[HN Gopher] Czech trainers teach dogs to sniff out Covid: 95-per...
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Czech trainers teach dogs to sniff out Covid: 95-percent success
rate
Author : respinal
Score : 143 points
Date : 2021-01-24 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.france24.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.france24.com)
| fock wrote:
| just a question, because this virus came from bats and now
| infects minks and humans: why should dogs be exempt from
| spreading or getting infected with it?
| etiam wrote:
| They're not. Like with the original SARS-CoV, there are
| reported cases of dogs getting infected. Felines seem much more
| prone to developing illness though.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Slightly bizarrely, I was wondering yesterday if this might be
| possible.
|
| I suspected it probably would be, but logistics would be a
| problem - because you would need a _lot_ of trained dogs+handlers
| to match the current need for tests.
| francisdrake wrote:
| Depending on how accuracy is defined 95% might be a bad result,
| as for all imbalanced class problems
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I wonder what dogs' ability to detect general sickness is. It
| would be good to have a control with other sicknesses.
| amelius wrote:
| If you have another illness, you shouldn't be on the streets
| either. Therefore, it doesn't reduce the usefulness of the
| test.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Assuming it's an infectious illness.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Dogs, at least some breeds, can detect enormous amounts of
| "smell" information.
|
| Only problem is how to make them tell people what they sense.
|
| Maybe some kind of dog brain MRI would be able to get the info
| directly?
| [deleted]
| jansan wrote:
| At least they can detect some forms of cancer:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_cancer_detection
| amenghra wrote:
| I have heard about dogs helping diabetic kids control their
| glucose level.
|
| Eg https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-year-boy-diabetes-dog-
| monitors-...
| coliveira wrote:
| I guess nobody will know until we have methodologies that test
| the odor of people. We don't have. But at least we now have ML
| techniques that could be used to do that in the future.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I don't think they even know definitively that it is odor.
| The dog could be working off any number of nonverbal cueues.
| coliveira wrote:
| That's right, but we need to start from something we know
| dogs are very good at.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Occam's razor applies here as well.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Dog catches Covid, sniffs and passes it to person of interest,
| smells on Covid said person.
| eappleby wrote:
| Apparently, the Miami Heat (NBA) are also using dogs to screen
| fans for coronavirus.
| https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/30770833/heat-use-corona...
| outime wrote:
| Here in Finland authorities use them at least in the airport and
| it's claimed that "testing has shown an accuracy level of nearly
| 100% even 5 days before actual symptoms appear" [1].
|
| [1] https://unric.org/en/finland-first-in-europe-to-use-dogs-
| to-...
| Loic wrote:
| As an anecdote, our complete family was infected early
| December. I lost my smell and taste capacities for about 4
| days. My wife and oldest son (13) still have very limited smell
| and taste.
|
| But now, I still cannot smell my body odour when I sweat.
| Normally, it is really a strong odour. But not any more. As my
| wife and oldest son cannot smell, I cannot ask them and going
| next door and ask if I smell or not after doing a workout is
| not something I want to do right now :-D
|
| I would not be surprised if dogs could smell a disruption in
| the "normal human body odour pattern".
|
| This is just a unique sample point without statistical value
| but if you have the same experience, do not hesitate to contact
| me.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| > I would not be surprised if dogs could smell a disruption
| in the "normal human body odour pattern".
|
| But isn't COVID induced Ansomia makes us loose the sense of
| smell and not that we stop generating body odour?
| Ruthalas wrote:
| I think the parent comment meant that the infected
| individual might not be addressing the smell because they
| could not perceive it, and it would therefore be greater
| than typical for them.
| Loic wrote:
| Yes, the three of us lost our sense of smell. Now, I am
| back and can smell again, but I cannot smell my body odour
| after a workout even so normally it smells really. This is
| at the moment the only thing I cannot smell.
|
| The questions are: is it because the infection had for
| effect a change in my body odour? Or is it because I
| recovered all my sense at the exception of the capacity to
| smell my own body odour?
|
| Nobody in the family can answer (too small or still
| suffering from anosmia) and I am not yet ready to ring the
| bell next door after a hard workout and ask the poor soul
| the smell!
| dusted wrote:
| I'd be somewhat worried that the dogs get or spreads covid..
