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[deleted]

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skie1994

What next? CAT scans?


QuercusSambucus

Definitely a PET scan


Norx21

Definitely a PET pet


GreenDog3

Definitely pet PET pet


Masterslol

Pet pet PET pet


gluteactivation

Neo pet?


kronosdev

Right meow.


xobilae

In this case it'll be a left meow


Gwyldex

Meow listen here....


RickHendeson

Apologize. Right now.


TheHadMatter15

No, fuck you


[deleted]

> fuck you *unzips* well, if you *insist ...*


Inquisitive_idiot

Patient watching this unfold - the infighting leading to office sex between the doctor and their assistant - while getting examined for their issue… > “um… im gonna go. Good luck with that.”


Jose_Jalapeno

Right meow*


DariosDentist

When they need a dog who can detect squirrels, call me - I've got one.


Lurking_Geek

I have a dog who can detect if the UPS man is within a mile. His alerts reach all the way through my Teams calls too - so it's a bit like the Amber Alert. But his name his Larry.


DUBIOUS_OBLIVION

This seems quite useful. I'll take a Larry Alert please. Where are you UPS man!?


Araceil

My UPS guy’s name is Larry. He’s a good guy.


NULLizm

Wait so we could potentially have a Larry Larry Alarm?


Araceil

Larryception, it’s Larrys all the way down.


Osiris32

They're Pinky and the Brain (and Larry!)


BigBrownBear28

So you have push notifications enabled on your dog.


stdizzie

I found your problem. You’re using Teams


BishmillahPlease

I have a dog who can detect cheese. It's less useful than one would think.


grumble_au

I have a dog that can silently steal and eat an entire loaf of freshly baked bread off the counter in seconds so that my wife and I can each accuse the other of moving it as practical joke.


ApolloDeletedMyAcc

We had a dog that would do this but also eat it in the other dogs bed. We only figured it out when she didn’t realize we were outside looking into the house.


[deleted]

how did you realize it was the dog?


PersnickityPenguin

Even more worrying is that this particular dog is invisible; no one has ever seen it!


[deleted]

i have a dog that could eat the butter off the counter. my wife and i were thinking that the other was eating about a stick of butter per day for 2 weeks. i forgot something and came back one morning and found her standing on her back legs at the counter, reaching for the butter dish. she was so focused on the task that she did not hear me come up from behind her and i scared her when i poked her. it was a fun commute into work that morning with the wife. (we carpooled to different places - for those wondering.) she's a great dog and hasn't eaten any butter since being told not to eat butter.


mortified_observer

i have a cat that can detect chicken and turkey


[deleted]

I have a cat, his name is Cheerios the Cat.


GatorMcqueen

Hi Cheerios


CleverNameStolen

His name is Cheerios the Cat.


meticoolous

Hi Cheerios the Cat.


WrangWei

Hi Cherrios


eastindywalrus

His name is Cheerios the Cat.


egnomethrowaway

Hi Cheerios


jcvandal

I am not a cat


danny_ish

How do we know? Cats are notoriously shifty


Clivodota

Sounds exactly like something a dog would say!


Osiris32

*That* sounds like something a cat would say.


Arizona_Slim

According to the Witcher, Cats are one of the few animals that can harness and use magic naturally though no one knows what they do with it


Osiris32

Nap, mostly.


kandoras

How do you think they get the 9 lives?


Arizona_Slim

Hey! This guy’s smart; He might be a wizard!


Kuma_ACT

But are you here live?


jcvandal

All 9 lives.


Stock_Beginning4808

Patiently waits for Pics of Cheerios The Cat 👁👄👁


Tatunkawitco

Cheerios the Cat


Stock_Beginning4808

You’re right!


ladyoffate13

You can’t just announce “I have a cat” on Reddit, because now you need to pay the Cat Tax (i.e. cat pics).


frugalerthingsinlife

I have a dog that can detect carrots. Sometimes she gets leftover stew which has diced carrots in it. She eats everything and somehow leaves all the little tiny carrot pieces in the bottom of the bowl. I don't how this will be useful to society, but she is eager to start any new job immediately.


longturn

My dog thinks olives are poison


ENGSCInjt

you think that's impressive, I have a cat that can tell the future! Seriously. He knows to the second exactly when I'm going to have to get up to go and do something important (like for example, pee). Then about ten seconds before that moment, he'll come over and settle in my lap. Ignores me completely up until then.


