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China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

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Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#71

Post by cat199 »

Nitramp wrote: post #38
mc32 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This very important. Both the PRC and USSR constitutions, on paper, arguably provide better freer basic law than that of the US but in practice it’s just words on paper. However, also in practice the faction in power gets to capriciously enforce what it wants selectively, usually to solidify standing. So mr Xi and mr Stalin (née Jughashvili) get to purge all want-to-be usurpers.

> However, also in practice the faction in power gets to capriciously enforce what it wants selectively, usually to solidify standing. aka as "the rule of law". From a continental European perspective, the US stance in rule of law seems a bit dubious as well, with the president pardoning his friends, or the enormous sentences afflicted to people once, but only once, they end up in bad public standing, or elected stat…

so you're saying Europe doesn't have this sort of cronyism?

(sarkozy, berlusconi, vw emissions, etc)

I'm afraid we are pretty much in the same bucket here

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#72

Post by schuke »

someperson wrote: post #24

I can't see how this can be successfully enforced without a massive education campaign and actual enforcement by authorities, including moving the so-called "wet markets" (which are outdoor butchers that are very important to the food supply chain in many areas of China) into modern indoor facilities for improved food safety. Older people in China (the so-called lost generation) are set in their ways: remember that i…

It’ll have to work on the margins. Yes enforcement will be a problem but top off my head I can see people massively reduce consumption for social reasons (like try not to offend your friends, business clients etc).

A law by the People’s Congress will override the myriad of local and central regulations that currently are impossible to interpret and enforce, and largely unhelpful to activists. This will help activists and lawyers a lot, too.

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#73

Post by PhantomGremlin »

nobody0 wrote: post #3

We still don't know where the source is, and who the 0th patient is.

Yeah, we have no idea where the source is.

But we do know that China is a country 9,596,961 square km in size.

We also know that China's National Biosafety Laboratory, their only Level 4 microbiology lab, is located at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is 278 meters away (as the crow flies) from the Huanan Seafood Market. Said market has previously been speculated to be the source.

Is it simply coincidence that in a country of nearly 10 million square km the outbreak may have started less than 300 meters away from this laboratory?

Fortunately the esteemed New York Times has assured me that this is a "Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins". https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru...

Here are a few articles that speculate further about this "fringe theory":

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronav...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-...

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#74

Post by dmix »

exhilaration wrote: post #59
bitwize wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional Chinese medicine was on its way out, and China embracing science-based medicine -- until Chairman Mao introduced "barefoot doctors" as a cheap substitute for real doctors when the Chinese health care infrastructure found itself woefully understaffed.

Related article: As it races to treat patients infected with the new coronavirus, the Chinese government is seeing potential in a cocktail of antiviral drugs. It is also recommending the Peaceful Palace Bovine Pill, a traditional Chinese medicine made with the gallstone of cattle, buffalo horn, jasmine and pearl. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/world/asia/coronavirus-tr...

> The use of these ancient Chinese remedies dovetails with a push by Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, to harness them as a source of national pride. He has said that officials should place as much importance on traditional Chinese medicines as they do on Western medicines.

This is actually scary to read, handing out placebos in the middle of an epidemic. China is going to continue being ground zero for these sorts of things (that and the developmentally-fringe parts of Africa).

A couple of years ago (2013-2016) China had an H7N9 avian flu outbreak that infected 1,223 and had a 30-40% mortality rate (COVID-19 is around 2.1%), which didn't get much Western news coverage:

>> It has been established that many of the human cases of H7N9 appear to have a link to live bird markets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H7N9

Even the classic 1918 flu that killed 50 million originated in China:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#75

Post by jcranmer »

vraivroo wrote: post #47
nathanaldensr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that dietary cholesterol has no relation to blood cholesterol levels, right? You know that the saturated fat myth--started by the sugar industry--was debunked, right?

Wonder why meat eaters have so much higher cholesterol then. Must be a vast vegan conspiracy.

If meat were really so obviously bad for you, then Inuit should be keeling over from atherosclerosis by their 30s or so. They don't.

(If you're unaware, the Inuit diet is very heavily meat-based; there just simply isn't a lot of opportunities for plants in the High Arctic. They're getting sufficient vitamin C from meat, which is actually moderately difficult!)

