Healthcare</a><br />- <a href="/senior-care-market-trends">Senior Care &amp; Assisted Living Market Trends</a><br />- <a href="/wearable-technology-healthcare-medical-devices">Smart Medical Devices: Wearable Tech in Healthcare</a><br />- <a href="/artificial-intelligence-healthcare">AI in Healthcare</a><br />- <a href="/remote-patient-monitoring-industry-explained">Remote Patient Monitoring Industry: Devices &amp; Market Trends</a></p>

This startup is tracking the coronavirus through sewers and using AI to predict its spread in a new project with MIT

<p class="enhanced-subtitle">Can Silicon Valley stop the next COVID?</p><p class="drop-cap">Mariana Matus was working on a Ph.D. in sewage. A grad student at MIT, she was sifting through wastewater — from a building, a neighborhood, a city — for bits of viruses. The data could then be used to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biobot-mit-covid19-sewers-testing-2020-3">analyze the health</a> of everyone who'd flushed. Pretty relevant information in 2020, right?</p><p>Matus thought so, too. Even before she had her degree, she went hunting for investors to turn the idea into a company. The pitch was that her team could help fight the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/risk-of-icu-dramatically-higher-without-covid-booster-2022-7">COVID-19 pandemic</a> by using wastewater surveillance, giving public health officials, or even you and me, a bottoms-down heads-up on whether people were sick.</p><p>The venture capitalists she approached were perplexed. Why was a student in public health — an academic, service-oriented discipline that strives to help people as a social good — asking Silicon Valley for money? "One of the key questions from investors was if we meant to create a nonprofit," Matus says. "They'd say: 'Are you sure? Did you mean to create a C-corp and a high-growth startup?' They didn't understand that there's this space of public health, that there are people whose job is to look at data and use it to create a program or intervention."</p><p>But that's exactly what Matus was pitching: a venture-backed startup explicitly aimed at responding to the next pandemic — and, in the process, delivering an impressive return on investment. "We are population health monitoring as a service," she says. "It's ongoing. There's a recurring, sustainable aspect to the revenue." In October 2021, Matus and her partner got $20 million in Series A funding to launch Biobot; today the company has 130 employees, a $125 million valuation, and a contract with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. </p><p>Broadly speaking, the US response to COVID-19 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-report-agency-too-slow-not-diverse-public-health-advice-2022-8">sucked</a> — not the thankless<strong>, </strong>unceasing labor of first responders and healthcare workers, but the chaotic and often contradictory efforts of the nation's public-health machine. Even after decades of warning and preparation, over a million Americans died, businesses failed, and schools shut down. Everybody felt the hit in one way or another. If the past three years represent the best the government can do, then pandemic response is precisely the kind of activity that venture capitalists like to describe as "ripe for disruption."</p><p>Private capital has been eyeing public health for years. But after COVID hit, the money rushed in for real. In 2019, venture deals with a pandemic preparedness component totaled $4.8 billion, according to the research group PitchBook. In 2021, they soared to $13.8 billion. This time, Silicon Valley is confident that the profit motive will supercharge public health. All they need is the right business model — and some government handouts. But the bigger question is: Can tech startups do a better job than the government of safeguarding us against the next global outbreak? And even if they can, what price will we pay for their invention?</p><h2><strong>The panic-neglect cycle</strong></h2><p>Back in 2006, after a global outbreak of avian flu, the famed venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins decided to get into the pandemic business. It devoted $200 million to a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/2006/02/16/kleiner-perkins-biodefense-cz_kd_0216kleinerperkins.html?sh=5e1f52c76edb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pandemic and Bio Defense Fund</a>, designed to invest in small, innovative tech companies that could save the world from deadly disease outbreaks. The firm brought on Thomas Monath, a former head of virology at the CDC, and invested in companies working on swine flu, influenza, Ebola, and home testing kits. The operating theory, Monath tells me, was that "there were plenty of dual-use applications that could contribute to pandemic preparedness but also commercial success, and you could leverage funding from public sources to help build the platforms that lead to products."</p><iframe title="VCs versus viruses" id="datawrapper-chart-iMnJo" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/iMnJo/2/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="554"></iframe><p>Translation: You could make money off of tools designed to fight pandemics, and the government would help you do it.</p><p>It was a good idea on paper, but <a href="https://fortune.com/2014/11/17/silicon-valleys-earlier-effort-to-stop-pandemics-like-ebola/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">it didn't work</a>. The fund tried to find companies whose products could turn a profit in the "off years" between big outbreaks, but it mostly ended up with single-use drugs whose only real customers were likely to be governments facing a full-blown public-health crisis. "Some of the investments made in the heat of battle weren't really likely to be big commercial successes," Monath tells me. "It just imploded by its own weight and lack of return." The bets Kleiner made, as he elegantly phrases it, "didn't result in lucrative liquidity events."</p><p>Several founders and investors told me that the failure of Kleiner's fund made Silicon Valley wary of investing in pandemic preparedness. "I don't see a lot of interest on the part of investors in pure pandemic plays," Monath says. "There are a few kind of more socially-impactful-minded folks out there, but even the richest of them all still wants to make more money." Venture capital fell into the same trap that plagues the government's approach to pandemics: a robust response when a respiratory disease sweeps the planet, followed by years of indifference once the crisis has passed. It even has a name: the panic-neglect cycle.