Someone’s Got to Do It

Is anyone a fan of the television series “Dirty Jobs”?

Hosted by Mike Rowe, the series was first aired on the Discovery Channel on November 7, 2003, and featured 179 episodes. The show highlighted various difficult and unusual jobs, showcasing the demanding work of individuals in various industries.

Not only was the show informative, but how else would you learn how to recycle leftover Las Vegas food and turn it into pig food, Mike Rowe and his camera team get into the jobs and get dirty. For those not familiar with Mike Rowe he is also the narrator for “Deadliest Catch” which follows the exploits of an Alaskan crab fisherman, another tough and dirty job.

The “Dirty Jobs” theme song was “We Care A Lot” by the group Faith No More which had the chorus “Oh, it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.” Perfectly apropos for the TV show.

I began thinking about “Dirty Jobs” recently as news reports were saying that there is currently a surge in cases of COVID-19. According to reports, infections began rising in early June, and this summer has most likely seen the largest summer wave of COVID-19 yet. Western states like California and Texas, as well as Eastern states such as Florida and North Carolina, have seen the greatest surge.

The rise in cases is attributed to several factors, including the emergence of new, more transmissible variants, increased indoor gatherings due to hot weather, and waning immunity from previous vaccinations or infections.

Since a substantial portion of people who get COVID-19 self-test at home and don’t report results to a doctor or clinic, how do we know that cases are rising?

The answer?

Wastewater sampling.

I quote:

“COVID-19 testing rates through wastewater sampling are determined by analyzing the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in community wastewater systems. This method serves as an early warning system for the spread of COVID-19 within a community, as the virus can be shed in feces by individuals who are symptomatic or asymptomatic.

Wastewater is collected from sewer sheds, which are areas served by a wastewater collection system. This wastewater includes water from household and non-household sources.”¹

If you are not familiar with the term sewer sheds” as I was, “a sewer shed is an area of land where all the sewers flow to a single endpoint, similar to how a watershed functions. It represents a distinct drainage or wastewater collection area within a larger system, and it can vary in size from large to small.”

So, what we have here could most likely be the ultimate episode of “Dirty Jobs” – testing for a highly transmissible disease in the foulest situation imaginable.

I wonder if Mike Rowe would be interested in checking out this job.

I also wonder if the episode would need a new theme song.

I’m open to suggestions.

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Mike Auerbach, Editor In Chief, [email protected]

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