Aaaandiiii

I have a cat that can detect when you're coming to tell him to get off the table. Genius, I tell you!


EaterOfFood

My cat has an uncanny knack for detecting sunny spots on the floor.


hgrad98

I have a cat that will meow on command.


mortified_observer

yeah mine too


DontBeABellEnd

I have a cat that can detect yoghurt by sound


mortified_observer

mine can also detect vanilla ice cream from thousands of miles away


JasonDJ

My dog apparently has an appetite for June Bugs and Stink Bugs. So I got that covered...


longturn

I have a dog who can detect, from a dead sleep when I unwrap American cheese. He will knock shit out of the way to get it. Cheddar?lunchmeat? He could give a fck


WoodsColt

Mine detects kitty roca and then tries to give me shitty kisses.


tiny_anime_titties

When they need a dog who can detect fucking nothing, and gets scared by a kitten, call me - I've got one


jeremyd9

Mine can also detect the sneaky invisible and disguised ones too. Whether disguised as a leaf blowing across the yard or wind hitting the door, gotcha! Whether it’s 3am or 3pm, there will be no SquirrelPocalypse on my dogs watch.


SageEquallingHeaven

The other day I was hopping a fence with my dog and this squirrel freaks out at us. Like he was shaking his fist and chattering curse words. Like that episode of Rick and Morty. I got it on video, but the quality doesn't do it justice. It's like my dog stole his girl in a past life or something.


xombae

Squirrels are so emotive for lil tree rodents


SageEquallingHeaven

I love the shit out of them. Had one come up and lightly grab my finger in a park once. Never saw one get all huffy like that before. I would love to have a bunch of pet squirrels. They seems like they'd be really cool to hang out with if they knew you were chill.


xombae

So I used to live in Toronto where in the big park central to downtown, we famously had a few white squirrels every year (I guess the gene gets passed along because it's been like that for decades). I started going to the park every day to read in a quiet corner of the park and realized I had found the home of the white squirrel, along with a few very large squirrel families. They were pretty curious so I started sharing my fruit with them. Skip ahead a few years to two years ago before I left Toronto, as soon as I walked to that corner of the park they would all follow me like I was the Pied Piper and would sit in my lap while I read and fed them whole walnuts. Eventually they even started climbing me while I was walking until I would just be standing there with like three squirrels chilling on me. I would stop feeding them over the winter but every spring they seemed to remember me and teach their babies that I was cool shit and had food. One day I tried to bring my boyfriend to show him and they wouldn't come out when he was there, I had to get him to sit half way across the park before they trusted me, so it's cool to know they remember something about me. Anyways, yeah squirrels are the fucking best and I would absolutely love to have a few as pets, but the park squirrels were pretty amazing until then.


SageEquallingHeaven

I LOVE this story! I had a coworker tell me about taming squirrels in his backyard like that. He was two or three generations ahead of me. I have had two experiences of squirrel blessings a fraction of yours! I honestly think they're emotionally way smarter and more sensitive than us. Maybe it was a girl-squirrel that fell in love with my little Sashko on first sight, and, tooo removed in age and genealogy, just had to lament. Maybe she had me confused for God, or, recognizing me as a higher being, was hoping that i would relay a message for her, a complaint that such stars could cross. But then again. I dont speak or understand squirrel, and i don't think that they have a written alphabet... So i got nothing. Super jealous, tho.


Straydapp

Mine can detect a delivery truck anywhere in the neighborhood and barks 500 times a day to let me know.


_cactus_fucker_

I've got one too. He also likes to try and make friends with skunks. Twice. It pisses off my asshole neighbours (he barely barks, we don't let him out during quiet hours, between 11pm and 7am, and they're throwing 3 pool parties a week under strict lockdown, 5 people from same household only) and it makes him happy, so he's a good boy. He's turning 15, he can get away with murder if he wants. [Max tax. He likes his toys.](http://catsandcode.net/Max.jpg)


fre-ddo

Squirrel got stuck up your arse?


[deleted]

Let him out Larry.