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Of course, when a random PR declares they have trained a ML to
| detect Covid with 95% accuracy, the public answer is "Why are
| governments not doing this?" .
|
| But whenever another random PR declares they have trained a dog
| to detect Covid with 95% accuracy, the public reply is
| skepticism.
| libeclipse wrote:
| Love these useless comments
| ashtonkem wrote:
| For whatever reason, the public seems to have a "newer is
| better" bias, where new techniques and materials are assumed to
| be inherently better. This often creates confusion and surprise
| when people learn that sometimes newer techniques are cheaper
| or more convenient but not better in every dimension; such as
| the fact that well developed 35mm film beat out the
| alternatives until very recently.[0]
|
| It's not clear to me if this bias is a result of
| marketing/current society, or if it's an innate part of what
| drives us to make new stuff as a species.
|
| 0 - https://youtu.be/rVpABCxiDaU
| CapriciousCptl wrote:
| Where is the study? I couldn't find the link. "95-percent success
| rate" is meaningless without context. Specificity/sensitivity,
| prevalence and the gold standard used all matter. You, too, can
| detect coronavirus with 100% "success" (and much higher than 100%
| that depending how you calculate it).
|
| bool carriesCoronavirus(human *subject) {return true;}
| scarmig wrote:
| On the other hand, if you tested everyone using this strategy
| and quarantined those who tested positive, you'd eliminate
| Covid in two months.
|
| If adding a magic doggie in to deliver the news would help
| compliance, all the better!
| nanis wrote:
| > if you tested everyone using this strategy and quarantined
| those who tested positive, you'd eliminate Covid in two
| months.
|
| You have too much confidence in that statement.
|
| If false positive, false negative, and prevalence rates are
| all 5%, and let's say you subject 350,000,000,000 people to
| the dog test (ignoring the time it takes to do that and
| logistical difficulties with having enough dogs and handlers
| etc).
|
| 9.5% of society tests positive resulting 33,250,000 total
| positive results. Half of this number are true positives and
| half are false positives. That means, quarantining 16,625,000
| uninfected people along with 16,625,000 infected people which
| results in the loss to society of their output and might also
| now get them infected depending on how they are quarantined.
|
| Out of the 17,500,000 people who are infected, there will be
| 875,000 false negatives who will not be quarantined who will
| continue to spread the infection. In fact, 5% false negative
| rate sounds kind of optimistic. If false negative rate is
| 25%, 4,375,000 infected people will not be detected using
| this method.
|
| You can play with the numbers using this calculator[1].
|
| Second, let's say you put a dog at every company and every
| day everyone needs to be sniffed on the way in. If the false
| positive rate is 5%, the probability that you will not be
| quarantined due to a false positive during the year is
| 0.95*250 approx = 0.0003%.
|
| [1]: https://www.covid2020.icu/false-positive-false-negative-
| simu...
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| It's also possible to add real tests and not taking dog
| sniffing as a source of truth, but more as an indicator.
| nanis wrote:
| "Real" tests are also subject to false positives and
| false negatives.
|
| What you are suggesting is to ignore the possibility that
| dog sniffing may result in false negatives, and
| administer a "real" test to anyone who's identified by a
| dog to be positive. Keep in mind that under reasonable
| assumptions, half of those people are false positives. A
| portion of them will falsely test positive again.
| However, some of the true dog test positives (anywhere
| between 2% - 25% of them) will falsely test negative.
| Therefore, this strategy will result in more infected
| people not being quarantined.
| Shish2k wrote:
| > [by treating everybody as infected] you'd eliminate Covid
| in two months
|
| Not to mention a ton of other illnesses. I do wonder if "the
| world's governments pay everybody to stock up on food and
| stay home for two months" would actually be a huge win for
| humanity, and maybe even in the short-term it would work out
| cheaper than two years of 75%-lockdown :P
| nanis wrote:
| > the world's governments pay everybody to stock up on food
| and stay home for two months
|
| What's that going to do other than to cause the price of
| "food" to go up and cause a bunch of people to die in the
| worst Black Friday reenactments?
|
| Note that while it is possible to calculate a weighted
| price index of food, people do not eat the weighted average
| of all food sold.
|
| It is fantasies of control by people that got us to the
| point where every day every where governments are burning
| away their countries' wealth and their citizens' futures.