</p><p>But the Kleiner fund did have one major outcome. The partners who led it, Brook Byers and Beth Seidenberg, lobbied the feds to create an agency to hand out grants to early-stage biotech innovations. Coming up with drugs and other therapies to fight pandemics is really expensive, so Kleiner helped persuade the government to use taxpayer money to underwrite the costs of the kind of work that the firm wanted to invest in. The result was BARDA, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, modeled on the famed mad-science agency DARPA.</p><p>Venture investors love that kind of thing. Government money — a carrot-type reward for entering a market they otherwise wouldn't — is known as "de-risking." And unlike private capital, government money doesn't buy equity in the company. It is, in the language of the game, nondilutive. Investors "like the idea that companies they might invest in can access nondilutive revenue as ancillary support for their program," Monath says. "The growth in the ability to get those kind of funds, I think, has incentivized some venture-capital folks." </p><p>This is a pretty standard way for the feds to get the technologies they need to support their policies. In-Q-Tel, a government-backed venture firm, does it all the time for stuff deployed by intelligence agencies. But funders like BARDA aren't long-term customers — they're designed to support companies in the early stages of development. Nevertheless, with the government assuming a big share of the risk in return for none of the profits, VCs were more likely to place bets on pandemic preparedness.</p><h2><strong>Public health and private industry</strong></h2><p>When COVID hit, Charity Dean was the assistant director of the California Department of Public Health. Amid all the failures and craziness that surrounded COVID testing before vaccines became available, Dean — a lead character in Michael Lewis' pandemic book, "The Premonition" — helped set up and run California's testing task force, which became a national model.</p><p>The problem, as she saw it back then, wasn't limited to getting tests approved and pushed out to people. It was how the results of those tests would get analyzed and turned into action. "We need the PCR tests to have real-time data on the rate of spread in communities," she told me when I spoke with her in April 2020. "Quite frankly, we are building plans assuming there will be widespread serological testing, even though it isn't here yet."</p><div type="image" title="A line of cars near a light-up traffic warning-type sign reading &quot;COVID testing,&quot; surrounded by orange construction cones" height="2796" width="4500" msid="98582729" hostid="261" sizebytes="850394"></div>Two months later, Dean decided to do it herself. She quit her government job and debuted a venture-backed startup, The Public Health Company, to "protect enterprise assets through biorisk software." PHC sells a dashboard designed to integrate more than 580 datasets, including social media, search trends, wastewater surveillance, pathogen genomics, and "human behavior indicators." After a career in public health, Dean was now in business selling pandemic-oriented software. It's still health — but it's not exactly public.<p>"I was surprised when I engaged with the venture-capital community. I was surprised to learn the alignment," Dean tells me when I talk to her again, in February 2023. "I had thought I would be a public servant all my life."</p><p>It turned out, she says, that the things VCs wanted were what she was hoping to build, too — they just used different language to describe them. "In 2019 I would have described it as public health, protecting the community, being accountable to taxpayers," Dean says. "Today I would describe it as asset protection for business continuity, where economic security is tightly linked with health security."</p><p>Startups like the ones launched by Dean and Matus are seeking to apply what Silicon Valley does best to the threat of pandemics: compiling and analyzing massive datasets to make better predictions about an outbreak. It's the promise and potential of Big Tech versus the perils of Big Germ. But from a VC standpoint, the question is: What's the business model? Pandemics may not be rare, but they are unpredictable — which means so are returns. City and state health departments have checkbooks too small and budgets too squishy to be reliable customers<strong>. </strong>Medicines and protective equipment can molder in a warehouse for years without being needed. And the work itself is time-consuming and costly, with no guarantee of a payoff. So how do you make money <em>between</em> pandemics?</p><p>Robert Nelsen, a managing director at ARCH Venture Partners pursuing pandemic investments, is bullish on the potential for big revenue over the long term. The key, he says, is "to make things better, faster, and cheaper" than the government or academic labs can. Stuff like vaccines that last longer, or that are delivered via transdermal patches rather than injections, or that work on lots of diseases instead of just the pandemic of the moment. </p><p>"A universal pill that kills viruses would be a big deal," Nelsen says. "If you cure a lot of people, you're going to make money. If you have a different way of making something, different science, different delivery, then you can think about different business models. Maybe it can be more equitable, maybe it can be more easily distributed, maybe it can be lower cost. So we're interested in those kinds of things."</p><p>Some pandemic-related startups, like Biobot, are content to target government as their primary customer. When I suggest to Matus that big universities might want to use her wastewater data to identify which dorms were starting to pop with meningitis or norovirus, she smiles and nods in a way that suggests people smarter and richer than me have already run that notion by her. "There's definitely applications for our data and platform outside government, and we want to go there, but in its time," she says. "And we will only partner with investors that believe that the government business is a massive one."</p><p>But many startups are looking beyond government to generate an even larger and steadier stream of revenue. At The Public Health Company, Dean wants to use data to enable businesses to protect their assets from all kinds of health and climate risks. That could certainly create a reliable and potentially lucrative customer base. But would giving that forecasting capability to transnational corporations actually save lives? Or would it only protect profits?