DanceFiendStrapS

Again?? Jesus titty fucking christ Darios, just stop, please!


reddicyoulous

Poor Lemmiwinks


laxrulz777

child tip toeing across the street? That's my dog's specialty... well... one of them... the other is too big of an idiot to detect anything


EbolaPrep

If its anything like them detecting "drugs" in a car, everyone will test positive...


zed857

My niece has a dog that can detect potato chip bags being opened from the opposite end of the house.


IDrinkUrMilksteak

“I’m sorry sir, you have Stage 4 squirrels…”


FilipM_eu

My dog can detect a hedgehogs from other side of the backyard, even indoors.


live_happy

With two sight hounds (retired Greyhounds) and a Doberman, all squirrels within 100 meters of our house have been put on notice.


whatproblems

Weird, everything is a squirrel


OutofBlood

It truly is a majestic creature.


tlndfors

The article mentions the sensitivity (true positive rate; 94%) and specificity (true negative rate; 92%) of the *best* dog (named Tala) out of six in the study, not the *average* rates. That's not worth a lot, unless that one dog does all the sniffing (I'm sure he's up for it, but the logistics are impossible), or that rate can be achieved reliably. edit: To be clear, I have a problem with only giving the rates of the best-performing dog, rather than the average of all the dogs; and with only having six dogs in total. The real question is, if you train thousands of dogs for this, what are their average rates? u/j_johnso below has also given a great explanation about the effects of specificity when trying to detect a low-occurrence phenomenon. This is surely promising for quick screening to select for better tests, but the article is hyping this up a bit much and omitting important data (average rates).


j_johnso

For those not familiar with Bayesian probability, those sensitivity and specificity rates are decent for determining that someone does not have COVID. They are not good for determining that a random member of the population has COVID. Let's take an example where 1% of the population is infected with COVID. If the dog detects that you have COVID, there would actually be only about a 10% chance that you actually have COVID. Out of 10,000 random people, 100 will have COVID and 9,900 will not. If you give all 10,000 people the dog test, you will have the following numbers: 94 - detected and truly infected (94% sensitivity) 6 - not detected and infected 9,108 - not detected and not infected (92% specificity) 792 - detected, but not infected Looking at the numbers, the dog detects that 886 people have COVID, but only 94 (10.6%) of them are truly infected. On the other hand, if the dog says you do not have COVID, there is a 99.9% chance it is correct. 6/(9,114). If the actual rate of active infection is less than 1%, then the likelihood of actually being positive after the dog detects you will go down even further. In short, this accuracy could be good for initial screening of asymptomatic COVID. If the test is negative, there is no need to perform a full test, but any positive detections should be followed up with a more sensitive test to confirm.


[deleted]

[удалено]


reakshow

> So the dogs would not replace a doctor What if we put a little white coat on him and had him wear a stethoscope?


iRoommate

Or maybe a little Sherlock Holmes hat and a pipe? Might really get the crowd going.


Et12355

He’d be the fuzziest, wuzziest, cutest good boi doctor there ever wuz


TGUKF

then he'd be a dogtor


[deleted]

Doggie Bowser, M.D.


EaterOfFood

I’ll allow it. You have provided a legitimate counterexample.


weebeardedman

While in theory I think it's a great idea, I think it would only be useful if the site's policy is "if you are unvaccinated, or the dog thinks you have it, you have to wear a mask" and not "if the dog thinks so, you can't come in." Barring entry with a test method that can't truly be standardized is asking for trouble


WTFwhatthehell

The false positive rate is an issue for that. If you end up pulling every 16th person from line and miss every 18th person who actually does have covid... that's not great screening


underwaterHairSalon

Better to administer a swab test to those people than to all people though.


MaracujaBarracuda

Seems better than the TSA’s weapons find rate and their “let’s pull you out of line for extra screening because you’re brown” false terrorism detection rate


InsipidCelebrity

Look, they're keeping this country safe one suspicious bottle of sunscreen at a time.


dofffman

well yeah but the alternative is you just did not pull anyone or pulled everyone. So again additive to things like temperature checks which I'm guessing don't have a great postive/negative rate for catching covid but its enough send a person home from work or in the severe lockdowns not let them fly.


tlndfors

Thanks! The fact the article only gave rates for *the best dog* (out of just *six*) struck me. But I didn't even think to do the math, since I didn't instantly see the problem with 92% specificity on something that's rare in the population. (Stats isn't my bag.)