| remram wrote:
| There doesn't seem to be a study. There seem to be no
| scientists or statically-trained people involved at any point.
| The article is the same everywhere I look (provided by AFP,
| French news agency) and only mentions "dog trainers working in
| their own time" who "rely on scant financial means".
| Geminidog wrote:
| This makes the avenue for detecting covid the same avenue for
| getting it. Covid is transmitted through breathing which is just
| a less aggressive form of sniffing.
|
| Thus the doggo would get covid then spread it to everyone he
| sniffs.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Interesting, I am Czech and I only hear about it here on HN. But
| it is plausible, Czechs reeeeally like dogs and love to train
| them.
|
| I wonder if an artificial nose could be constructed doing the
| same thing. Smell is a potential diagnostic tool.
|
| For example, it seems that certain people can smell Parkinson's
| disease and that the biomarkers have actually been identified:
|
| https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2019/...
|
| We are not very good, as a civilization, in artificial smelling.
| Being humans, we develop machines that try to 'see' and 'hear'. A
| canine civilization would probably develop a smell-distinguishing
| AI first.
| megous wrote:
| I'm also Czech, and I don't trust any of this. Methodology is
| suspect, and barely described. And as someone already pointed
| in the comments, this needs to be double blind, to avoid
| suggestions from the dog trainer. I'd also like to see control
| samples from people with other respiratory illnesses, etc.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I definitely concur that strict verification is necessary.
|
| That is one of the reason why I would prefer an electronic
| nose. For all their problems, machines do not want to please
| their handlers.
| alexpotato wrote:
| I remember there being a project during the Iraq War that
| sought to duplicate the effectiveness of bomb sniffing dogs
| with some kind of chemical device.
|
| Long story short: millions spent and it was concluded that dogs
| are still both the best and most cost effective method for
| sniffing explosives.
| petre wrote:
| Too bad the dogs sometimes get injured and are put to sleep.
| I've read about rats trained to sniff landmines. Probably
| their training is more expensive?
| dalu wrote:
| Lies, it's actually 94.643
| rozab wrote:
| I have a deep skepticism about sniffer dogs. This article by the
| National Narcotic Detector Dog Association just about sums it up:
|
| https://nndda.org/the-double-blind-attack/
|
| >While the scientific community highly endorses double-blind
| testing, it can have disastrous effects on canine teams. As there
| is no way to determine whether the canine responded correctly at
| the time of the alert, the question is, should the handler reward
| the canine? This is a vital question due to the fact that
| detection canines are largely trained on a fixed ratio reward
| system where the canine is rewarded immediately for almost every
| correct response.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Why can't a third party immediately confirm (or deny) the dog's
| alert in the double blind test?
| cptskippy wrote:
| That's what I was wondering. The whole argument that double
| blind testing can't work because the dog needs positive
| reinforcement seems specious.
|
| I'm imagining a room full of opaque cake domes with drugs
| under some. The dog identifies one, it is lifted to reveal
| the truth. No one knows how many domes hide drugs, the test
| proceeds until the dog/handler conclude it.
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's easy to go beyond fixed reward to variable, which is also
| very powerful.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Vlachova said the Czechs would like to work together with the
| Finns or with French and German teams working on similar
| projects.
|
| > Unlike their western peers, the Czech team works in its free
| time and relies on scant financial means provided by a local dog
| food maker.
|
| This is the kind of cooperation where Europe could really shine.
| It's not big pharma or financial money abstraction, it's
| something people can relate to.
| supernova87a wrote:
| It would be nice if reporters were required by law to define
| exactly the numbers behind statements like "95% success rate".
| Under penalty of being sent to live on an iceberg for violating
| it.
| Spivak wrote:
| Why hold the reporters to that standard? They are just
| regurgitating a press briefing that came across their desk or
| outlining an interview with someone from the project.
|
| I don't where everyone gets this idealistic reporter archetype.
| Unless you're a super famous investigative journalist with the
| clout to get funding to fuck about for months/years for a story
| you're basically a glorified copywriter.
| the_duke wrote:
| The whole point of journalism is to filter information by
| relevance or value, validate it for accuracy, and present it
| to the audience.
|
| "Regurgitating" press releases has sadly become the norm for
| many outlets, but it trivializes the whole existence of news
| media.
