Dog walks probably won’t give you Covid-19

New fur breeding research on covid-19 create Include media waveWalking your dog suggests a whopping 78% increase in the risk of catching a viral pandemic. However, there are many reasons not to do research at face value, and your worries should be spent on other, more pressing risks.

Research Release It was recently published in an environmental research journal by a team of Spanish scientists. They conducted an online survey of more than 2,000 people in the country between April and May of this year, just as Spain faced the first wave of a pandemic and enacted a series of restrictions on travel and distance. It was conducted.People were asked to answer many questions about their current life, Includes pet ownership and whether they have ever suffered from covid-19.

Just under 5% of survey respondents said they were infected with covid-19 at some point. And when the researchers compared the percentage of covid-19 among those who said they walked or did not walk their dogs (because they did not have pets or simply did not walk them) before People in the camp had a small chance of reporting an infection: 6.9% vs 4.2%.

From this, the researchers concluded that walking the dog “increased the risk of infection with covid-19 by 78%.”

There are a few things to deal with, but even assuming the findings are accurate, the above statement is not immediately correct. These types of studies are called observational studies and are meant to examine patterns and trends in the real environment. Observational studies are an important aspect of science, but one of the known limitations is the inability to show a direct causal relationship between what you are trying to observe.

At best, this study suggests that walking dogs does not definitely increase the likelihood of infection, but that walking dogs is associated with a greater risk of covid-19. The author states that this treatise was edited by a third-party translation company, so it is worth asking if this phrase is the result of what was lost in the translation.

Language aside, the actual meaning of the study is also uncertain. In trying to explain the findings, the author speculates that the dog may have picked up the virus from the outside world while walking and infected its owner with covid-19.But while the dog is It is shown It carries the coronavirus and can result in illness. No evidence To date, dogs have transmitted the infection to others. In most cases, it is clearly the owner who infects the puppy. Surface and outdoor infections of covid-19 among people have been recorded as well, but are considered a rare source of infection.

Therefore, for this theory to be true, two unlikely things need to happen at the same time. A dog is infected by being exposed to an external contaminated source and then infects its owner. Also, if you want to find a clear level of additional risk, you should raise this event frequently. So to speak, it doesn’t actually pass the sniff test.

Another theory they present is that people who walk dogs are more likely to take other actions that increase their risk of catching covid-19. That is certainly likely. However, the data is not always as robust as it looks. Most clearly, half of the cases of covid-19 documented in the study were not confirmed by actual tests and were instead based on self-diagnosis. Obviously, it wasn’t the fault of anyone, as it was much harder to get the covid-19 test back in the spring. However, it creates the data collected from all Shakia and the conclusions that may arise from it.

The premise of this study was not to portray dogs as covid-19 scapegoats, but to look for behavioral patterns that could explain a person’s risk of infection. That is a perfectly valid goal. However, if you are looking for so many potential patterns, you may find something that looks real at first glance.

Is it possible that the dog has been a pandemic silent carrier all this time? It is unlikely that science will truly reject it. But scientists usually apply a basic sense of validity to what they discover, based on what we already know. If dogs are the main source of infection, there is plenty of evidence from other studies, suggesting that it is not. So, for now, this study is more likely to be a one-time fluke than a specific reason to always wear a mask on your precious dog (ie, pets with a covid-19 contract). If you have a dog Take precautionary measures Advice will be given on their behalf).

In addition, in this study, dog walking was not the highest risk activity associated with the capture of covid-19, and shared a home with someone else who captured it. People living with covid-19 victims were 60 times more likely to get a viral illness than those without a viral illness at home. Unfortunately, this is an additional risk supported by a lot of evidence and is much more difficult to avoid than simply not letting the dog walk.