Why New Diseases Like COVID-19 Keep Appearing in China

From Vox comes a short explain­er that delves into why virus­es like COVID-19 have often first tak­en off in Chi­na. They write:

As of ear­ly March 2020, a new coro­n­avirus, called COVID-19, is in more than 70 coun­tries and has killed more than 3,100 peo­ple, the vast major­i­ty in Chi­na. That’s where the virus emerged back in Decem­ber 2019. This isn’t a new phe­nom­e­non for Chi­na; in 2003, the SARS virus also emerged there, and under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, before spread­ing around the world and killing near­ly 800.

Both SARS and COVID-19 are in the “coro­n­avirus” fam­i­ly, and both appear to have emerged from ani­mals in Chi­na’s noto­ri­ous wildlife mar­kets. Experts had long pre­dict­ed that these mar­kets, known to be poten­tial sources of dis­ease, would enable anoth­er out­break. The mar­kets, and the wildlife trade that sup­ports them, are the under­ly­ing prob­lem of these pan­demics; until Chi­na solves that prob­lem, more are like­ly to emerge.

Days ago, Chi­na’s wildlife-farm­ing indus­try was per­ma­nent­ly shut down by Chi­nese offi­cials.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Chi­nese Muse­ums, Closed by the Coro­n­avirus, Put Their Exhi­bi­tions Online


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Comments (6)
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  • Tormod says:

    High­ly spu­ri­ous con­clu­sion drawn from TWO exam­ples!!
    Smells more like extreme­ly unpleas­ant racist pro­pa­gan­da.
    Take this down, it shames you dis­grace­ful­ly.

  • gareth says:

    Please let’s not for­get that west­ern farm­ing has its own exam­ples that was­n’t even as sim­ple as facil­i­tat­ing cross-species infec­tion.

    For instance vCJD (vari­ant Creutzfeldt–Jakob dis­ease) from BSE (Bovine spongi­form encephalopa­thy) aka mad-cow diesease is a pure piece of west­ern sci­en­tif­ic farm­ing.

    Feed­ing dis­eased sheep (scrapie) bone meal to cows (total­ly nat­ur­al food source) and thence to humans.

    The fall­out from BSE con­tin­ues — still Cana­di­ans who have spent any time in the UK/France between 80 & 96 can­not donate blood because there’s no wide­ly avail­able test. (Oth­er time­frames cov­er the whole of West­ern Europe & Sau­di Ara­bia).

  • SJD says:

    Watch the doc­u­men­tary “Unseen Ene­my” made by CNN Films. You’ll think more about what is prac­ticed in these lethal­ly unsan­i­tary live ani­mal mar­kets. SHUT DOWN THE MARKETS.

  • Harrie Baken says:

    Indeed! And do not eat oth­er ani­mals.

  • Don Stilwell says:

    Stop eat­ing ani­mal prod­ucts (meat, dairy, etc.). Stop ani­mal farm­ing. Start by clos­ing the Con­cen­trat­ed Ani­mal Feed­ing Oper­a­tions that pro­vide most of our meat. Hunt only to keep ani­mal pop­u­la­tions down, don’t eat them. Stop using antibi­otics on ani­mals to increase growth. Kill male farm ani­mals to pre­vent repro­duc­tion and allow die off. Only these things will great­ly dimin­ish these dis­eases, will reduce resis­tant organ­isms, will pre­vent new organ­isms. And, yes, Chi­na should close the wet mar­kets too.

  • graciela staines says:

    Thanks a lot for shar­ing and for your research

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