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.
There’s only a limited number of wealthy people even in China, so making it a 10x difficult and expensive it will still reduce, you know by China and Vietnam actually making an effort to reduce the trade in wildlife, it could help regardless.
The worst ones are the unsanitary wet markets in the middle of dense urban areas, getting rid of those is the first step.
Meanwhile Xi Jinping is still promoting Chinese medicine in conjunction with standard medicine, even during the pandemic.
The wildlife “ban” that China enacted conveniently doesn’t include medicine, only for food consumption. There’s little chance the animals being brought into the country legally won’t have their meat sold on the blackmarket, just so they can get some scales or individual organs.
EDIT: sorry, I've misread the title, looking at the actual report
https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...
it seems that US still has (well, had in 2019) way more millionaires - 18 million. It's only in top 10% wealthiest people that China overtook US
Still, 4 million people eating pangolins would provide enough opportunities for interesting zoonotic jumps
0.003% of Chinese citizens being millionaires doesn’t discredit my comment.
If only a subset of them were the ones buying the millions of trafficked Pangolins and civets and whatever else carries CoV, then that’d be great progress as a starting point.
Then for the wealthy you can make it a big social stigma to purchase them, especially after it brought the worlds economy to a halt... instead of doing the complete opposite where authorities are promoting it. Chinese authorities are well versed in influencing social stigmas and public shaming, which is a big deal in a country where ‘saving face’ often outranks reality.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well it says related viruses... so I'm not sure there has to be a connection between Pangolins and the market directly. Although that's probabbly a good route to investigate.
I highly suggest you this video [1] from Vox which explains why virus outbreaks (like SARS, Ebola etc) usually appear in wet markets, like the one in Wuhan.
YouTube is such a bad source in discussions about controversial matters that not only should it incur -5 karma but people ought to appear to repossess your keyboard.
- what one can read in 30 seconds takes 5 minutes to watch because people read much faster than they talk.
-The relevant 5 minutes of video will usually be embedded in a 20 minute video somewhere in the middle.
- The url says nothing about the trustworthiness ofthe source so you have to go out of band to establish credibility. Add to this YouTube is literally where every crank ever uses for sources as if 17 lunatics quoting each other makes them collectively more credible.
Basically a YouTube video is an invitation to waste 20 minutes of your life
Consider spending a few minutes summerizing the the video including what is established and by whom and why they are a credible source.
That way readers can distinguish between you and a million cranks.
I have a hard time to see the point of your message, given that if you read the description of the said Youtube video they post multiple of the source material they used to make it if you're allergic to videos.
My message was only a recommendation, I don't see why I should try to summarize an already well-crafted explanation.
It is actually a good video but its hard to discern this and even this well crafted explanation could have been profitably replaced by 2 pages of text.
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.
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.
> why are researchers still agonizing over all these alternative theories?
The evidence currently implicates a virus that jumped from pangolins to bats and then bats to humans (EDIT: bats to pangolins and then pangolins to humans [1]).
Understanding that transmission mechanism is crucial to reducing the odds of it happening again.
It could also help curtail the sales of specific animals in wet markets that are higher risk. Although as usual, this is looking back rather than looking forward.
This depends on the will of the Chinese government. They instituted bans on exotic wildlife selling and farming shortly after SARS, but then rolled it back when the furor died down.
Exotic animals in wet markets are not consumed by the majority of the population; this is mostly driven by the Chinese rich. The industry has survived creating its first pandemic due to its lobbying power; let's see how it rides out the second one.
Please don't parrot conspiracy theories. The virus shares almost 100% of its identity with known pangolin viruses.
> The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission.
Edit: To clarify, these viruses have approximately 90% identity but in the (oft-suspected and brought up) ACE2-binding spike protein there is a ~97% sequence identity.
> In particular, SARS-CoV-2 exhibits very high sequence similarity to the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses in the receptor-binding domain (RBD; 97.4%) ... Indeed, the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 possess identical amino acids at the five critical residues of the RBD.
There is another preprint that details more about betacoronavirus recombination.
