Hello Everybody,

Dogs in Finland do it. And they do it so well. So why not dogs
everywhere else? Certainly, there is no dog shortage in the USA.
And no shortage of dog trainers. So what is the problem? What
about the rest of Europe? And Asia? I hear there are lots of dogs
in Asia. Australia also has lots of dogs, known as dingos. What
a way to put those doggies to work!

Of course, it could be dogs only understand commands in Finnish.
And only Finnish trainers understand dog talk. In which case, we
will all be at the mercy of Finland and its dogs.

Maybe Tommi K. can tell us how dogs are trained in Finland. I mean,
this is Fidonet. And the Fidonet logo is a Finnish dog. So, he should
know.

--Lee

Dogs Detect Covid-19 Fast & Reliably, Tests Almost 100% Accurate:
Why Not Use Them More?: Finland


- Snifer dog Kossi learned to detect Covid-19 in just 7 minutes.

- 'Dogs detect coronavirus fast and reliably — why not use them
everywhere?'; Finnish researchers say their canine sniffer experts
can detect COVID-19 quickly and cheaply but, so far, their skills
are hardly used to control the pandemic. DW, Oct. 21, 2020.

~ "A dog could easily save so so, so many lives," University of
Helsinki veterinary researcher Anna Hielm-Bjorkman told DW, who says
their testing has shown an accuracy level of nearly 100%. ~

Europe is in a panic over the second wave of COVID-19, with infection
rates sky-rocketing and GDP plummeting. Belgium has just announced
it will no longer test asymptomatic people, even if they've been in
contact with someone who has the disease, because the backlog in
processing is overwhelming. Other European countries are also
struggling to keep up testing and tracing.

Meanwhile in a small cabin in Helsinki airport, for his preferred
payment of a morsel of cat food, rescue dog Kossi needs just a few
seconds to tell whether someone has coronavirus. If it were left to
Kossi and his pals, crowds of potential virus carriers could be cleared
in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost with none of the
physical discomfort that accompanies the current nasal swab test based
on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method.

No human nose needed: A dog can sniff a cloth wiped on a wrist or
neck and immediately identify if it comes from someone who has
contracted the virus as much as 5 days before any symptoms appear
which would lead a person to go into isolation. "A dog could easily
save so so, so many lives," University of Helsinki veterinary
researcher Anna Hielm-Bjorkman told DW, who says their testing has
shown an accuracy level of nearly 100%.

It was originally her idea to see whether Kossi, a talented
disease-detection dog, could redirect his skills in sniffing out
mold, bedbugs and cancer to detecting the new virus just as it
started to spread in Europe. "It took him 7 minutes to figure out
'okay, this is what you want me to look out for," Hielm-Bjorkman
said. "So that totally blew our minds."...

https://www.dw.com/en/dogs-detect-coronavirus-fast-and-reliably-why -not-use-them-everywhere/a-55340369

--
Big Or Small We Lay Them All

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* Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)