
Pangolins found to carry viruses related to Covid-19 - hhs
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52048195
======
balola
Good luck telling the rich and powerful they shouldn't eat this what they
believed is the most tonic and upscale meat of late.

Remember that girl who paid 6.5 million dollars to get into Stanford last
year? Her dad's listed company sells billions of dollars of TCM every year
that claims to cure thrombus because the ingredients used (earthworm, scorpion
and leech) are adept at digging things. Yes TCMs don't need to go through any
FDA-like process or trial to prove anything, coz it's national treasure.

Pangolin meat and scales are prized in TCM coz you know, it dig rocks.

~~~
dcolkitt
This is kind of an off-the-wall idea, but... what about creating artificial
meat substitutes for these prized exotic animals?

Couldn't Beyond Meat create a pretty close facsimile to pangolin or bat or
snake or whatever? Obviously this wouldn't eliminate 100% of demand.
Particularly among those eating the animals for their magical properties,
instead of their taste. But even if artificial versions of exotic meats could
cut consumption by 20-30%, the corresponding risk of zoonotic virus
transmission should fall linearly along with that.

~~~
balola
It's valueded because it's wild and natural, they don't care about the costs,
many of the eaters show off this dish on social media coz they are rich and
powerful, and won't be punished for eating endangered animals.

And it's not that exotic meats are all delicious so people prize them, what
flavor do shark fins/cubilose have? It's the supposed power they got.

------
jorge-d
Emphasis should be put on the fact that it's both an endangered and
internationally protected specie (from which China is a signatory [1]). It had
nothing to do in those markets in the first place.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CITES](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CITES)

~~~
jeltz
So does that mean that the sale of pangolins at the market in Wuhan was
entirely illegal? If so this seems like a huge enforcement issue if endangered
animals could be openly sold at a market.

~~~
rhombocombus
It was entirely illegal and remains so. It is a huge enforcement issue, and
hopefully this encourages the Chinese Gov't to crack down on these wildlife
markets, but it didn't happen after SARS-CoV-1 (which IIRC also came out of a
wildlife meat market in China) so I don't hold out a lot of hope.

~~~
corndoge
The wildlife markets are permanently banned now, as I understand it

~~~
bobthepanda
They also did this after SARS for a short bit. Let's see how long it lasts.

------
chrisco255
This article actually says nothing new. It does not draw a direct Covid-19
evolution path from pangolins to humans. That pangolins and bats carry
coronaviruses is well known. That these viruses are related is well known, but
it's still not clear that pangolins are the source for Covid-19. Very
misleading headline on no new information.

------
drtillberg
Since we already know the virus shared up to 96% of the same DNA as horseshoe
bat virus collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2003 from a cave 600
miles away ... why are researchers still agonizing over all these alternative
theories? The only place near Wuhan the virus existed prior to the outbreak
was at the institute of virology. And the first places the outbreak occurred
were in the immediate neighborhood of the institute. I'm really genuinely
curious why bigtime news outlets keep talking about Vietnamese pangolins.

[1] E.g., [https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-
lab...](https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-lab-bats-
attacked-scientists-peed-12252873/)

~~~
leetcrew
isn't 4% difference in DNA pretty significant? that's comparable to the
genetic difference between a human and a mouse, iirc.

~~~
romski
It’s not DNA, it’s an RNA virus. More changes happen with them.

~~~
cjf101
There's also a lot less genetic information in a typical virus than in a
human, so each mutation represents a much larger percentage change.

For context: The entire SARS-COV-2 genome is 29,811 nucleotides long. The
human genome is around 3 billion base pairs.

------
jcims
Michael Osterholm called this out during his episode on the Joe Rogan podcast
back on 3/10, presumably from prior research -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw&t=1180](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw&t=1180)

------
TrackerFF
I wish we could direct focus on those responsible, the smuggles and illegal
(or legal) markets that enable this kinda of stuff - but without getting into
heated "that's racist" arguments, because certain places traditionally value
these animals so high.

------
swsieber
There's actually a really nice documentary on Netflix about pangolins. It's
mostly a black market for being able to eat them. They are mostly being
poached/smuggled/etc.

------
dna_polymerase
"The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats,
together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a
time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses
from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should
not be ignored."

[https://cmr.asm.org/content/20/4/660.abstract](https://cmr.asm.org/content/20/4/660.abstract)

A paper from 2007.

------
IdontRememberIt
I bet PETA & Co will take this once in a life time opportunity to put pressure
on all governments (shaming and pressure campaigns) so they put pressure on
China to ban wild life and some crazy wet markets
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market)).

Having visited many markets like this in Asia. I will not miss most of them as
long as they are so unregulated/dirty.

------
haunter
Vice had a nice report from the Ebola outbreak in Liberia 2014. Showing how
people can just buy bush meat from the markets: monkey, bats etc. Worth a
watch.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XasTcDsDfMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XasTcDsDfMg)

~~~
dirtyid
At the start of this outbreak, people were blaming Africans for eating
bushmeat from wetmarkets using less than civil rhetoric, then later scientists
traced the source of the outbreak to kids playing in an hallow tree where bats
roosted. Wetmarkets do need to be either modernized or eliminated, but that
doesn't mean initial speculation is correct.

------
muizelaar
Anyone have a link to the actual paper?

~~~
pks016
From top comment.

[https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-
bio...](https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-
biology/CURBIO_CURRENT-BIOLOGY-D-20-00299-compressed.pdf)

------
blondie9x
People of China, please step up and protest the government to stop the sale of
wild animals such as this to prevent future outbreaks and protect humanity
from animal-borne illnesses.

~~~
slg
What makes pangolins more dangerous than pigs or ducks which have been a
similar source of human diseases? Because I can't tell if pangolins are a
greater threat or if they are just an easy target because the practice of
eating them is not as widespread as eating other common disease carriers.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _What makes pangolins more dangerous than pigs or ducks which have been a
> similar source of human diseases?_

It's less the species than the wet markets.

Putting lots of species in close proximity, particularly ones that don't
naturally co-exist, facilitates host jumping. Its only comparison is with
medieval European cities, where people, sewage and livestock had constant and
close proximity to one another.

~~~
jonny_eh
> Putting lots of species in close proximity

Live ones at that.

~~~
sharatvir
"Close proximity" does it a disservice when there are cages of animals stacked
on top of one another such that the animals in the bottom cages may be covered
in the feces of those above them.

------
luxuryballs
More like BANgolins now amirite

------
gadders
I wish Chinese medicine would just die already. An absolute pile of horseshit
invented by Mao etc because he'd killed the actual doctors in his cultural
revolution [1] It's main purpose now seems to be to claim that the rarer the
animal you eat, the harder it makes your dick.

[1] [https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/traditional-chinese-
med...](https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/traditional-chinese-medicine-
origins-mao-invented-it-but-didnt-believe-in-it.html)

------
throwawaysea
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opinion/sunday/coronaviru...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-
china-cause.html)

> A second cultural factor behind the epidemic are traditional Chinese beliefs
> about the powers of certain foods, which have encouraged some hazardous
> habits. There is, in particular, the aspect of Chinese eating culture known
> as “jinbu,” (進補) meaning, roughly, to fill the void. Some of its practices
> are folklorish or esoteric, but even among Chinese people who don’t follow
> them, the concept is pervasive.

~~~
vvram
People having been practicing these for centuries, what has changed recently
that it has become a global pandemic ?

~~~
typon
It's possible that these viruses jumped to humans all the time in the past and
killed a particular village, town, city. Now we have global travel enabled by
planes/cruises/cars. The spread is what's killing us with this latest
pandemic.

