Live data from Hacker News

Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic? (2017)

smithsonianmag.com

71–77 of 77 posts

Re: Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic? (2017)

#71
post #54
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as Tom Cotton (Senator from Arkansas) declared on Fox news that it was a Chinese bioweapon. All governments have wingnuts.

I think it's clearly not a bioweapon, and there would be no benefit to China for releasing it, but it's exactly the sort of thing that lab was investigating, so part of me wonders if there wasn't a leak of a research sample. Even if it were so, I would never blame all Chinese people for it.

Occam's razor is for the obvious, it was a cross species jump of a disease from another animal (in this case a bat). Which happens somewhat regularly, and was already known to be a concern.

Re: Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic? (2017)

#72
post #63
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did and now there are no new cases from local transmission.

Do you have any proof of that or any way to confirm the data they provided? Some people seem to think that a country known for lying, murdering and disappearing whistleblowers suddenly is an example of transparency and honesty

So do you trust statistics from America then?

Re: Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic? (2017)

#73
post #11

I wonder if this will be the final nail in the coffin for wet markets and in particular game markets, given this history. I mean not just in official proclamation but resulting in the complete disappearance even in rural backwaters.

If I remember figures properly, wet market and other exotic animal husbandry industry in China employs close to 10 million. Extrapolate for rest of the world (bushmeat etc). It's not going to get banned, even the one in China I surmise is going to be temporary like SARS, albeit depends on domestic backlash. If anything there will be some actual enforced regulation / intervention to reduced risks. I.e. maybe everyone who works or interacts with the industry will be tracked using technology developed for COVID quarantine.

Also it's important to highlight, there is NO evidence the wet market was the source of COVID, they found older cases back in mid November with no relation to it. The wet market was simply the first hotspot - and seeing how contagious the virus is even in clean environments, the level of squalor wouldn't have made much of a difference. The authorities closed it down because that's where tracing led them, which led to conjecture that inertia-ed into likely cause. Now you still have idiots who thinks it's bat soup. I haven't seen a correction at all since there's more pressing local COVID news. It's like the last ebola outbreak, people were blaming Africans for eating bush meat but patient-0 was traced to a kid playing under a tree where some bats slept in.

Re: Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic? (2017)

#74
post #73
post #11

I wonder if this will be the final nail in the coffin for wet markets and in particular game markets, given this history. I mean not just in official proclamation but resulting in the complete disappearance even in rural backwaters.

If I remember figures properly, wet market and other exotic animal husbandry industry in China employs close to 10 million. Extrapolate for rest of the world (bushmeat etc). It's not going to get banned, even the one in China I surmise is going to be temporary like SARS, albeit depends on domestic backlash. If anything there will be some actual enforced regulation / intervention to reduced risks. I.e. maybe everyone…

True we don’t know the origin of this one, but the article mentions other viruses over the years and decades that mutated from jumping from animal to human to human to human having their start in places in China where close interaction with these animals occurs (either animal husbandry or as bushmeat).

Re: Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic? (2017)

#75
post #74
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember figures properly, wet market and other exotic animal husbandry industry in China employs close to 10 million. Extrapolate for rest of the world (bushmeat etc). It's not going to get banned, even the one in China I surmise is going to be temporary like SARS, albeit depends on domestic backlash. If anything there will be some actual enforced regulation / intervention to reduced risks. I.e. maybe everyone…

True we don’t know the origin of this one, but the article mentions other viruses over the years and decades that mutated from jumping from animal to human to human to human having their start in places in China where close interaction with these animals occurs (either animal husbandry or as bushmeat).

I think the situation will eventually converge to a point where certain animals will be banned, but not the market themselves. The markets will probably be moved into buildings with better sanitation and surveillance with modernized regulations. IMO High density Chinese pork farming, which caused the disastrous pork crisis due to African swine flu last year is a more likely vector for future outbreaks. China has to move to high-density animal husbandry for food autonomy, especially pork. It's one of their key strategic interests that's not going to change, or is even more important to pursue depending on the geopolitical fallout of this pandemic. If anything now is the time to focus and embrace artificial meat. But at the end of the day, it doesn't resolve the fundamental unpreparedness of the world if the cause of COVID was some chance happenstance like some farmer smelled some bat poop.

Re: Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic? (2017)

#76
post #71
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's clearly not a bioweapon, and there would be no benefit to China for releasing it, but it's exactly the sort of thing that lab was investigating, so part of me wonders if there wasn't a leak of a research sample. Even if it were so, I would never blame all Chinese people for it.

Occam's razor is for the obvious, it was a cross species jump of a disease from another animal (in this case a bat). Which happens somewhat regularly, and was already known to be a concern.

Maybe, but I somehow don't feel like their government would have fought to hide as much info about it unless they were embarrassed about something, so I feel like the razor cuts the other way. Can we really trust a government that hid things for so long? That said, I doubt we'll have any real proof one way or another.

Re: Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic? (2017)

#77
post #76
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occam's razor is for the obvious, it was a cross species jump of a disease from another animal (in this case a bat). Which happens somewhat regularly, and was already known to be a concern.

Maybe, but I somehow don't feel like their government would have fought to hide as much info about it unless they were embarrassed about something, so I feel like the razor cuts the other way. Can we really trust a government that hid things for so long? That said, I doubt we'll have any real proof one way or another.

Local officials hid information because nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. This is an ancient tradition in China.

Once the news bubbled up to smart people at the top who understood math, their reaction reversed.

There is no way that if people at the top had known what was really going on, they would have let the Moon festival happen.

Post reply on HN