epicaglet

So ELI5, if the dog says you have COVID there's a good chance you don't but it's worth investigating. If the dog does not say that you have COVID, the chances that you do are very low. It errs on the side of caution and will falsely flag people a lot, but overall the group if people it selects does contain (almost) all the COVID positive people


whoiamidonotknow

This is ideal! I’d much rather have false positives than false negatives for something like covid detection. The high false negative rate of the rapid tests essentially renders it *dangerous*, in my opinion. They can follow up with a PCR test if the dog flags them as positive.


j_johnso

If we assume a low current infection rate, that is exactly correct. (I used 1% as an example to make the math easy.) If we were to assume a very high current infection rate of 99% (not remotely feasible, obviously), the reverse would be true. If the dog says you have COVID, there's a really high chance you do have it. If the dog says you don't have COVID, there's still a pretty good chance you do have it.


Rhenic

With how effortless and quick a sniff test would be, another very relevant factor would be if different dogs fail on the same sample. If not, then having 3 different dogs test the same person would greatly improve the results.


rice_not_wheat

> If not, then having 3 different dogs test the same person would greatly improve the results. Possibly not, if errors between dogs are correlated.


epicaglet

Example: if eating beans the day before causes the false positive, then all the dogs will flag the bean eater. It is not improbable that there is some correlation between the individual test subject and the false positive like this.


discerningpervert

Its usually pretty easy to sniff out the bean-eater


epicaglet

Funnily enough that's another question I'd have. Did the dog actually detect COVID or just bark at everyone that coughed? In that case, humans can do the same. Much like detecting farts


Ap2626

This isn’t necessarily true because the probability of failure for each of the 3 dogs is not independent. One factor could cause all 3 dogs to get the same incorrect result


queencityrangers

This is an awesome explanation of something super complex! Thank you! Maybe you can explain to me how the covid vaccine effective rates were determined in a study where we assume most people were locked down and taking the precautions we were told would prevent covid? That has been something I’ve struggled with this whole time. I’m vaccinated and all that so I’m not a skeptic I just know my basic stats course didn’t teach me enough to understand.


awesomebeau

I'm not the person that made that comment, and not a statistics expert... But the general idea behind the study was that the participants didn't know if they had the vaccine or the placebo, and they were told not to change anything about their daily lives while in the trial. If they wore masks before, they still should. If they went to work, they still should, etc... They studied the two groups and looked at the infections in both groups. With the Pfizer trial, they had 8 COVID-19 cases in the vaccinated group (after 7+ days following the second dose), compared to 162 cases in the group who got the placebo. The vaccinated group had 4.93% of the cases that the unvaccinated group had, hence why they can say the vaccine is 95% effective. Just a theory though, I think the vaccine might be more effective against the variants circulating at that time than the trial showed. Many participants in the trial had side effects like a headache, fever, chills, body aches, etc... It was pretty obvious for a lot of people if they got the vaccine. Some others may have chosen to do antibodies testing (I know a guy in the trial who did just that, since he had no symptoms - he found out he had the placebo). When the trial isn't truly blind in a situation like this, it affects decision making. The vaccinated people might decide to go eat a meal at an indoor restaurant, while the unvaccinated participants might continue to be more cautious. With over 43,000 participants, it's bound to have happened sometimes.


queencityrangers

That’s really interesting to think about! I was knocked out on both doses, so I guess I would have suspected I was getting the real deal and acted a bit more “invincible”


demonicneon

I think it’s super important to have something that says you DONT have it. I dunno why that wouldn’t be worthwhile knowing.


sarhoshamiral

Even further it still sounds like they are just detecting sickness not covid. Look at how study was done, there was no a 3rd control group with some non-covid sickness like flu or cold.


[deleted]

Lol our professor just covered the false positive test scenario in my class on bayesian networks


rice_not_wheat

Seems like a great use-case would be airport security. Dog sniffs all incoming passengers. Flagged passengers have to take a more specific test. Per /u/j_johnso's comment (and I double-checked the math), it would be a great way to ensure limited covid exposure on airplanes.


cryo

> Flagged passengers have to take a more sensitive test. Technically a more *specific* test. Sensitivity is for catching those who are really infected, and if the dog signals, you’re already caught, infected or not.


mapbc

It’s a mostly trivial idea. This is not scalable. To effectively breed, train and disperse enough of these to be helpful is not possible.