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#76

Post by powerfoolx »

cat199 wrote: post #71
Nitramp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, also in practice the faction in power gets to capriciously enforce what it wants selectively, usually to solidify standing. aka as "the rule of law". From a continental European perspective, the US stance in rule of law seems a bit dubious as well, with the president pardoning his friends, or the enormous sentences afflicted to people once, but only once, they end up in bad public standing, or elected stat…

so you're saying Europe doesn't have this sort of cronyism? (sarkozy, berlusconi, vw emissions, etc) I'm afraid we are pretty much in the same bucket here

Law doesn't automatically hold, as long as it still require enforcement. Those sort of errors are kind of unavoidable. That is a program requires user input at every step and people do that.

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#77

Post by jack_h »

Nitramp wrote: post #38
mc32 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This very important. Both the PRC and USSR constitutions, on paper, arguably provide better freer basic law than that of the US but in practice it’s just words on paper. However, also in practice the faction in power gets to capriciously enforce what it wants selectively, usually to solidify standing. So mr Xi and mr Stalin (née Jughashvili) get to purge all want-to-be usurpers.

> However, also in practice the faction in power gets to capriciously enforce what it wants selectively, usually to solidify standing. aka as "the rule of law". From a continental European perspective, the US stance in rule of law seems a bit dubious as well, with the president pardoning his friends, or the enormous sentences afflicted to people once, but only once, they end up in bad public standing, or elected stat…

I'm not sure how your examples illustrate your point.

For instance the power to pardon is defined within the constitution with a singular exception added to it. It doesn't say a president can't pardon their friends. That might be socially unacceptable but it is a power delegated to the president nonetheless. If the constitution made no such mention of that power and the president was pardoning their friends - or indeed anyone at all - then that would be a good example of capricious use of power outside the rule of law.

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#78

Post by salawat »

Nitramp wrote: post #57
failrate wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the opposite of "rule of law".

Uh, yes indeed :-)

That's interesting. How would you change it?

The Executive having the power to pardon (or to refuse to prosecute) for crimes is meant as a check on legislative power to make life miserable through imposition of bad law. Just throwing that check away seems a bit destabilizing.

I mean, I'm with you on the the American justice system being capricious in terms of minor crimes being able to ruin a person's civil standing like marijuana possession has done; and rampant abuse of overclassifying certain types of crime as felonies, thereby disqualifying someone from participation in the civic process (something I genuinely have begun to abhor as I've gotten older, because of the perverse second-class citizen caste it creates with minimal if any remedy for restoration of rights without an absurd amount of pressure being applied by someone who has paid their debt to society).

However, it is putatively rule of law. Just rule of law with the assumption of input by men. Law is in itself a tool. A tool is nothing without the hand that wields it.

What angers me more is that we don't come down harder on those that maliciously attempt to use the tools of law against other tools of law. I.e. attempting to circumvent Constitutional rights through judicial review, or passing laws that everyone knows violate one Amendment or another and relying on the small number of Supreme Court justices and their auspices to just ignore passing a final decision on a case.

Frankly it seems like a somewhat intractable problem, but nevertheless, I can't deny that the United States at least puts up a good fight in terms of trying to make it work nevertheless.

Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#79

Post by anthony_doan »

drenginian wrote: post #17
bilekas wrote: post #11

It can be banned, sure, but I don't see the superstitious side of the consumption being curtailed. When you have a market for rare 'natural wondercures' being sought out, it only takes one mutation in a virus to spread on from another mammal to humans, add to that China's population density. A recipe for disaster.

You really think people in China haven’t been scared out of doing risky things like eating wild animals?

I mean... this is the 2nd or 3rd cases of a virus that cross from animal to human from China.

Is it that hard to believe China haven't change?

Re: China bans consumption and trade of wild animals

#80

Post by ASalazarMX »

bilekas wrote: post #11

It can be banned, sure, but I don't see the superstitious side of the consumption being curtailed. When you have a market for rare 'natural wondercures' being sought out, it only takes one mutation in a virus to spread on from another mammal to humans, add to that China's population density. A recipe for disaster.

> When you have a market for rare 'natural wondercures' being sought out, it only takes one mutation in a virus to spread on from another mammal to humans, add to that China's population density. A recipe for disaster.

What if the government starts a massive propaganda campaign about quartz crystals, hot stones or some other abundant and innocuous miracle cure?

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