Big Data and Bacteria: Mapping the New York Subway’s DNA

“They are like New Yorkers” they live in the filth of 20 million neighbors.FIFY

Sort of interesting. But, it seems to me, our capacity to gather data and measure things, exceeds our understanding of what to do with the information.We can, for example, measure pathogens in our drinking water like lead or arsenic down to a few parts per million. But we don't know precisely at what levels they become harmful. Same with radioactivity. We don't know why a single peanut can kill someone with a peanut allergy, while others can scarf them down all day.So now we have additional useless knowledge of DNA in subways. Thank you, scientists!

That's why I like private passenger cars. You can curate your own germ collection.

I have sat next to a Tasmanian Devil in the NYC subway, or at least he acted like one.

Suddenly those people wearing surgical masks while in public don't seem so strange.

Why in the world are we tracking Germans in cities?!? That's racial profil...oh, never mind.

Before entering the subway start spraying your can of Lysol all over the place. New Yorkers will love you for it.

Maybe if we raise taxes we can solve this problem, like global warming.

I think this information is good to know, as it gives a baseline and can be compared to diseases in a community. We don't know what we don't know.Too bad they don't have information on viral DNA/RNA. A mind numbing task.

Science is still in it infancy. The most to be accomplished by these studies is that few students will earn their PhDs in the process, not much will be added to the total scientific field of knowledge.This was an extremely long and painful article to read with minimal of interest for the average WSJ.com reader. One would think the editors would have required the word count to be reduced.I wounder how much of this study was funded by Federal Tax dollars?

I have read that people who live on farms rarely have hay fever. Growing up surrounded by germs and allergens probably helps one develop a strong immune system. Conversely, living in a relatively sterile environment is likely to cause one to have a weak and underdeveloped immune system.

The next logical step for liberals is to spread the germs around.

Wait'll they get a load of the humungous pus sack residing in Gracie mansion.

The science is settled. We're all gonna die. Of something. Eventually.

I am shocked ... imagine disease germs in the NY city subways and other public areas! Whodathunkit? Far more significant than war ...disease has shaped, shaken, and almost halted the course of mankind over the years. Vast expanses of our DNA are bits and pieces of bacterial and viral infections accumulated by the survivors over the centuries. It will be the "bugs" that will eventually take most of us, collectively and individually, off the planet. But as purportedly Jim Morrison said (if one gets wisdom out of rock personalities) - no one gets out of here alive.

Well ... the fire of London ended the plague that invested the city in the 17th century, but, other than that, we have immune systems for a reason: to deal with the constant assault of microbes.If we were to get more serious about cleaning things, young kids might not develop mature immune responses to microbes. They might develop more allergies which are just manifestations of the immune system over-reacting to stuff it shouldn't over-react to.

Why do I now feel like I don't want to touch anything in my office?

Good Grief! I learned in 7th grade health class that there were germs on almost every surface, everywhere. If they were dangerous enough to worry about, we would all be dead already.And finding them in the subway? That can't be difficult.

Well, when one observes the public, 1/2 are pigs and factor in all theseillegals among us that come from pit holes, expect more diseases.Can't imagine what their living quarters look like.Ambition & Windex or Bleach are not expensive...

To calm people down, someone ought to write The Immunist Manifesto!Namely, unless your immune system is punching below its weight for some reason, you can take all these germs in stride.In fact, if there is a measure for national germ levels similar to the GDP (the domestic gross product?) the US will rank way below most countries in Asia and Africa.

Aside from anthrax, none of these findings are very surprising. Furthermore, hospitals garner more pernicious bacteria than subways do. Let's talk about that.

Time has changed! Twenty years ago many Europeans thought that the typical American's anxiety about germs was a bit exaggerated. It was enough to show microscopic blow-ups of door handles, bank notes and many other things to make people aware. If you want to avoid unpleasant surprises, the rule is simple. Unless you get a chance to wash hands before, eat even finger food with a fork and a knife. The sad reality is that apparently in today's world there are more vicious germs and we are less immune to them than in the past.

Adrian Monk would need sedation.

This is like an ad for Uber.

The list is rather extensive: HIV/AIDS, various forms of hepatitis, the complex of diseases often known as Gay Bowel Syndrome, all of the common STDs [as syphilis, mainly reported in gays] only more frequent, etc. I'm sure these are involved in the reduced gay lifespan as I and my colleagues have documented for San Francisco and Dr. Frisch documented in Denmark [the gay median age of death appears to currently locate around the early 60s, married or not, while for married straights the median age of death locates in the mid-80s].

There are more bacteria in us and on us already to a power of ten, then there are cells that constitute us from the fertilized egg. Not to mention the world around us. The accurate question is who is colonizing who? We essentially evolved within a glob of so called germs. The immune system is not to eliminate germs but to coexist with them.