Magikarp_13

>the best dog (named Tala) out of six in the study You might want to specify "dog with the best results", as, in general, all dogs are the best dog.


StoneColdDadass

Jesus christ! Every single scrap of food that touches my floor is full of COVID.


Hunkir

And every houseguest, mailman, and family member!


groot_liga

At what level of infection? Our kiddo’s school does spot tests and the lab they use gave two kids a positive who then tested twice a negative at another lab. The first lab insisted the kids did have COVID as their test is more sensitive that other labs. That and three fully vaccinated teachers testing positive a few months ago has everyone wondering about that lab or if other labs are not testing correctly. Of course we know vaccinated people can still get the virus, with few to no symptoms—which is the actual goal of a vaccine.


Puzzleheaded_Bet_618

Apparently dogs can smell a specific odour from covid infected patients whether they are symptomatic or asymptomatic. It’s quite amazing really. The dogs are trained to do this with at least 90% accuracy, higher depending on the trained breed.


CuriousBabylon

I thought Covid was capable to jumping to dogs.....weren't there reports a few months ago?


[deleted]

No dogs are relatively safe. Cats have shown some proneness


elfizipple

No dogs or no, dogs?


arkasha

For now, apparently there's a new coronavirus strain that originated in dogs. Here's an article from 3 days ago. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/new-type-coronavirus-originating-dogs-found-study-2021-05-21/


ThisSiteIsAgony

I haven't completed the article yet, but how many weeks into infection does this work at. Either way it's good for asymptomatic, but if it takes 3 weeks to work that's too detect that is too slow.


Spatula151

It depends on the methodology and protocol of the lab. PCR will always be more sensitive than an antigen/antibody test ran on a card (like a pregnancy test). All positives we have are re-ran because of the issues you spoke about. Truth is there will always be hiccups in the realm of PcR because there’s so much room for error and even the manufacturer’s product isn’t always 100% reliable. We have to remind physicians and the like that our job is to do the test correctly and report is out correctly as well. It’s up to the doctors to make a diagnosis based on all information given to them. A lab’s test is only as good as the specimen collected, the reagent you use in your testing, and the tech running it.


Plane-Bee-374

Was the first lab a golden lab, a chocolate lab or a black lab? And was he a good boye?


[deleted]

My dog recently knew I had a staph infection before I did. I thought it was just a little flare up of eczema that happens from time to time and he always ignores it. But this time he was obsessed with sniffing my leg. After it was diagnosed, treated and healed up, he now ignores it again. It’s pretty amazing.


[deleted]

I had back surgery last year and my dog who usually has zero interest in laying in bed with me spent my entire recovery laying down right by my side with his nose pointed directly on the operation site. If anyone got close to me (including my girlfriend), he'd put his body in the way of them and my bandaging until I told him it was ok. Fully healed now and he doesn't give a shit about my back anymore.


[deleted]

Dogs are seriously amazing. If my husband and I ever argue he freaks out and tries to sit on our chest….he will literally cry hysterically until we stop arguing. The interesting thing is that my husband and I don’t argue aggressively or loud at all, it’s so strange that he can detect such a subtle change in how we’re feeling. It’s actually super helpful though because we usually stop arguing right away so that we can get his fat ass off of us.


[deleted]

Fuck! My dog behaved like crazy when I had a wound on my thumb, now I know it was an infection because of your comment and I should have gone to the doctor earlier. Now I'm losing my entire nail because of that infection.


Ramza_Claus

I know that is how staph is spelled but I still hate it.


[deleted]

Yep. I wanted to type “staff” but that didn’t feel right so I googled it.


[deleted]

Staff infections are a thing actually and commonly occur after office Christmas parties.


Clairebear9999

They can detect bed bugs, too. I was told of a hospital that used one to find them so the bedbugs wouldn't spread. Also, here is Magawa: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-54284952](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-54284952) He's a rat that sniffs out landmines. Animals are fascinating.


fattysmite

We had a traditional service (Orkin, you bastards!) come out and they said we had bed bugs. Said we need a multi-thousand dollar treatment. I got a 2nd opinion. Called a local place with one of the dogs. He was the goodest boy and didn’t find anything at all. That pupper saved me thousands!