| coliveira wrote:
| You have a misunderstanding about "validate it for
| accuracy". From the point of view of journalism, this
| validation only means that you're reporting that a
| statement was really made by someone, or that a fact
| occurred as the journalist saw it happening. It doesn't
| mean that the journalist will validate experiments, or
| investigate statements made by someone else.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| We can read press briefings ourselves. The only reason for
| reporters to exist is to dig at least a little bit deeper for
| truth. We've all heard about the economics of journalism, we
| just don't think it's acceptable.
| coliveira wrote:
| Sorry, but I don't think you're paying enough to deserve
| someone to spend the time digging for deeper truth. That's
| the sad reality of modern journalism in a capitalist
| country.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I think the bigger problem is that it's too easy to copy
| after somebody has done the digging work, so journalists
| are not incentivized anymore.
|
| I tried to pay for journalism, but usually I get lower
| quality material than what I can read in HN comments for
| free.
| virgilp wrote:
| > They are just regurgitating a press briefing that came
| across their desk
|
| I would argue that's one of the problems. It's easy to just
| regurgitate press briefing, but that's _not_ what their job
| should be. I'd argue they could at the very least impose some
| form standards (don't publish "x% success", ask for exact
| metrics before publishing the press briefing). Asking them to
| vet that the study methodology was sane is too much - but
| asking them to use specificity & sensitivity instead of
| "success percent" isn't too much to ask.
| coliveira wrote:
| why do your think this the the work of a journalist? If
| this is important, then we should have some regulation
| saying how companies need to report experiments.
| virgilp wrote:
| well, for starters, it's published on france24.com,
| that's a pretty good hint that it is the work of a
| journalist.
|
| I believe one shouldn't regulate _all speech_ (e.g.
| company press releases, or scientific publications); but
| I think it's fair to regulate reporting, to some extent.
| And you can even have a somewhat wide definition of
| "reporting" (e.g. if you collect audience size metrics
| (e.g. in order to get revenue from advertising), and your
| audience is greater than X, then you are reporting).
| nanis wrote:
| It is the job of the journalist to at least be able to
| ask "what do you mean by 95% accuracy?" and to publish
| the answer given or the fact that no satisfactory answer
| is given because the reader is not in a position to be
| able to ask that question to the entity whose results are
| being publicized.
| supernova87a wrote:
| The number is the story.
|
| So reporters are just PR agents? Just cc everyone on the
| press release and forward misinformation because they can't
| understand it? Just fill those column-inches? We've got a
| paper to put out, doesn't matter if it's true. Sell those
| ads!
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| I hope to never meet someone who's violated an iceberg.
| psyc wrote:
| Don't worry. Captain Edward Smith died.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Thanks, I almost inhaled my keyboard.
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| As cool as this development is, I can't help but think about how
| this could be grossly abused and used as another means of
| detaining or abusing certain populations state or federal gov
| might not like. "Pointing", or the provable technique of
| eliciting a "positive" detection response from a detection
| animal, has long been a huge point of contention for use of drug
| dogs during traffic stops - especially in California and
| Illinois. A huge proportion of these stops also involved the use
| of "pointing" drug dogs to lead to egregious 4th amendment
| violations.
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-01-06-ct-met...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Cops need a reasonable suspicion to search your vehicle or
| belongings.
|
| And an easy way of claiming they have one is having dogs point
| at things, usually on command. It's a legal loophole.
|
| Other tricks include claiming you have a slurred speech, or
| that they smelled alcohol breath or marijuana.
|
| Then they can search your stuff, find nothing and say it's a
| false positive.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| Having dogs point at things is already (or should be)
| "search".
| dehrmann wrote:
| Huawei worked on AI that can recognize Uyghurs. Seems like a
| reasonable extension of that.
| axegon_ wrote:
| Similar approach taken in France[1] not that long ago. What seems
| interesting here is the fact that France uses Malinois dogs,
| which seems a bit odd. They are insanely trainable and smart(I am
| saying that as someone who owns a working line Malinois) but
| their noses are nowhere nearly as effective or sensitive as say
| terriers(which is what they have gone for in Czechia). I'm
| guessing it's a "work with what we have already" situation but
| still curious to know if there is something more to it.
|
| [1] https://www.france24.com/en/video/20201103-researchers-
| train...
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