I very much doubt the reliability of dogs being capable of doing that.
With low blood sugar though, it's not like they directly detect someone's sugar level. It's some of the chemicals that come with the physiological changes. Even with that, it's questionable if they can really sniff that out, from what I have read, the reliability is pretty low and it may be more they are picking up on behavioural cues rather than sniffing it out. May be that some dogs can and some it's the behaviour cues.
It’s a waste of money. They need to put it into public health...to strengthen communities and address problems that neoliberal privatization and poor worker protections caused. Besides, this wasn’t “the big one”. The powers that be can spend billions on building security apparatus and have the public bend over backwards like trained seals...then, when everything is bankrupt and common society is in decay, how will they handle the next one? Will “the big one” then be compounded by essentially having crippled the whole world’s ability to function?
I had a friend who had diabetes. She had a little shitzu dog. He wasn’t trained on anything, but he would wake her up at night when her blood sugars were low. Then he got sick and she had to put him down.
Yes, I also don’t see the difference in dogs looking for illegal drugs, meat or if they are used to sort out sick people. Though, I think it would be cheaper to just look for people with a temp, which could be done by a machine.
I can do this temporarily, to stop this wave and maybe the next one. If that becomes the case, though, if this virus starts chronically popping up every year, we still have to live. Just don’t let really frail elderly and immune compromised people fly without a doctor’s note. Everyone else will have to take risks. Because what if people are asymptomatic? What if the dogs and all the expensive machines are not trained or made to to sniff out the next big virus...we can’t go on and on living in a state of State imposed constant viral hyper-vigilance forever when most people get mild symptoms. Sorry. That’s not living. That’s the walking dead.
Yeah, I've heard lots of positive anecdotes too, but studies seem to give wide ranges, I suspect a fair bit is the dogs themselves and then training with individuals may make a difference too ie. alerting might not be as accurate if trained with someone else, I never looked into it.
Which was actually sad. I’m not sure it was the best or even the most necessary change. Again, what needed to change was the way the higher-ups, world leaders affect geopolitics...not changes and crackdowns on everything for everyone else. The US went to war over a false premise after that, which created more ongoing instability in the Middle East. Brown skinned people have been profiled ever since.
I'm hoping with just contagious illnesses in general there will be changes. It's awful how bad the general population is with washing hands. I was one where I would go out with a cold, strep, etc. for a long time due to the attitudes I grew up with, didn't have a choice as a kid and then as an adult it took a while before I changed my ways. I was at least considerate when out when sick like that though in terms of washing hands, communal food, etc. I've seen many instances where others are really rude about that type of thing.