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Time to Ban Wet Markets

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Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#211

Post by boomboomsubban »

tal8d wrote: post #206
boomboomsubban wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This qualifier, "initial", makes me think you are arguing that their subsequent actions are excusable. Over the past months they have made many good moves, and their conduct after signing the trade deal in early January seems decent. >Accusing the other party in trade negotiations of releasing a biological weapon, coincidentally right next to your own infectious disease facility One member of the foreign department…

> ...reply to the "US accusation" that the virus was unleashed intentionally by the Chinese. Oh that is an easy one. That US accusation was actually open speculation by Indian and German researchers examining the only data that China was willing to share with the rest of the world. They weren't accused of intentionally unleashing it, but negligence was speculated - the lying and secrecy is the cause for that, and the…

>Oh that is an easy one...

This seems to be referring to the immediately pulled journal saying some parts of the virus were very similar to HIV, at least that's the only Indian or German researcher based thing I've heard. That wasn't the start of the hoax, the "open speculation" was basically just that engineering this was possible, and the blame for these hoaxes does not rest on the Chinese.

>This is all unprecedented.

It's not, and I was referencing two very specific claims you were making. When you feel we are encountering an unprecedented level of misinformation, why do you think that your information is untainted?

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#212

Post by himinlomax »

notacoward wrote: post #210
himinlomax wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say Kansas, some people have pointed at China. I read a book a long time ago that said France, more specifically a US or UK military camp where pigs, horses, chickens and wounded men were in close quarters. In any case, the start of the epidemic during WW1 hints that the origin may be linked to it. That bushmeat or wet markets are currently a huge risk does not mean that there are no other types of risky situatio…

Of course someone said it was China. It's only slightly more surprising that they'd say France, but some people will jump at any chance to place the blame "over there" and it has nothing to do with the science. The earliest documented cases were in Haskell county, from which it spread to Fort Riley, and from there to the WW1 front, etc. https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article200880539.html Note that it's a Kansas s…

You're asking for citations when it's perfectly clear from the discussion we're having that there is no scientific consensus. I can only assume you're asking in bad faith.

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#213

Post by tal8d »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #211
tal8d wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...reply to the "US accusation" that the virus was unleashed intentionally by the Chinese. Oh that is an easy one. That US accusation was actually open speculation by Indian and German researchers examining the only data that China was willing to share with the rest of the world. They weren't accused of intentionally unleashing it, but negligence was speculated - the lying and secrecy is the cause for that, and the…

>Oh that is an easy one... This seems to be referring to the immediately pulled journal saying some parts of the virus were very similar to HIV, at least that's the only Indian or German researcher based thing I've heard. That wasn't the start of the hoax, the "open speculation" was basically just that engineering this was possible, and the blame for these hoaxes does not rest on the Chinese. >This is all unprecedent…

> That wasn't the start of the hoax...

The only perpetrator that would provide an excuse for baselessly accusing the US military would have to be the US government. So when did they fabricate that hoax? Was it when the FBI started cracking down on spies in January? Are they the ones that pressured the Mounties to start clearing their level-4 labs of Chinese virologists last year?

> ...the blame for these hoaxes does not rest on the Chinese.

The lying and secrecy creates the environment in which that sort of thing thrives. At some point you can't characterize predictable consequences as victim blaming, for many the benefit of doubt was lost pretty early on, following the crackdown on doctors and journalists who accurately described events.

> When you feel we are encountering an unprecedented level of misinformation, why do you think that your information is untainted?

Let me be more clear: China lying about something is to be expected. What is unprecedented is the combination of two things: the lie being told has severe and unavoidable consequences to everyone, and the means to combat the lies are not only open to all - but are actively being employed to do so. The beauty of opensource intelligence is that any potential for manipulation can be quantified in a way that secretly sourced data cannot.

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#214

Post by notacoward »

himinlomax wrote: post #212
notacoward wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course someone said it was China. It's only slightly more surprising that they'd say France, but some people will jump at any chance to place the blame "over there" and it has nothing to do with the science. The earliest documented cases were in Haskell county, from which it spread to Fort Riley, and from there to the WW1 front, etc. https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article200880539.html Note that it's a Kansas s…

You're asking for citations when it's perfectly clear from the discussion we're having that there is no scientific consensus. I can only assume you're asking in bad faith.

There doesn't have to be consensus before you can show evidence, and accusing others of bad faith is against the rules.

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#215

Post by arcticbull »

himinlomax wrote: post #176
arcticbull wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of economic damage, over 4.4 million cows were slaughtered [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45906585

All restaurants, museums, bars, cinemas, gyms, airlines and so on are currently closed in Europe. The economic damage is going to be at least a 1000 times worse.

I wasn't comparing it to nCoV-19, I stated it was a lot of damage in absolute terms.

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#216

Post by juiyout »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #113
jonny_eh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a direct consequence of their agricultural practices It's also a result of people, around the world (but mostly in China), buying into Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It creates a market for products based on wild animals like bats and pangolins, which this virus originated from.

It is utterly bizarre to believe that eating different animal flesh will provide some sort of unique medicinal properties. It’s all pretty much muscle or fat tissue which is all very similar between wildly different organisms. Animals aren’t like plants or fungi which make a huge library of secondary metabolite compounds that do work as medicine. Like all archaic belief systems, let us hope that with enough time the…

It may be bizarre. I grew up on traditional Chinese medicine in Taiwan. Vast majority I had was various types of plants like you mentioned in power, pellet, or pill form very similar to western medicine. There is some medicine extracted from animal products like musk, honey, etc, though much less used.

There are major efforts in Taiwan's universities to reinterpret TCM with contemporary science methodology. In term of manufacturing, the process is very far from the image of a "wet market". Acupuncture & Tuina, as part of TCM, have been applied on athletes around the world.

