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New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#231

Post by pubby »

_byed wrote: post #216
tempsy wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating bats is not an inherently Chinese thing to do. This is a case of some people in China who happen to eat bats. It’s actually more offensive to suggest it is than to defend the practice as “cultural”.

> Eating bats is not an inherently Chinese thing to do. This is a case of some people in China who happen to eat bats. > It’s actually more offensive to suggest it is than to defend the practice as “cultural”. It's worse to read into a statement and reveal your own biases. I never said it was "inherently Chinese." Different cultures eat different foods. Shaming the choice to eat a food is a dark pattern. Reading into…

>Shaming the choice to eat a food is a dark pattern.

It shouldn't be. Food is a very topical, superficial aspect of culture and the average person has more than enough choice in what they eat.

If eating bats is causing serious pandemics, then I'm going to shame eating bats. If shark fin soup is damaging the ecology, then I'm going to shame shark fin soup. If high-sugar diets are resulting in massive health problems, I'm going to shame high-sugar diets.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#232

Post by jlmorton »

sandworm101 wrote: post #161
monadic2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s plenty of actual research into the ancient origin of vampires you can read without resorting to baseless speculation. There is no single myth or origin and eastern europe has no vampire bats—in fact, the bats are named after the myth. The connection is likely due to them simply being nocturnal. EDIT: My tone came off as completely dismissing your thinking, which I don't mean to, I just mean to say that there'…

Bat "bites" are only half the story. Bat scratches are really nasty. In ancient times they would look like bites and most always would become infected. Even today, in much of the world (ie usa) any contact with wild bat should be taken very seriously. The link between bats and disease is no myth.

Bats are also the common wild reservoir for lyssaviruses, like rabies. Bats are not highly susceptible to rabies, and can remain asymptomatic for long periods of time. If you wake up in a room with a bat in it, or if you find a bat in a room with a child, or otherwise disabled person, rabies post-exposure prophylaxis is called for, even if you don't find a scratch, or bite mark.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#233

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

alisonatwork wrote: post #226
sgustard wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been told by friends in China that modern cities like Beijing shut down these markets years ago. It's still a holdover from the huge migration from rural to urban environments, and a cultural preference for eating wild meats, more so than a cost of living issue.

Wuhan is a modern city. I've never been to Beijing but I have visited two of the other tier one cities and I can assure you wet markets still exist there.

In places like Singapore (Chinese dominant culture, but different government), wet markets exist, but they don't sell unregulated wild meat.

I gather the one in Wuhan wasn't supposed to either, but either enforcement was lacking or they were paid to look the other way.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#234

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

wcoenen wrote: post #140
Zod666 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because of the wealth disparity. A massive chunk of the population lives in absolute poverty. I don't see them fixing that anytime soon.

> massive chunk of the population lives in absolute poverty 30 years ago yes, but not anymore. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=C...

Also, the rural folks living in poverty are not the ones buying exotic animals in a big city like Wuhan. Although they may well be at the start of the supply chain, catching it for the well-heeled city folks treating guests to exotic banquets.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#235

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

mrb wrote: post #203
ggm wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Need better data to get better mortality rate. Stop hyperbole, let the epidemiologists call it.

Of course, we need better data. But tunesmith was downplaying numbers with unsourced claims, so he needed to be corrected. The latest stats: 54 deaths out of 1764 cases → 3.1% mortality rate https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus...

All things considered, it's highly likely that there are more unreported cases than unreported deaths, which means that the actual mortality rate is lower.

What we need is stats on cured vs died for confirmed cases, but I haven't seen recent figures on that for a while, plus there's an inevitable delay on declaring somebody cured.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#236

Post by liuliu »

contingencies wrote: post #196
thisistheend123 wrote: post #7

President Xi has warned that the virus is spreading. His intervention seems to be unprecedented. Is it worse than what it seems to be? They have quarantined whole cities and are building a hospital at war scale especially for this. Maybe the Chinese know something that the world doesn't know yet.