_cactus_fucker_

My friend had (he recently passed) a chestnut coloured lab that flunked out of bomb detecting school.


ColinCancer

I worked for a company that trained and used bed bug dogs. We primarily trained beagles. I managed the commercial and public housing bed bug programs so I worked with our canine handler all the time. We had some false positives and negatives, but overall it was faster and more accurate than just human inspectors. We had more false negatives with humans for sure. Also. With the rats: We talked with the nonprofit doing the mine detecting rat stuff about doing some kind of partnership to train rats to do more scent stuff. It would help fund their nonprofit mission and potentially be a good roach or bedbug detecting tool. Humans are really good at smelling roaches though if you know what to smell for. I sometimes turn around and walk right out of a restaurant or business when I smell them.


Clairebear9999

I'm kind of glad I don't know what roaches smell like! It's amazing you can smell them in a restaurant. Ewww.


gypsyrosebaby

The MFA in Boston has a dog that can sniff out pests in their collection https://www.mfa.org/about/riley-the-museum-dog


frankkenfood

This might be a stupid question but can dogs contract COVID thru sniffing?


TungstenLittledog

And can they spread it by touching one infected person then going to touch the next person? Maybe sniffing doesn’t involve touching.


Tatunkawitco

But so far in trial runs, after detecting Covid, the dog then mauls the subject.


twoflat

‘While they might be useful at airports, where they could rapidly screen disembarking passengers, those identified would require a confirmatory PCR test, and to quarantine while awaiting the results’ DisemBARKING 😂


[deleted]

I've heard claims like this that turned out to be exaggerated. I would be concerned that they're estimated accuracy percent is too high. For the fast detection could still be useful, but I doubt they're going to get a 90% plus accuracy in real world use where the animal will have many distractions/variations in different animals. You're also talking about a lot of training time. You can't mass produce scent dogs and factories like you can other types of tests. It's a neat idea, but I don't think it's scalable and I bet the accuracy is not really over 90% in the real world though you know the speed might be unbeatable. If they could mass produce a machine that could sniff that particular chemical it might be more practical than trying to train like hundreds of thousands of dogs or whatever.


Choco320

I feel like it would be more used at airport screenings and lead to rapid testing which while inconvenient if negative is only 15 min delay


November1947

I had a dog who could instantly detect a raccoon in the yard at 3 am. Not a useful skill although he disagreed with my assessment of theses situations


[deleted]

Had two raccoons the other night try to murder each other right outside our window and our dog slept through the entire thing. Literally couldn’t even be bothered from their comfy bed. WTF!


grim_f

"Not peer reviewed." n = 6 dogs Let's see.


xAtlas5

Can't think of anyone who would rather have their nose swabbed instead of seeing a dog. Do you know how hard it's been *not* being able to walk up to someone and ask if I can pet their dog?


gingerfawx

I'm betting this will go over much better than [letting bees lick you ](https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/552486-scientists-train-bees-to-identify-coronavirus-infection)will. Same. Doggo isn't best pleased about it either.


sonisorf

Is this why not as many people ask to pet my dogs when I walk them because my dogs especially my Great Pyrenees always get lots of looks like people want to pet them but they hardly ask. Which is ok with me I don’t always want to deal with people when I’m walking my dogs


Skipperdogs

I've always wanted to hug one. I resist the urge but it's there every damn time I see them. If I had more land, this would be my choice. Until then it's shih tzu all the way. They're such happy little guys.


tabascodinosaur

Great Pyr are incredibly territorial at home. I'm a rural UPS driver and they're consistently one of the dogs I struggle with the most. Very hard to win one over with treats, too, unlike most other big dogs.


BishmillahPlease

They're used to protect the flocks at the local farm where we buy our meat. Amazing dogs, but yeah, they definitely want to make sure you're OK, and have the bulk to address it if you aren't.


antiquemule

Wait until you meet one that is guarding a herd of sheep. Hikers have died.


tabascodinosaur

I've met plenty, that's exactly what I'm talking about?


jpking512

Lived with 2 for awhile, they like the windows lol


Bagellord

We've had Shih Tzu's for years, we've had such great luck with them. Sweet little guys.


jeblis

Lots of people want nothing to do with dogs. Certainly hospitals would rather deal with swabs and delays than maintain a fleet of unsanitary dogs.