It's almost certainly the product of a recombination event between a pangolin and bat betacoronavirus, since recombination aggressively involves the spike protein in betacoronaviruses. Since we already have a bat virus with high identity (96%) and now a spike protein with very high identity (97%), both in the same phylogenetic tree with origins to SARS-CoV-2, it's reasonably to assume that this is the product of natural recombinant evolution.
Now, it might be the case that it's guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere, but I don't really buy it. Nature is staggeringly good at producing new and innovating viruses, and I believe we will soon find more closely related ancestors to this virus.
We know, from published scientific research in well-respected journals, that "guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere" has been happening for many years.
We also know that China has previously had several terrifying biocontainment failures with virus labs. Things got out, including coronaviruses, but were stopped before spreading far and wide.
By the way, the very original conspiracy theory was eventually proven correct. Calling it a conspiracy theory was a great way to mock people who were pointing out the truth.
This seems pretty outdated -- The Wuhan market and (proximity to the Disease Research center) has been IDed as the primary place where it spread, but is no longer considered the place where it originated. That's why we're still looking into the origins of this thing.
The first case IDed by the Lancet had no exposure to the seafood market, but many later cases did (pg 499):
> It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for human ACE2 receptor binding with an efficient binding solution different to that which would have been predicted. Further, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one would expect that one of the several reverse genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would have been used. However, this is not the case as the genetic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone17. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in a non-human animal host prior to zoonotic transfer, and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage in culture could have given rise to the same observed features.
Quantifying differences is really difficult and the commonly cited numbers are kinda iffy as a rigorous measurement (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-does-being-99...) in the sense that the public interprets them - 99% comes from looking at single base pair changes only. For the coronavirus, it's an RNA virus so it'll mutate a lot faster than DNA viruses or organisms like us. And the generation time is gong to be a lot faster to allow for a lot more divergence more quickly than longer generation times in mammals.
I think "we already know" is a little strong. Here's the only place I can find the paper they refer to: https://gofile.io/?c=D4zfxD
It is one page long, not peer reviewed, and says "96% or 89% identical". If I were a journalist, I think I would at least want to have an expert review the citations for those numbers, and the evidence that this particular virus was present at those labs.
It wouldn't be the first time something like this happened, either. Russia accidentally released Anthrax[1] from one of their facilities in the late 70's, and it killed over 100 people in the neighboring town. Of course they tried to cover it up, and the truth did not come out until much later.
I think it kind of is when it comes to spreading diseases, that's why us humans eating great apes has had disastrous consequences for our health as a species in the past (the same goes for us eating pig brains)
It would be like if a global pandemic was traced back to the U.S. 300 yards from Fort Detrick. Any rational person would take notice of this but instead it's labeled a conspiracy theory.
What is more crazy is that there is no international pressure for China to at least temporarily close down that research institute. The international community should have also demanded for immediate inspections on the institute's premises as soon as this virus started going worldwide, for crying out loud, we've had wars started because of some aerial photos of some metal tubes in the Iraqi desert but instead this is treated like "super-power business as usual".
Shutting down virology labs would be the stupidest, most self destructive thing we could do right now. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has probably the best equipped and most experienced coronavirus researchers in the world. Within weeks of the start of the outbreak, they had sequenced the virus' genome, published it widely and publicly, and immediately started investigating antivirals. They remain on the forefront of the fight.
The virologists there are very active publishers, and by all accounts among the very best in their field. And now they're pissed off. Here's a snippet from the institute's coronavirus lead, defending them from an onslaught of insane and stupid conspiracy theories:
> [Shi Zhengli] said on her social media account that she “guaranteed with her own life” that the outbreak had nothing to do with the lab but was a “nemesis for the barbaric habits and lifestyle of some people – like eating wild game including bats.”
Chinese researchers and doctors have generally been among those most willing to push back against the CCP's misinformation and censorship. Of all people, why in the FUCK would we want to muzzle these guys?
> What is more crazy is that there is no international pressure for China to at least temporarily close down that research institute.
Why is that crazy? Unless you're suspecting the Chinese of designing a fairly dull viral weapon that they first released on their own people, I'm not sure why anyone would care to go through the doors.