</p><p>Back in 2019, Charity Dean was a hotshot public-health official trying desperately to get anyone to care about pandemic planning. So I ask her what that person would think of the VC-driven Charity Dean of 2023.</p><p>Past-Charity, she assures me, would be fine with present-Charity. "I've been dreaming about this for a decade," she says. "I just assumed someone else was building it. But here's where I was naive. If Charity Dean-2019 walked into my office today, she would not understand that the chief security officers at enterprise are the local health officer. They own all the risk and no one's coming to save them. I didn't know that — and they didn't know that, either."</p><p>That's what it takes to believe that commerce can fix the panic-neglect cycle: faith that governments will pay top dollar for your product during the panic peaks and businesses will be customers during the neglect valleys. "If it doesn't, in the end, become a massive network delivering high value for all players, then it has failed," Dean says. "That's very much aligned with the incentive of our investors. The Charity Dean of 2019 would not have understood that in the way I do today."</p><h2><strong>The market failure</strong></h2><p>Public health officials and researchers acknowledge that venture capital, if well regulated, is capable of producing innovations that could help prevent or respond to a pandemic. "I'm quite positive about this, at least in concept," says Sandro Galea, the dean of Boston University's School of Public Health. "What's made the public-private partnership for vaccines effective, frankly, is that it capitalized on the mechanisms of the private sector, but they were funded by the public purse."</p><p>Sometimes it works. Moderna, maker of one of the mRNA-based vaccines against COVID, got <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-merkley-and-jayapal-lead-colleagues-in-urging-the-biden-administration-to-review-moderna-hhs-contract-and-expand-global-covid-19-vaccine-access" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$10 billion of taxpayer money</a>. Palantir, a pedigreed Silicon Valley company that has contracted with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon, provided analytics services to the CDC throughout the pandemic. Last year, the firm got a <a href="https://fedscoop.com/cdc-palantir-common-operating-picture/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$443 million contract</a> for five more years.</p><div type="image" title="A curving glass building, maybe 10 stories, in an office park, with a sign reading &quot;US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&quot;" height="5464" width="8192" msid="98582731" hostid="261" sizebytes="2168476"></div>But the fact is, many old hands in public health are leery of private enterprise. They remember getting burned during the Obama years by software companies that promised to create shareable <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/va-vista-medical-records-flaw/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">electronic medical records</a> and easy healthcare signups. And they believe that public health is about more than gadgets and software. The kinds of things that earn a profit often cater to an elite clientele, while the kinds of things that improve the health of the public aren't for sale. "In political-science jargon, you have concentrated losers and distributed winners," says Thomas Frieden, who directed the CDC for almost a decade. In other words, it's a classic market failure. "That's one of the reasons we need public health in the first place," he says.<p>Frieden recalls how, after the influenza outbreak of 2009, CDC identified a huge need to combat any respiratory pandemic: more ventilators. So the agency contracted with a company to design and build a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new, robust ventilator</a>, cheap enough to go into rotation in hospitals nationwide.</p><p>"It worked," Frieden tells me. "I vividly remember, they brought it into my conference room, adjacent to my office."</p><p>So if it worked a decade ago, why was there such a life-threatening shortage of ventilators in 2020? "One of the big ventilator companies buys it and kills it," Frieden says. "They didn't want it to undercut their market."</p><p>That's the real risk of relying on the marketplace to protect public health. Market priorities aren't health priorities. For every well-meaning former public health official like Dean who is trying to make things better through the venture ecosystem, there are more tech types advocating nonsense like <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-strange-twisted-tale/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hydroxychloroquine</a>. And Silicon Valley isn't exactly rushing to take on thorny stuff like school ventilation. While he was working on getting new ventilators, Frieden also begged the private sector to make a durable, reusable mask for healthcare workers, but no one stepped up. No market in it.</p><p>As Frieden tells it, the most critical failures in the government's response to the coronavirus weren't anything that venture investments could actually help with. They were things like communication breakdowns, a creaky system for safely testing and approving new drugs, and a lack of consensus around societal priorities. Venture-funded innovations don't solve those problems. They just treat the underfunded, malfunctioning public-health system as damaged and attempt to route around it.</p><p>In the end, almost every pandemic-related product created by Silicon Valley will ultimately require the government as a primary customer. Say a VC funds an innovation that costs only $1,000 a person and needs replacing only every five years. "Unless you have government procurement, it's not going to get bought," Frieden says. "That's $300 billion to cover the US. You don't have that money. The market isn't there." And if the government loses interest in funding pandemic preparedness, as it has so often in the past, VCs will lose access to the taxpayer money they're counting on to de-risk their investments.</p><p>Three years after the pandemic devastated the world, we're already losing interest in preparing ourselves for the next one. Last month the vaccine maker Moderna reported a loss for 2023, and a falling demand for its shots. As emergency funding for COVID dries up, pandemic-related startups are in a race against time. In aiming to disrupt the panic-neglect cycle, venture capitalists hope to cash in on the panic. But they may find themselves unable to monetize the neglect.</p><hr /><p style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers"><em>Adam Rogers</em></a> <em>is a senior correspondent at Insider.</em></p>