Great research Cornell...GO BIG RED!!!!

From this we conclude the average New Yorker washes his hands once every 11 days.

Given the many diseases associated with gay sex, it would be interesting to see how the mix of microbes in gay bars and gay meeting places compares to the mix in public spaces, transportation systems, churches, theaters, and pizza-joints.

If you want to find the real, life-threatening germs in the city, then try the 86th street station - the germs come from Gracie mansionWear gloves when venturing underground

Another good reason not to go or live in NYC besides high taxes!!!

Interesting...but one of the most bacteria/disease laden places anywhere is the gasoline pump handle....

"he has found germs that can cause bubonic plague uptown, meningitis in midtown, stomach trouble"kind of like . . . nuclear war, anthrax and hangnail.Couldn't resist.

The project must have been sponsored by Purell

So just how much money did we spend to conclude the subway is dirty? Smells like a bunch of political microbes digesting tax dollars and spreading the make work socialist disease. Oh, I forgot, it is science and knowing (better yet - controlling) is good.

Ah, the joys of what it must be like living in overpopulated, ghetto-like, urban concentration camps. Because, as will be parroted ad infinitum, urban life is so superior to everything else. Enjoy.

This article “expands” the way I think about big cities.I often refer to NYC, DC, & Chicago as America’s “cesspools”. I am thinking about prevalent corruption in politics & big business when I say it. 'Fat cats’ hang out here & line their own pockets with profits produced by underpaid ‘slave labor’ in a country where ALL people are allegedly “free”.I see stark differences between society’s haves & have not’s in these cities. I see homeless living on benches, on street corners. I see ‘fat cats’ living in ivory or gold towers. In these cities, I see greatest evidence of a deteriorated America.This article just adds to the ways I think about cesspool cities. It expands my thoughts to actual health hazards that exist for all who live here, & who use public transportation.I think there are MANY reasons Americans should evacuate cesspool cities, to get away from the many forms of filth that pervade them, to find places where they can live “cleaner” lives.

This is all interesting, but what do we do with this information? We find cheese-and rodent-related related bacteria on the turnstiles at the 72nd Street station and we do what exactly? Install hand sanitizers? Clearly the masses are not being harmed by the bacteria.

There are over 10x more bacteria than our own genomic cells. Our immune system is nothing, sine quo non, without our biome and virome.Even the air we breath is the ancient and present day interplay of the planet's biome and virome we have to thank.These scientists are at the edge of a frontier of knowledge that will touch us all, increasingly in time. I marvel at their recent discoveries as explained, it was in plain view all along. Micriobioilogists rock!

Time to wear the full body condom when on the NY subway.

Wear gloves and cover your mouth when you sneeze.

The research always starts off benign.... then comes the twist and then finally "control".

There is a reason that NYC is called the "hell hole of the world."

No kidding. It's a city. When you take a 30 square mile island and mash in enough people to fill the average U.S. state, it's going to be germy

My group believes that ‘real life’ is more informative than ‘what people say.’ We compiled obituaries with unstinting care and reported what we found. Frisch dissed our compilations in the same manner as you. But when he examined 6.5 million persons followed for up to three decades (1982-2011) he found the age of death of married gays & lesbians very close to what we had reported, with the same ~15-20 year deficit in longevity. We are just wrapping up a 7 country study of contemporary child sexual abuse and have found that as indexed by Google News about half of US molestations are by the homosexually-inclined; in China – which is far less supportive of homosexuality – they accounted for 5%, in Russia about a quarter, and in the UK about three-quarters. Ideology often blinds to reality, even demands investigation be censored, but truth has a way of embarrassing it.

Sounds like NYC is the ultimate destination for building natural immunity.

The same stuff could probably be found on most escalator handrails, shopping cart handles, shop and restaurant door pulls, credit card machines and money; in fact on anything that has the potential for being touched by lots of people. The best you can do is to avoid placing bare hands and fingers on those places as much as you can, and if you do, don’t for God sake touch around your face. Finally, wash hands as often as possible and have a packet of disinfectant wipes in your car. Finally, always use wipes placed by shopping carts as well.

That settles it: I'm going full bore Howard Hughes. The tipping point was that high level of cucumber bacteria.

Wash your hands after taking the subway and use UV-Aid beforehand and you'll be safe from surface and airborne germs.

An easy way to avoid this would be just those alcohol gel sprays.

The whole city of New York is one big bactria pathogen.

........and this information is worth $1 million?

The real message is only travel in the clean taxis.

Data is not useless. Data is simply data until it supports or refutes a hypothesis.Imagination and understanding allow the knowledgeable to recognize patterns and relationships in data.Statistics allow us to review the meaning of data. Data is not useless.