Here is a map I made of the spread yesterday (only). https://github.com/globalcitizen/2019-wuhan-coronavirus-data... While making it, I was watching the numbers quite closely. An observation I made is that the official statistics were ~900 officially confirmed cases on the 24th evening, ~1200 officially confirmed cases 25th (morning), yet only 1300 officially confirmed cases on the 25th (evening). Why ~50% jump then…

It jumped to 1900 again in the morning. That is just a reporting pipeline delay I think. Not diverging from "hyperbolic growth" as far as I can tell.

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#237

Post by mkl »

aclsid wrote: post #146
sdiw wrote: post #21

From what I've read it came from bats. Most probably bats being eaten.[1] Bats have been the source of at least 4 pandemics. It's interesting to note that current coronavirus spreading in China and the SARS outbreak of 2003 have two things in common: Both are from the coronavirus family, and both were passed from animals to humans in a wet market.[2] I tried to put together a page for coronavirus in China here where…

It was reported in the BBC today that while SARS originated in bats, the vector for humans were a species of cats that got the disease from the bats. For coronavirus what we know so far is that it originated in a seafood market, but as to what species was eaten that is speculation at this point.

The vector was civets, which are not cats. See the evolutionary tree here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feliformia#Phylogenetic_tree

Felidae are cats, and Viverridae are civets (closer to hyenas and mongooses).

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#238

Post by [deleted] »

maverick2007 wrote: post #124
celticmusic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who teaches in China and according to him everyone is extremely worried. People aren't going out, wearing masks when they do, and so forth.

For what it's worth I'm flying back home to the US from the UAE and at the airport as I was waiting to check my bag I saw many (10+) groups of Chinese tourists checking entire boxes of 3M N95 masks. My guess is that they're running out at home and these tourists saw an opportunity to make some money or help people out (or both).

[deleted]

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#239

Post by osteele »

JCharante wrote: post #143
celticmusic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who teaches in China and according to him everyone is extremely worried. People aren't going out, wearing masks when they do, and so forth.

- Wearing masks is normal because of air pollution. A lot of people wear really loose non-N95/n99 masks though, but there's definitely an uptick in people wearing better masks because of the virus. - An acquantince of mine went to a supermarket today. Everything seems fine (they live not too far from Beijing where there are confirmed cases). - There are still people entering Wuhan to see family. ( https://youtu.be/cm…

In Shanghai (at least, Pudong and Puxi), mask usage has jumped dramatically since last week. I haven't actually kept score, but my impressions of usage from walking around a lot are:

- Summer/spring (lower pollution — Chinese AQI around 60–100, with spikes to 150): 5-10% of people wear masks outdoors. The indoor rate is lower (2-3%?).

- December/early January (AQI typically above 120): 20-30% outdoors. The indoor rate is much lower.

- As of January 23/24: 80-90% outdoors. The indoor rate is at least as high. This time period includes a couple of anomalously low-pollution days (AQI 30 — the lowest I've ever seen in Shanghai), when I might otherwise expect mask usage to be even lower than that 20–30% from before the Wuhan events escalated.

This is just people walking around and shopping. As of a few days ago, some businesses, such as Starbucks and Didi (Chinese Uber/Lyft), require employees to wear respirators (and they've messaged to customers on WeChat and in the Chinese Starbucks and Didi apps).

Re: New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

#240

Post by qwerty456127 »

sdiw wrote: post #21

From what I've read it came from bats. Most probably bats being eaten.[1] Bats have been the source of at least 4 pandemics. It's interesting to note that current coronavirus spreading in China and the SARS outbreak of 2003 have two things in common: Both are from the coronavirus family, and both were passed from animals to humans in a wet market.[2] I tried to put together a page for coronavirus in China here where…

Isn't the very fact people eat bats alarming? Who would eat bats voluntarily? They probably don't have much choice there.
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