The CDC’s response to COVID was a disaster. Can Silicon Valley get it right?

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Wastewater data from a few major cities suggests monkeypox may have already peaked in some areas of the US.</li><li>Outbreaks in New York City and San Francisco have stopped growing, though there are still many new cases. </li></ul><p>There are some early signals that monkeypox may be slowing down in areas of the US, after infecting <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/us-map.html">more than 18,900</a> people across the US in barely three months.</p><p>Wastewater <a href="https://soe-wbe-pilot.wl.r.appspot.com/charts#page=overview_mpxv">data</a>, case <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/2022-lab-test.html">counts</a>, and reported sexual activity <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7135e1.htm?s_cid=mm7135e1_w">patterns</a> all suggest this outbreak may be turning a corner.</p><p>Cristin Young, an epidemiologist who's studying monkeypox for the private <a href="https://biobot.io/data/">wastewater company Biobot</a>, says it's a little too early to say for sure that cases are declining across the entire US. Disease rates will likely continue to "vary widely" based on local availability of tests, vaccines, and education, she told Insider.</p><h2>Some cities are showing promising signs of turning a corner</h2><p>There are promising <a href="https://searchcovid.info/dashboards/wastewater-surveillance-mpx/">signs</a> popping up in <a href="https://publichealth.verily.com/#Southeast%20San%20Francisco,%20CA:Monkeypox">San Francisco</a>, <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/data/health-tools/monkeypox.page#surveillance">New York</a>, <a href="https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/hhsa/programs/phs/community_epidemiology/dc/human-monkeypox/localcases.html">San Diego</a>, and other hard-hit areas of the country showing that both case numbers and wastewater levels of the virus are plateauing, and in some cases, declining.  </p><p>(Monkeypox case rates are also slowing down in other hard-hit countries around the world, including France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the UK, leading the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/monkeypox-outbreak-can-be-eliminated-europe-who-officials-2022-08-30/">World Health Organization to argue that elimination of the virus is still possible across Europe</a>.)</p><p>In Los Angeles, Dr. Rita Singhal, who directs disease control, told reporters last week that there's been a "leveling" in new cases in her county, which could be an "early indication that transmission is beginning to slow."</p><p>Singhal said she's "cautiously optimistic" that the level off "is real and that it will hold," but the wastewater in LA still has record-high levels of monkeypox in it:</p><div type="image" title="graph of LA county wastewater showing monkeypox levels increasing" height="785" width="1315" msid="93936170" hostid="261" sizebytes="18868"></div><p>This sewage data suggests the worst of LA's outbreak may not be over. Some monkeypox cases may be being <a href="https://www.insider.com/er-doctor-monkeypox-patients-are-getting-misdiagnosed-with-other-conditions-2022-8">missed by providers</a>, while other patients <a href="https://www.insider.com/i-had-monkeypox-the-physical-and-emotional-pain-were-excruciating-2022-8">manage their own care at home,</a> without getting an official diagnosis. But even those more hidden positive cases will show up in raw sewage.</p><p>"Your poop will know that you're sick before you know you're sick," chemist Stephan Baumann, an infectious disease expert at the lab <a href="https://twitter.com/Agilent">supply company Agilent Technologies</a> told Insider.</p><p>Baumann explained that wastewater, unlike case numbers and hospital admission rates, throws up clues <em>before</em> people feel ill. It's "a good tool in the sense that it doesn't lie, it's anonymous, and no one's privacy is being invaded," he said. </p><h2>Three big reasons why the monkeypox outbreak may be slowing down</h2><div type="image" title="man looking at his monkeypox injection site after vaccination" height="1400" width="1866" msid="93936172" hostid="261" sizebytes="83604"></div><p><strong>1. The way it spreads</strong></p><p>Monkeypox requires <a href="https://www.insider.com/monkeypox-gay-bisexual-men-affected-but-who-warns-stigma-2022-5">close and prolonged</a> contact to spread, and is chiefly being passed around in this <a href="https://www.insider.com/do-you-need-monkeypox-vaccine-how-to-decide-2022-8">outbreak through sexual contact.