The news broke this week that Baltimore is asking some residents to get COVID tests based on analysis of their sewage water.

That's right, folks. The government is testing your poop for the Rona.

Baltimore officials were not only able to detect a rise in COVID-19 particles from a particular neighborhood, but from a specific apartment complex.

The government housing complex is just one of many in the sunny and definitely crime-free city. The local housing authority has been frequently checking the wastewater of such facilities to see which ones might be hotspots of infection.

Yet Baltimore is only one of many communities implementing such testing. The CDC has an entire page dedicated to helping cities start their own "wastewater surveillance system," because if there's anything the government needs to surveil, it's my number twos.

"As I've said before, poop really doesn't lie," said Halley Reeves of Oklahoma University, who is helping set up such a program to test Oklahoma's sewage.

The system in Oklahoma has helped determine when new minor variants of the Rona pop up as health authorities keep an eye on the virus to make sure it isn't mutating beyond the perimeters of the vaccine.

While that's useful and all, it'd be much, much cooler if it was for a disease that wasn't vastly survivable. How much manpower does it take to monitor millions of people's excrement for a virus that a good portion of people never knew they had? Once again I ask myself: has shaping our entire economy, way of life, and testing systems for the Rona really worth it? Are there not vastly more important issues we should use our finite resources to solve?

I'll let you decide.

Other states that have cities that are spying on residents' poop include New York, Colorado, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Ohio.

Here's a map in Wisconsin showing what areas the government is monitoring your feculent waste:

I never thought I'd need to worry about the government getting data from my derriere, but now that I know, Imma go build an outhouse.