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© 2020 AFPWuhan's wet markets struggle after virus lockdown
By Jing Xuan TENG WUHAN, China©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
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© 2020 AFP
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Chip Star
Good.
Numan
You beat me to it!
wanderlust
The guy in the middle, not much use wearing a mask like that! Just like some of the people here in Japan.
The Avenger
Wet markets must be shut down, humans must obtain their food in a more humane way, or we will continue to pay the price. This would do the rest of the beings in the world a gigantic favor; it's just a shame that conscientious people will go down with those complicit. Truthfully, factory farms in this country and elsewhere are barely better, often cruel beyond belief, and the food is contaminated and unhealthy. Yet the vast majority of people still aid and abet cruelty with their purchases, not seeking humane alternatives.
Blacklabel
wet markets are just so.....misunderstood.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/china-wet-market-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html
Bjorn Tomention
These wet markets that sell exotic live animals for food or fresh kills are not hygienic and in most developed nations they would not be allowed. So either china wants to be part of the modern developed world or not?
China can not be forgiven so easily.
Vinke
'Fresh' and 'hygienic' are not the same thing.
I've seen similar markets in China, and they're nasty. Even the 'fresh animal sections' in supermarkets there are nasty and harrowing (frogs, lizzards, snakes, fish in very tight containers, suffocating, injured, battling to get out) . Then again piles of raw meat and e.g.chicken legs without containers, in the warm open air, in supermarkets. How exactly is even that hygienic? Fresh yes, hygienic, no.
For me, these markets and supermarket sections are a huge problem foremost for the reason of animal welfare; the absolute lack of it.
Numan
Actually both are plausible.
1) It could have been a developing bioweapon, so the CCP could remove unwanted ethnicities like in the Western regions, get a foothold in strategic countries for geopolitical reasons, or defeat countries that China doesn't want to engage in a direct conflict.
2) Unsanitary conditions for processing live animals for consumption created the idea environment for a super virus to develop naturally.
The former makes CCP government look worse in the eyes of the Chinese people and international community.
nakanoguy01
wasn't tsukiji one big "wet market?" the difference is cleanliness. china is ten million light years away from being a clean country. even their major cities are glossed over cesspools of uncleanliness.
Muratafan
Nice try China. The PR move is far too late. Everyone knows that within a year or so, the wet markets (or whatever they referred to) will be back. The demand for 'freshness' supercedes a concern for health.
Moreover, interesting how this article came about. I thought China had kicked out all the U.S. reporters? Alas, China is trying to 'show' how they've cleaned up their act (ha, ha, ha!).
Kind of like how China is 'trying' to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, they are reducing the annual INCREASE in their annual emissions. So, instead of polluting at 70 kph, they are now polluting at 50 kph, but still increasing the overall output of emissions.
CCP, no one trusts you.
quercetum
Grant and I’m reading Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722 on London 1665). That is only circumstantial evidence; you might be able to trace the Bubonic Plague to China. Not denying the possibilities of the wet market but making a case to look into the Institute of Virology. Among the initial infected in Wuhan, some had connections with the seafood market but others had no connections at all.
If the US is responsible enough to shut down the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in Fort Detrick, Md due to safety concerns, shouldn’t China be held accountable for its negligence in accidents of the lab in Wuhan?
Vince Black
Just shut them down. They’re a disgrace and the cause of all the crap happening in the world today. Oh the poor things are struggling with business?
Good. Struggle.
Numan
@quercetum
From an article published in 2010, the Great Plague, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It happened within the centuries-long Second Pandemic, a period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which originated in China in 1331, the first year of the Black Death, an outbreak which included other forms such as pneumonic plague, and lasted until 1750.
Haensch, Stephanie; et al. (2010), "Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death", PLoS Pathogens, 6 (10): e1001134, doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1001134, PMC 2951374, PMID 20949072
DEADLY DISEASES: Epidemics throughout History
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2014/10/health/epidemics-through-history/
smithinjapan
It IS unfathomable that they were allowed to reopen, but I guess it should be more unfathomable that there is any demand. We are doomed as a species.
Alfie Noakes
https://twitter.com/tomgauld/status/571994690289061888
quercetum
@Numan
Thanks for the links. My point is that what you’ve raised only establishes the source being in China 1331. That’s it. Where is the “wildlife” in this equation? And your point is that there have been epidemics in China.
Aly Rustom
sanctions on China until the CCP ends ALL wet markets NOW!!!
quercetum
Its possible. We don’t even know if they sell bats in that seafood market. Does anyone? All we have is that it’s nasty and dirty.
Black Sabbath
Bats should be banned. Too dangerous. Ducks should. be closely regualted.
Pukey2
Go vegan!
stormcrow
Let’s hope this is the end of a vile custom.
jenn cats
Diffrent names for the virus
Covad-19
Wuhan virus
China virus
Dont eat bats virus
https://www.ibtimes.sg/watch-this-woman-eating-bat-fancy-wuhan-restaurant-ignoring-uproar-over-natural-hosts-coronavirus-38197
utorsa
Dude with the chin mask/cigarette combo doesn’t look like a paragon of good hygiene.
The manspreader scratching his nose doesn’t inspire confidence either.
serendipitous1
Yeah, the 'food' is fresh because the animal is alive but freshness is irrelevant if the animal has a disease. Haven't we just learnt that the very hard way?
Numan
@queretum
Are you saying that the Bubonic plague has no animal factor? You think that it was developed in a lab in 1331? Was it not spread through fleas and rats?
Is that not the animal factor that allowed it to reach town to town all the way to Europe?
I never said a wet market is the source of the Bubonic plague. No one has said that.
Everyone has said that unsanitary conditions around animals increases the chances of spreading viruses.
Numan
Like I said before, both situations are plausible.
1) From a lab - From the lab after worker was exposed in the lab where animals were being tested with virus, that worker shopped in the markets and infected others.
2) From highly unsanitary environment like those wet markets -The animals being used in the lab to test the coronavirus were sold to the Wet market after testing and death.