</a> That is "probably one of the reasons that we are going to start seeing a slowing down," Singhal said. </p><p>Baumann described the monkeypox outbreak like a "fuse" which burns at a moderate pace through a community, before eventually leveling off and extinguishing itself — unlike COVID. </p><p><strong>2. Vaccines</strong></p><p>In the US, the free, nationwide monkeypox vaccine campaign is also <a href="https://www.insider.com/do-you-need-monkeypox-vaccine-how-to-decide-2022-8">finally underway in a meaningful sense</a>, with thousands of <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/30/fact-sheet-white-house-monkeypox-response-team-announces-new-plans-to-support-large-lgbtqi-events-and-equity-interventions-to-reach-communities-at-highest-risk-of-contracting-the-virus/">new Jynneos doses being distributed</a> to pride events and pharmacies in different areas, and a new intradermal vaccination strategy <a href="https://www.insider.com/monkeypox-dose-sparing-us-may-give-smaller-vaccine-doses-supply-2022-8">stretching supplies</a> to more people across the country. </p><p><strong>3. Behavior</strong></p><p>Finally, people in affected communities have been shifting their behaviors — and there are some clear indications that those lifestyle adjustments are making a big difference.</p><h2>An astonishing shift in behavior that has impressed public health experts</h2><div type="image" title="dr demetre in the 2021 pride parade, standing on a car and waving" height="1095" width="1460" msid="93936174" hostid="261" sizebytes="329924"></div><p>Surveying more than 800 men who have sex with men, the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7135e1.htm?s_cid=mm7135e1_w">CDC</a> found around 48% reported reducing their number of sexual partners this summer, and 50% said they've slowed down on one off "sexual encounters." </p><p>Grindr's Head of Communications Patrick Lenihan told Insider users are still active (because "we're not just a sex app," but also a social network, he said).</p><p>Still, there's no doubt that "people are changing their approach to sex" during this outbreak, Lenihan said. "I've been out for 20 years, I live in a very heavily GLBT community, and I can tell you that people are being really responsible, by and large, and taking it seriously."</p><h2>The coming months will be crucial</h2><p>It remains to be seen exactly how effective these vaccines are at stamping out transmission during sex, how long mitigation measures will last before fatigue sets in, and whether public health departments and STI clinics will receive <a href="https://www.insider.com/white-house-monkeypox-public-health-emergency-in-us-2022-8">enough funding</a> to continue any meaningful response to this outbreak.</p><p>If it turns out that <a href="https://www.insider.com/13-men-tested-positive-for-monkeypox-without-symptoms-study-says-2022-8">monkeypox can spread asymptomatically</a>, that will add another complicating factor to the elimination efforts. Health experts expect that even if containment is possible, it <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fd41586-022-02763-z%3Ferror%3Dcookies_not_supported%26code%3D6142d460-f9aa-45ce-8437-8b475f086152%26utm_medium%3DSocial%26utm_campaign%3Dnature%26utm_source%3DTwitter%23Echobox%3D1661956384">could take years</a>.</p><p>Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the White House's Deputy Monkeypox Coordinator, said on a recent <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/ChqPkrmj2LV/">Instagram live with Grindr</a> that, of course, behavioral changes aren't the solution — and they are "not forever." But they do help control the outbreak until <a href="https://mpoxvaxmap.org/">more vaccines</a>, testing, and treatments are available for those who need it. </p><p>"Edit what you're doing based on where you're at," Daskalakis, a longtime LGBGQIA+ health advocate, said. "Pick your own adventure, but pick one that may reduce your likelihood of being exposed to monkeypox."</p>

