@augieray no, it wouldn’t — some processes can be treated as stationary over short intervals but not long ones. For example, if the measurement is affected by seasonality for some reason (eg a dry/wet seasonal pattern in the local climate), that won’t affect comparisons of measurements week to week, but it will affect long range comparisons. N.B. that example is made up; wastewater data analysis is outside my wheelhouse but I know enough statistics to have a sense of what I don’t know, if that makes sense.

@augieray I was under the impression that wastewater data was really only good for near-term comparisons, e.g. “do current levels represent an increase or a drop from last week?” Do we have expert commentary somewhere on whether this has changed? I’d be happy to welcome good news if I could be convinced that we didn’t have to worry about other factors intervening in long range trends (examples off the top of my head — changes in typical viral load in excreta as the virus evolves, changes in wastewater dynamics due to extraneous factors like droughts/floods or engineering updates, changes in how the measurements are taken or reported). I mostly haven’t tracked the data since 2022, so it’s very possible there’s info I’ve missed.