Sweet jungle meat from a wet market is the likely source, as with many of these kinds of virii over the centuries.
That the Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing research on engineered coronaviruses isn't in dispute. They have published several research papers describing their work over the last 10 years.
It wouldn't have had to have been a deliberate release for SARS-CoV-2 to have come from there. Accidents happen, and there have been several accidental releases of the original SARS-CoV from Chinese labs. It's also not beyond the realm of possibilities that someone tasked with destroying animals that were research subjects decided to make a few extra yuan selling them to the wet market across the street instead.
> SARS has not re-emerged naturally, but there have been six escapes from virology labs: one each in Singapore and Taiwan, and four separate escapes at the same laboratory in Beijing.
Those accidents are fucking terrifying. I'm not sure whether to be more scared of that, or of wet markets and antibiotic-soaked factory swine/cattle/poultry farms. Humanity certainly isn't taking any of this seriously enough.
> Sweet jungle meat from a wet market is the likely source
There are numerous reports of the wet market source not being the actual source. I've never said that the Chinese have released this virus on purpose, I did in fact imply though that the Chinese created this virus on purpose (how it got out in the wild is anybody's guess). Having countries creating bio-weapons in 2020 should be grounds for war, no matter if they release it or not.
Later edit: Now I saw that you said "dull viral weapon", what do you find so "dull" about a virus that has put the whole world economy on its knees in a matter of 4-5 weeks? Yes, it's not as gore-y as Ebola but it's an order of magnitude (at least) more effective in bringing us down as a species.
> I've never said that the Chinese have released this virus on purpose, I did in fact imply though that the Chinese created this virus on purpose
There is zero credible evidence that this virus was engineered in any way. What we do have is detailed genomic analysis done by actual virologists, comparing it with coronavirii from the vast pools in animal populations, that can trace its natural evolution [1]. This analysis and ongoing surveillance is how virologists and epidemiologists hope to predict future epidemics.
> weapon that they first released on their own people
I don't think anyone suspects that it was a weapon. A totally non-selective weapon like this would be extremely stupid. But it still could have come from that lab, and such a theory should not be discarded for the time being.
No one (in this thread at least) is claiming it's a weapon. The point is that the research lab at the center of this pandemic has, and continues to, research and collect viruses just like SARS-CoV-2. The authorities in Wuhan also tried to cover up the outbreak before it became too severe to deny. It may be a coincidence, but it also may not.
>Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive titled: “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.” https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coro...
I think that when you look at both the properties of the virus (fairly long-tailed inhibition period, large proportion of carriers not displaying any symptoms, being infectious even after becoming healthy yourself, life-long consequences even for people who survive, aerosol spread and so on) and the results so far (the human lives + medicine systems of so far only a few countries + The Next Big Depression), it is not 'a fairly dull viral weapon'.
Sure, if you think of it in terms of being a weapon, it's not an armageddon weapon, but very few madmen want those anyway.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of people blame 'human encroachment' upon wilderness for this. These people of course ignore the entire history of humanity and somehow think this is new and that we're paying the price.
I didn't downvote you, but I will tell you what I think: probably because the comment is seen as irrelevant to the discussion, and also because people who don't care about human treatment of animals don't want to see comments about human treatment of animals.
First: the overall discussion is about where COVID-19 came from.
Second: this thread is discussing whether it's a natural mutation and subsequent transmission vs. somehow engineered by China. The OP made the comment that they don't understand why people are spending time looking at alternative theories because they believe it's assured that this came from a Chinese virology research lab.
Third: the comment parent to yours was a response to the OP saying the reason was because it fit the narrative of Mother Nature getting revenge on us for harming animals. This narrative was implied to be ridiculous; I suspect that most people in this thread do not believe 'Mother Nature' is an entity capable of taking deliberate actions like revenge. That comment was downvoted, probably because the commentariat here doesn't like sarcasm, but also maybe because they do not like to entertain nonsense. This kind of poisons the rest of the thread; here, there can be no legitimate meaningful followup comment to nonsense or in many cases sarcasm.