The monkeypox outbreak may be peaking in some places. Here's what we know — and why the coming months will be crucial.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>After more than two years of covering COVID, I've developed my own ad hoc system for checking out how the outbreak is going where I live.</li><li>It involves checking 3 websites, and takes just 5 minutes.</li></ul><p>A friend texted me recently: <em>What was that COVID % cutoff you watch out for? </em></p><p>A concert she was planning on attending was canceled due to multiple band members testing positive for the virus. </p><p>I realized, in that moment, that I have developed my own three-point system for assessing how bad the COVID-19 outbreak is raging near me. It's not a perfect system, but it helps me get a handle on how risky indoor, maskless activities may be day by day.</p><p>My system is a bit haphazard, but it's also informed by more than two years of reporting on the pandemic — talking to experts, reading studies, and generally being immersed in the COVID chatter.</p><p>Here are the three key metrics that a <keyword id="6364896" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="public-health" source="Orion">public health</keyword> reporter uses when deciding how cautious (or carefree) to be about COVID:</p><h2>First, I check the % of positive tests</h2><p>Public health experts say that even though testing data certainly isn't a totally accurate picture of what COVID is doing in a given area, it is still a helpful gut check to gain basic situational awareness.</p><p>In New York, there's a <a href="https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-alert-ny">COVID Alert NY app</a> for that. I like to toggle back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn  to get a more granular picture of infection rates in both boroughs (where I spend most of my time in the city.)</p><p>When the % of positive tests dips below 1%, that's one indication things are looking good. Right now, I'd say things in the city are OK, not great, but the infection trends are getting a little worse, day by day:</p><div type="image" title="graphs of test positivity rates in brooklyn and manhattan - both going up, moderately" height="600" width="1200" msid="90599335" hostid="261"></div><p>A test positivity rate of around 1-2% is a <a href="https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/evidence-roundup-why-positive-test-rates-need-to-fall-below-3/">good sign</a>, but as more people are testing at home these days (or not at all), it may not be an accurate representation of the true scale of an outbreak. </p><p>If you don't live in New York, try your city or state <a href="https://covid19.colorado.gov/data">health department's website</a>, which may have the percentage of positive tests where you live.</p><p>The <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view?list_select_state=all_states">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has a county by county dashboard</a> for the entire country. Pick your state and county, then scroll down to the "testing" area of the page to see whether cases are trending up or down, and note the % of positive tests where you live on the left hand side of the screen (the CDC data for New York looks a little different than the NYC data, because the federal data is a couple days behind):</p><div type="image" title="test positivity graph for manhattan - going up slightly" height="669" width="1240" msid="90599336" hostid="261"></div><p>Whatever tool you use, pay attention to the % of positive tests, and the rate of change. This can help you assess whether COVID rates are going up or down, and by how much.</p><p>Using the slider tool on the CDC website can give you a clear sense of the direction of the trend over days, weeks, or months. In the chart above, I have the slider tuned to a roughly three-month span between January 2 and March 29. It's hard to see that cases are going up right now, because the current increase is dwarfed by the previous Omicron wave earlier in the year.</p><p>But when I move the slider further toward the right (below) looking only at the past month, the recent case increase comes into focus: </p><div type="image" title="percent of positive tests in manhattan graph - going up slightly" height="680" width="1203" msid="90599337" hostid="261"></div><h2>I take a peek at how much COVID is being flushed down the toilet</h2><p>Because so many people are testing at home these days, and those results aren't recorded by health authorities, my second stop is always the toilet. By that I mean, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-experts-poop-data-shows-omicron-peaking-in-the-us-2022-1">wastewater data</a>.</p><p>Wastewater data, a newer tool than the others here, is the one that makes me feel the most aware of my surroundings. It's a form of passive surveillance that only requires a flush. (People who have COVID-19 excrete it in their poop. Their deposits are not infectious — but they do turn viral tests positive.)</p><p>COVID spikes are often detected in wastewater three to seven days before cases start increasing, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/communication/responder-stories/wastewater-surveillance.html">according to the CDC</a>.</p><p>The CDC recently put up a nationwide wastewater dashboard for COVID, but <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/14/cdc-sewage-surveillance-states-00016795">not every state or county is on it</a>. It works for New York City, though, so I check it regularly <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance">here</a>:</p><div type="image" title="wastewater covid map for nyc" height="851" width="1324" msid="90599338" hostid="261"></div><p>You can see that the level of virus in New York County (Manhattan) wastewater is going up, as indicated by the orange and yellow dots on the map, which show positive % changes at different treatment plants in the city.