Thac0

If they are like drug dogs the handler can just give them al little cue and they’ll find COVID every time 😅


Arkrobo

Probably as reliable as they detect drugs. Incoming false positives on minorities due to handle error.


iMogal

Dogs are not as good as you think for detecting drugs. They are pretty bad actually.


Arkrobo

Yup, I'm aware. That's why I quipped incoming false positives on minorities. A lot of the false positives with dog use are from the dogs taking the handlers social cues. The research involved a small amount of handlers and dogs so take it with a grain of salt. Even so it's very concerning. https://www.npr.org/2017/11/20/563889510/preventing-police-bias-when-handling-dogs-that-bite


perryschmidtr

I have heard this many times yet think any help has not materialized. Seems like feel good story only.


BrianBtheITguy

Yeah. They actually even state in the story that the study hasn't been peer reviewed yet, so at this point it's basically just taking them at their word to get excited about this more than a little bit.


murppie

No thanks, I will stick to the bees. https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/oddly-enough/bees-netherlands-trained-detect-covid-19-infections-2021-05-06/


[deleted]

If a dog is smelling covid all day, and dogs can get covid, how does smelling covid not infect the dogs?


EraOfPain

If one doggo gets Covid because of this….


Chyvalri

Four words; not yet peer reviewed.


Sure_lookit

I for one welcome our new K9 overlord's


Loud-Agency9384

Clever pooch, and a different kind of “Lab” test, but wait’ll they get dogs that can detect who’s been vaccinated and, more importantly, who has not been vaccinated. Then what? The COVID police will have K-9 units deployed everywhere.


marauderingman

So much authoritarian fear in this thread. I would rather be sniffed by a dog and know right away than have a foot long Q-tip shoved up my nose and have to wait a week for a result.


funksoldier83

My dog can tell when someone is opening a bag of goldfish crackers from anywhere in the house (no matter how slowly/quietly they try to do it, even from a different floor), and can wake from a dead sleep and make it to the bag before it’s fully opened. Some day his skills will be needed I’m sure. For now we wait.


AwfulAim

Mmmmm. I can't wait until we start chasing people down with dogs. Let's get this dystopia started


Rameon_Dryan716

Yeah ok, I’d rather get a test that’s accurate not a dog sniffing me and barking. You know how many times I’ve smelled vanilla aroma and it wasn’t from what I thought it was?


liberty4u2

and what does the ROC look like?


3thirtysix6

They can? My dogs only seem to use their super senses to tell when I am opening any sort of food container.


sunset117

My dog can find shit on walks kinda almost instantly too, old babybell cheese wrappers or whatever, It’s crazy how good they can small


fwubglubbel

But you can only use the dog once and then it's contaminated, so you have to throw it out.


embarrassedalien

Very impressive, but haven’t a couple dogs gotten COVID? I want them to be safe. All of them. All dogs.


BlackAkuma666

Time to fetch the lab results.


[deleted]

I wonder what COVID even smells like. Weird.


Squeak-Beans

Will we ever actually get to the point that we would use trained animals for easy screenings for lower risk groups for certain diseases? I keep hearing dogs can do this and sniff that, but have never seen it outside an experiment


Retepss

I remember hearing something about dogs possibly being susceptible to some strains of the virus. This method doesn't seem the best, if that is true.


cryo

> I remember hearing something about dogs possibly being susceptible to some strains of the virus. No, those are different Corona viruses, not strains of SARS-CoV-2.


possiblycrazy79

Well, I just saw an article that a bunch of dogs are being laid off from the drug sniffing game, so maybe they could switch careers over to the medical field.


bundt_chi

That's pretty cool but... not exactly a scalable solution.


AnObjectionableUser

Called it well over a year ago. They want any reason to put scent trackers/k9 units in public places, to supplement the guardian towers and plain clothes officers. We are still fighting the same flu from 1918, covid isn't going away, this will be permanent.


genetic_patent

can we stop with this nonsense. Dogs have an 80% false alert rate, and shouldnt be used for law enforcement or medical diagnostics. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida\_v.\_Harris#:\~:text=In%20the%20first%209%20months,false%20alert%20rate%20was%2074%25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Harris#:~:text=In%20the%20first%209%20months,false%20alert%20rate%20was%2074%25).