But wait!!
Don’t forget what happened to the dodo bird?
Do NOT let things go extinct. Society will not know how to deal with extinct entities. Find that flu. Get the WHO on the case, stat!!
There are smallpox samples in a lab somewhere too, accidents happen too. And smallpox is much deadlier than COVID and has horrible permanent disabilities. And many people today are not vaccinated against it.
If smallpox gets out there in the wild then it’ll really be an apocalypse. The handwringers will actually have something to wring their hands about.
Supposedly, all smallpox stocks were destroyed sometime in the 90s, but I’m sure there’s some halfwit out there who still has a government-funded fridge full of the stuff.
They’re not going to let go of that “don’t kill granny” BS, I see. I wonder how many kids lost their grandparents to COVID and are now burdened down with guilt because they think that maybe it was them what done it.
Meanwhile in Germany.
Hospitals lied about ICU availability to get more money.
Were they given a pass to help scare the public?:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.bild.de/politik/kolumnen/kolumne/kommentar-zum-intensivbetten-betrug-unsere-angst-darf-nicht-missbraucht-werden-76698320.bild.html
Anyone know where to get a rapid test done in Tapei without an appointment? I found the list of PCR places but I just want a place I can go without an appointment and get a quick test for peace of mind. Only symptom is a sore throat.
Maybe look and ask in this thread?:
Is the EUA requirement of no adequate treatment the reasons why the likes of Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin were lambasted by most of the media (backed their phamra sponsors)?
Can you put that into context?
Indonesia’s population is just at/above/below the U.S. on the global ranking.
276 million population. Daily cases increased 5-6k/day until June 8th, then increased quite a bit after that. The concentrations of cases being mainly in Java. Worldometer shows 64,886 tests per million population, so take that case number with a grain of salt.
This is purportedly being driven by the recent period of “Mudik” when people travel from the cities back to villages for the Eid holiday. Although discouraged by the government, there wasn’t a rigourously enforced travel ban nor an enforcement of self isolation upon return. Now cases are rising faster and in some locales of East and West Java, field hospitals are being overwhelmed according to local media.
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That’s higher than the 50,000 tests per million in TW.
Imagine Taiwan deploying Covid-detecting dogs in high profile areas to detect asymptomatic individuals like drug mules.
Here we show that upon training explosives detection dogs on sniffing COVID-19 odor in patients’ sweat, those dogs were able to successfully screen out 3249 individuals who tested negative for the SARS-CoV-2, from a cohort of 3290 individuals. Additionally, using Bayesian analysis, the sensitivity of the K9 test was found to be superior to the RT-PCR test performed on nasal swabs from a cohort of 3134 persons. Given its high sensitivity, short turn-around-time, low cost, less invasiveness, and ease of application, the detection dogs test lends itself as a better alternative to the RT-PCR in screening for SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic individuals.
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Do you think TW really wants to detect asymptomatic cases? As the AP, New York Times and others have noted, the testing in TW has been focused on symptomatic individuals and those who have had contact with confirmed cases.
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Dogs detecting Covid positive spreaders in public in seconds would be game changers. Taiwan will never be first at anything thing though so it’s up to some other outside-the-box-thinking country to use the one-two punch of detection dogs and vaccines to track and destroy Covid.
Does Taiwan have drug-detecting dogs? They don’t seem to have police dogs.
I think this would be awesome. But as I am increasingly becoming aware, the virus is something we’ll need to contain as opposed to “destroy” (eradication is a great goal but this will take years to happen, if it happens at all).
Guy
If that’s not some sort of belated April fool’s joke, that’s pretty damn impressive.
Since it (apparently) works better than any other known measurement technique, and would allow everyone to resume life as normal (given sufficient dogs trotting around), I am 100% confident it will not be used, not now or at any time in the future.
Lockdowns will continue until morale improves.
Covid detecting dogs should be deployed at Taiwan’s airports to screen for Covid positive travelers. The deterrent effect alone would help deter those who use fever reducing drugs and fake PCR test certificates to evade control measures.
With about 220 million scent receptors – humans only have 5 million - dogs can smell things that seem unfathomable to us. Dogs have smell receptors 10,000 times more accurate than humans’, which means their nose is powerful enough to detect substances at concentrations of one part per trillion - a single drop of liquid in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools! . . . a study has even shown that dogs can use their highly evolved sense of smell to pick out blood samples from people with cancer with almost 97 percent accuracy.
(Study shows dogs can accurately sniff out cancer in blood | ScienceDaily).
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But TW’s problem has never been COVID positive travelers. All travelers, even vaxxed travelers, have to present a negative COVID test and do 14 days of quarantine.
As far as we know, nobody who has presented a fake negative test or used antipyretics to mask symptoms has ever caused the virus to spread in TW. 14 day quarantine solves a lot of problems.
The current outbreak was caused by unvaxxed infected pilots who were subject to a 3 day quarantine only and a quarantine hotel that apparently wasn’t following the rules.
If TW is going to deploy dogs, it should be in the community where the current testing approach is less likely to find asymptomatic cases.
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