Due to my first hand account of TCM, I'm unable to dismiss TCM just as easily as you.

One thing I like to point out though, Taiwan's regulations on wild life and traditional medicine may be what China currently needs to curtail future potential outbreaks. As you know, TCM is tremendously popular in Taiwan yet Taiwan doesn't produce outbreaks like its neighbors does.

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#217

Post by juiyout »

christiansakai wrote: post #4

I remember when I was small, I accompanied my mom to a wet market, and saw a frog butchered in front of my eyes (chopped into two horizontal cut), and that gave me chills till this day that I actually don't eat frog meat. I do other stuffs though and have no problem handling knife for meat work. On the other hand, wet market like Tokyo's Tsukiji is very fresh and clean. Actually, wet markets through Japan are usually…

Can't remember which reality show was it. But the concept was for a bunch of city people living in a small mountainous village without outside help. As I flipped though channels, there was an episode that caught my attention.

On this episode, these city people were craving for pork. I believe they were seeded a pig ready to be butchered. Now their community rule was "If you help out in butchering the pig, you get to have a share." Essentially in this show, you need to kill every single animal yourselves if you want to eat it. Those city people were not good at butchering either. I recall the scene was pretty ugly. Quickly some people decided they don't want pork anymore after some dry heaving. For those who went through with butchering, they get to make pork chops and cure their own bacon just to add some delight to their arduous rural lives.

I often wonder what I would do in that situation.

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#218

Post by skoutus »

thu2111 wrote: post #196
skoutus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a direct consequence of their agricultural practices Sorry, but you seem very certain of this claim, and I don't see evidence to back it up. Please point us to evidence that Chinese agricultural practices are directly responsible for pandemic viruses. If anything, the common agricultural practices of over-using antibiotic, which the both the US and China engages in, is what most scientific studies have poin…

There have been a lot of papers and investigations that suggested a link to wet markets for this and prior pandemics of respiratory diseases. Here's a paper from 2004: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067360... "Wet markets—a continuing source of severe acute respiratory syndrome and influenza?" Not many parts of the world have this practice and the places that do have nasty viruses.

Thanks for sharing that particular report. There's a couple of things worth pointing out.

1. This report is also strangely claiming that the H1N1 swine flu most likely "came from a frozen source and a laboratory seems the most probable culprit", a claim that both the WHO and CDC refuted. This raises a red flag for me.

2. I appreciate you sharing the article, and I want to read it critically. Unfortuantely this article does not provide any hard evidence (from tests or physical analysis) showing a clear direct link between SARS and wet-market. It doesn't even have a methodology section, so I'm not sure why it's in a scientific publication. I'm guessing this is a paper that tried to summarize current findings, but the best evidence this paper can give is this: "The host range of SARS coronaviruses in wild or farm-raised animals is not resolved. Yi Guan and colleagues14 recently established a potential zoonotic origin of SARS coronavirus (CoV) and wet markets as a possible source of the original outbreak." In other words, they think it could from wet-markets but they don't even know the transmission vector. Where's the hard science to back up the provocative title that "wet market is a continuing source of severe acute respiratory syndrome and influenza"? I guess putting a question mark in the title lowers the burden of proof for the author.

3. I do take one point from this study seriously: The butchering process of animals should be regulated. When animals are butchered at an industrial scale in factories, health inspectors can easily check the butchering process. But when they are done at very small scale in smaller wet-markets, it is very difficult to inspect them. This is a rightful public health concern, whether or not it is the source of influenza.

4. Actually, the US and Europe still have wet markets, and the public seem to love them. They're called fish markets, where fishermen sell their daily catch directly to consumers. They'll cut and clean the animals right in front of customers. To be clear, they have tighter regulation than the wet markets we see in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, but they are exactly the the same kind of markets: they allow farmers and fishermen to sell directly to consumers in small daily batches, which can include butchering services.

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#219

Post by skoutus »

Waterluvian wrote: post #200
skoutus wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not here to defend selling bushmeat or the trade of wildlife for "medicine", but wet markets are simply markets where farmers can set up stalls and sell directly to consumers, including livestock and meat. Yes, it doesn't have the same sanitation code as supermarkets, but these wet markets are actually just what regular markets looked like 100 years ago. There's nothing nefarious going on there that breeds pandem…

I think I hear what you're saying. It's about perspective. But I also think you made my point when you said "what regular markets looked like 100 years ago." That's exactly the problem. So yeah, they're not some evil contraption you'd see in a James Bond chase scene. But they're stuck in the past and our health standards have gone way up since then. Or put more simply: we no-longer have to, and no-longer choose to ac…

1. No one is saying "let the people die". Health and safety standards should be raised as we gain more understanding of health risks. My point is that we need to increase the safety standards and health codes at wet markets, beginning first by banning the wildlife trade and bushmeat.

2. Wet markets actually serve an important role in the local economies of markets where supermarkets are not easily accessible. Actually, we still have wet-markets in the US and Europe and we love them. They're called fish markets, where local fishermen sell their daily catch directly consumers, and they would kill and clean animals right in front of buyers. We have no grievances with that, and chefs often recommend them to people. The difference between these wet markets and the ones we see in China is regulated standards, so that's a big area of improvement.

Re: Time to Ban Wet Markets

#220

Post by _-david-_ »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #52

We should refrain from giving way to blatant racism, like for example calling on purpose this virus the "Chinese virus". There is no evidence at all that 'wet markets' are the source of this. If there is an issue it is the hunting of wild animal for food and that is not specific to China, see Ebola, etc.

If Chinese Flu is racist (despite Chinese not being a race) then so are many others. Spanish Flu, Ebola, West Nile, etc.
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