</p><p>To dig a little further into the data, I scroll down to the footnotes on the same CDC page, here:</p><div type="image" title="wastewater % change footnote" height="329" width="1332" msid="90599340" hostid="261"></div><p>Unfortunately, this table can't be filtered, so you have to scroll through the entire thing to find your area (thank you Ctrl + F!) Once you've found your area, pay attention to the numbers in the far right hand column:</p><div type="image" title="wastewater levels at different sewersheds around the city, many of them with % of virus going up" height="445" width="1231" msid="90599341" hostid="261"></div><p>If the numbers are positive, that means there's more virus in sewage now than 15 days ago, which in turn means more people are getting sick. A bigger positive number indicates more rapid spread. This doesn't mean all positive numbers are bad and all negative numbers are good.</p><p>If there's a big surge in cases, sewage numbers may be declining (negative) even though lots of people are still sick. Alternatively, numbers might be slightly positive in a place where case rates are very low, and that could just be noise in the data. So it's important to read the data in a larger context. </p><p>Because the CDC wastewater data is only tracking sewage changes on a 15-day interval, I also like to gut check it against other nearby poop meters. <a href="https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm">Boston's wastewater data</a> is refreshed every 3-7 days (more often when COVID cases are spiking.) </p><p>The city has two graphs I check, one for the north part of town, and one for the south. Together they paint a clear picture of what's going on:</p><div type="image" title="north boston wastewater" height="593" width="916" msid="90599342" hostid="261"></div><p>The level of virus in wastewater is going up (more people are getting sick), but it's still nowhere near the COVID-positive poop peak of the first <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-experts-poop-data-shows-omicron-peaking-in-the-us-2022-1">Omicron wave at the beginning of the year</a>. </p><div type="image" title="south boston wastewater" height="593" width="905" msid="90599343" hostid="261"></div><p>There are other city-wide sewage datasets in spots around the country. Yale has data for seven spots in <a href="https://yalecovidwastewater.com/reports">Connecticut</a>, and <a href="https://biobot.io/data/">Biobot Analytics</a> (the company that analyzes wastewater data for Boston) is doing excellent work on this nationally.</p><h2>My third stop is the website of a public health professor in Florida</h2><p>Epidemiologist Jason Salemi from Tampa, Florida created <a href="https://covid19florida.mystrikingly.com/national-community-profile">his own COVID-19 dashboards and visualizations back in 2020</a> and he's been updating them ever since.</p><p>Salemi told me via Twitter DM that he created the site in the early days of the pandemic to get public data into "a format that your average person could easily digest."</p><p>Salemi draws from both the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services for his data, and displays it in charts that are easier to read than many federal tables or websites. </p><p>I especially like his fourth chart. Scroll down until you see "#4 Comparing the % of the Population vs. the % of Recent Cases Each State Makes Up."</p><p>Here you can see how cases in your state (or, city, if you live in New York or Washington, DC) stack up per capita. Again, these are only official, reported cases, so the true number of sick people is likely higher than what's listed here:</p><div type="image" title="chart showing NYC cases high, compared to population" height="886" width="1505" msid="90599344" hostid="261"></div><p>In New York, you can see we're punching above our weight right now, in terms of infections.  </p><h2>If I want more of a Weather Channel-style COVID forecast, I head to the IHME</h2><div type="image" title="picture of scientist studying coronavirus structure in GISAID database" height="1402" width="2100" msid="90599347" hostid="261"></div><p>When I want to think about where things are headed over the next several months, I check in on forecasts done by data experts and disease modelers. While I don't do this as regularly as I consult the previous dashboards listed here, one of my favorite forecasting sources is the <a href="https://www.healthdata.org/">Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation</a> at the University of Washington.</p><p>Their modeling has been consulted by the <a href="https://www.healthdata.org/acting-data/our-covid-19-forecasting-model-otherwise-known-chris-murray-model">federal government</a> throughout the pandemic, and it tends to be reliable. </p><p>In their most recent US dispatch, from March 19, the <a href="https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/Projects/COVID/2022/102_briefing_United_States_of_America_2.pdf">IHME modelers said</a> "it is certainly possible that the interaction of a rapid return to pre-COVID behavior, and the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/can-you-get-ba2-if-you-had-omicron-evidence-risk-2022-3">spread of BA.2</a>, could see a short period of increasing case numbers." Sounds spot on to me. </p><p><em><strong>Do you have a favorite COVID-19 dashboard or data source? </strong><a href="mailto:hbrueck@businessinsider.com">Share your pick with this reporter via email</a>.</em></p>