I think that your reply pointing out that we do mistreat animals ends up being seen as irrelevant and not contributing to the discussion. Whether or not we mistreat animals may be relevant to the 'Mother Nature' idea, but since that is seen as irrelevant to the actual discussion about COVID-19 origins, there's no point in posting the reply and thus the downvotes ensue.
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.
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.
"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."
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).
Having visited many markets like this in Asia. I will not miss most of them as long as they are so unregulated/dirty.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Which is what I expected. There is truth to diseases like this coming from dangerous food practices, but that often gets coated in a layer of ethnocentrism that pins it on a specific animal or the need to hunt wildlife instead of relying on a factory farming infrastructure (which is also increasing the potential for global pandemic by overusing antibiotics).
"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.
Black market vs regulated market. Pangolins being endangered and protected mean they are only sold illegally. People selling animals illegally aren't getting health inspections. Of course regulations for legal animals probably need to be improved
Well, for starters you're reducing the number of attack vectors.
If the only animals we can eat are a small number of species from regulated farms, any crossover/issue is contained and traceable to those species and farms.
If you allow (including as a purchaser you create demand for it), in open market a wider range of species from a wider range of sources, you open up the number of attack vectors increasing risks to everybody on the planet.
Domesticated animals have well known diseases and at least you know where they came from. Wild animals are a complete unknown when they hit the market.
I really hope that is the future. Plant based meat or just proper free range farms and hunting I guess. Industrial meat production is too cruel and just another pandemic waiting to happen.
100% agreed here, I am very hopeful that lab-grown meat will become the norm (when it gets affordable), and that as older generations die off and more environmentally and health conscious younger people make decisions, the average consumer eats little to no animal products. Lab grown meat will absolutely be a huge help to this transition.
We simply do not have a choice - we're either going to have massive climate change and mass displacement, animal-borne viruses wiping out chunks of the population, fishless oceans by 2050, etc. We can't feed the population with animals anymore.
I wonder why I don't hear this argument more from vegans. Eating animals spreads disease. Chronic wasting disease, avian flu, SARS, Influenza, mad cow, probably even the common cold.
Vegans do make that argument sometimes, and it's often countered by the fact that other diseases and bacteria can spread on veggies, like salmonella and E. Coli on lettuce. And proper handling and cooking will kill viruses/bacteria, so it theoretically shouldn't be a real problem...
Note that I'm not arguing one way or the other, that's just how I've seen it play out a few times.
I don't have a horse in this race either, but bacterial diseases are far more manageable than viral diseases from a public health perspective. The fact that you can get the former doesn't balance the latter, if pandemic risk is a policy consideration you want to have.
Except for the part where bacteria can evolve permanent resistances to antibacterial agents, and survive for weeks or months on surfaces, while viruses have a limited ability to adapt to antivirals and have a short and finite span of viability in the wild.
Antibiotic resistance has an energetic cost and generally gets selected against in the absence of agents. Bacteria are also much easier (and cheaper) to test for. Even if there was a hyperbug, you can afford to check everyone inside a half mile of the infected for relatively low cost.
I know more people who've had hospitalisation levels of illness from lettuce than meat, raw or otherwise. My wife was recently made very ill from some salad leaves.
The vast majority of all food poisoning comes from greens. Not meat.
Plenty of folks die from Salmonella and E. Coli outbreaks
Sorry, but this is absolutely absurd to claim. Are you actually suggesting that keeping animals in cramped, filthy conditions, surrounded by dead baby animals covered in feces (ex. pigs in farrowing crates), is less likely to facilitate disease growth than growing romaine lettuce?
Edit: I re-read your comment and saw you were referring to food POISONING - but I'll still maintain my point here. Fact of the matter is, food poisoning is not contagious and is fairly rare, and there are machines in place for product recalls, etc. What we have at the moment is a global pandemic started by the close quarters of animals. Which one would you rather deal with?
And the reason it's more common to get salmonella or e-coli from plants is because they are eaten raw (lettuce or broccoli or carrots, etc); this doesn't mean meat isn't contaminated with it. It just gets "cooked off" because you heat meat (or pasteurize dairy).
