Ebola is not an airborne spread communicable disease.
The flu is - and there have been several that have had higher mortalities. Do we use this same detection methods for high mortality flu strains?
I’m sorry you did not discern the point I was attempting to make. Use of dogs like this is novel. I’d suggest there are better ways to determine if a person has a communicable disease.
You’re right! And as soon as everyone is vaccinated we can go from 99.7 survivability to 99.8!!
There are always those few pesky individuals that will go ahead and die on you just out of spite...
Disregard Ebola - the main issue is - is use of dogs in this manner appropriate and an acceptable way to detect disease?
Dogs are obviously fallible. Was crossing an international land border and a dog trained in drug detection alerted at the trunk of my car. I opened the car trunk - the dog found nothing - except the banding tools I used to band owls.
Found out later from someone at CBP that works in that sector that the handler got razzed about that for a couple of weeks. But the dog was wrong. It happens sometimes.
Ebola is absolutely airborne in the later stages of the illness. I lived 500 meters from the Dallas hospital were two nurses got Ebola from the Nigeria confirmed via airborne droplets they lacked the respirator PPE that was later deemed essential to stop the spread they had surgical masks and face shields only and both inhaled it. The report was made to the CDC and it detailed the airborne route. There is also much evidence from the DRC to support late stage airborne droplet transmission as well as a fecal aerosol route where explosive bowels in the last stages aerosolizes more than the 50 virons needed for infection.There is mountains of evidence to support airborne Ebola at certain stages of a patient’s infection profile.
Dogs in this use is perfect to find those with mild infections who think oh I just have a sniffles well no you have COVID and are spreading it to everyone around you who may or may not just have a sniffles from it later. Dogs also can find the asymptomatic sheders who don’t know thst are sick but still shed virus to others. Dogs will smell the active virus they are harbouring with 90% accuracy that’s better than PCR or antibodies testing via ELISA tests.
Dogs should absolutely be put in airports before we cram into aluminium cans all sucking the same air with an infected person. Trains, subways, concerts, anywhere large groups are close quarters. Find the super spreaders before they gain access and stop them from infecting people that’s the goal and dogs have now proven the ability to do just that. The USA needs thousands of these dogs to find , isolate and quarantine the infected until they are not infectious anymore.
Dogs in this use make a great way to do mass noninvasive surveillance to find infected while they are in public places where just by being in public you have consented to a dog search that has been upheld at least half a dozen times in USC Court’s and the Supremes have as well. We can’t swab everyone going into an airport but you can have dogs walking the lines and when they smell an infected person isolate them and do a second test via swab rapid ELISA or rapid pcr and get another dog as well if both dogs alert then the probability of a false positive is near zero 90% raised to 90% for a double positive is near zero probability for a false positive.
The first thing that must be understood is the fact that a person with active COVID infection must be isolated in medical quarantine until clear of th virus that much is not negotiable society has a right to isolate infectious people and the government has plenary power to do so. How you find those infected people and isolate them is up for debate but these wonderful animals and their superhuman noses just opened a way to find people in mass and with low costs and very high accuracy.