You Searched For "biobots" and got 12 results

Scientists create remote-controlled cyborg cockroaches that can go under search and rescue missions

Rahul Verma

A Delaware county is taking an underground approach to the spread of coronavirus — by examining the county's sewers

Lauren Frias

Researchers are trying to build a biobot - a robot made from living tissue and cells

Victoria Webster

Scientists made tiny living 'robots' from human cells that may one day help treat diseases

Polly Thompson

Bill Gates says 'COVID can be treated more like seasonal flu' after Omicron surge peaks

Ben Gilbert

COVID-19 experts say Omicron is peaking in the US, citing data from poop samples

Hilary Brueck

This startup is tracking the coronavirus through sewers and using AI to predict its spread in a new project with MIT

Jeff Elder

The CDC’s response to COVID was a disaster. Can Silicon Valley get it right?

Adam Rogers

The monkeypox outbreak may be peaking in some places. Here's what we know — and why the coming months will be crucial.

Hilary Brueck

I'm a COVID reporter — here are the 3 dashboards I check to gauge COVID rates in my area before making plans

Hilary Brueck

The Business Insider 100: The Creators - ranked 1 to 100

Kaitlyn Yarborough

The Business Insider 100: The Creators - from A to Z

Emmie Martin,Tanza Loudenback,Alexa Pipia