> is less likely to facilitate disease growth than growing romaine lettuce?
As I clearly stated I was discussing, as with the parent comment, the community of diseases that infect consumers is massively more prevalent in eating salads than meat. That's not an opinion.
You will. Vegans do bring this up now, but they're outshouted by people talking about the more important problem at the moment - stopping the current pandemic.
I'd argue it's just as important right now to take the coronavirus as a massive warning and stop doing what we are currently doing. It's only a matter of time before this happens again - Bill Gates predicted this would happen back in 2015 in a Ted talk.
Your phrasing suggests that it's very obvious, yet you are blaming salads as the real public crisis in an earlier comment. Fact is, breeding animals and raising them for food is going to keep resulting in pandemics. Like the one that we are currently going through.
Don't raise livestock or breed/catch wild animals, and the contact between humans and animals drastically lowers. Then pandemics don't happen. If that market in Wuhan didn't exist, we wouldn't be having this conversation today.
Great. Comment stalking. That's the sign of a well balanced mind. Certainly not the behaviour of a detached zealot obsessed with shoehorning their personal dietary preferences into every conversation.
> Your phrasing suggests that it's very obvious, yet you are blaming salads as the real public crisis in an earlier comment.
You are clearly in such haste to find fault that you don't actually read the things you are arguing with. You jumped in on a discussion, made yourself look like a loony deranged type and here you are doing it again in a non sequitur fashion
Take your daddy issue driven zealotry elsewhere and stop harassing people
They do but it's a mostly hopeless cause. If lab grown meat ends up being viable on an industrial scale at a competitive cost, our consumption of animals will likely be something that can be openly discussed without being instantly pushed aside.
I've argued this on HN plenty of times and I get drowned out by people telling me that they like bacon too much and that "well e-coli can spread on lettuce too so we might as well keep breeding hundreds of billions of animals per year and keeping them in filthy conditions in close proximity."
For a very scientific community, you absolutely hit a brick wall as soon as you tell a typically unhealthy group of people that eating meat is a massive public health hazard.
I'm sorry to put it so crudely, but this is a legitimate difference between the first and third world. And, clearly, it has consequences for the rest of the world. I don't understand why this is so controversial - we send aid to countries comperable in size to regions of impoverished mainland China. Only about half of China has modernized in the last ≈50 years and it's infuriating that bringing this up is suddenly socially unacceptable. These are facts which underpin life and death decisions for millions of people - we cannot sweep them under a rug because they happen to be localized.
If you don't, then yes, animal farms in general need to be shut down. But they won't, because the world is addicted to eating meat, and pandemics will keep happening.
Speaking of which, I need to get back to work but I'll see ya in an identical comment section in four years where people will blame, oh I don't know, the eating of chinchillas or something.
It's already the most trafficked animal in the world. Murdered by the millions in the name of psuedo-scientific traditional medicine. Hopefully after this world governments put a strict ban on its trade.
I think China banned consumption of all wildlife meat recently. Set me straight if this isn't correct. Governments banning trade and consumption of wildlife meat would be a great outcome but for that the note had to reach only the policy makers.
It's a temporary ban. They need a permanent wet market ban but they won't because the CCP loves this stuff too!
Fuck the CCP and their disregard for human health!
What good are strict bans, if they are subverted and ignored on a regular basis? China already had a wild animal trade ban after SARS and yet, here we are. The only thing that can solve this, is actual medical education, eradicating this witchcraft traditional medicine...
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.
> 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.
I think we are entering a stage of the world where particular regions can't have their own esoteric customs/traditions if you want to have a global economy and trade. Actions taken by people around the world affect everyone. Are we going to a future that's just normalized and beige?
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.
Now you have more than a billion people poaching rare animals to extinction because of superstition, in totally unsanitary wet markets that, frankly, have no place in a modern country.
Nothing had to change. We've had plenty of pandemics before. Black death, 1918 flu, smallpox, cholera, and so on and so on and so on and so on. We're at an all time low in infectious disease deaths in human history - so if anything it's gotten way better thank to vaccines and public sanitation/health efforts.
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.