Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

N

Nutrient

Junior Member
Registered Member
Jura said:
here comes
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(the main point is in the US not enough tests have been administered so far)
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From the article:

The net effect of these choices is that the country’s true capacity for testing has not been made clear to its residents. This level of obfuscation is unexpected in the United States, which has long been
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.

Very true. I think the reason for the tardy US testing is that they don't really want to know how shockingly prevalent the virus is already.

This thought triggers another one. Earlier, somebody (sorry, I've lost the reference) linked to an article that raised the possibility that SARS-Cov-2 may have started in the US. The article made a strong point, citing a virologist frim Taiwan: the virus has five strains -- and ONLY the US has all five in great numbers. (China has two strains.) Other countries have some combination of the five -- and only the five -- but no other country has all five in abundance. This means it is likely that the US is the source of SARS-Cov-2.

If the US is indeed the original source, imagine the consternation in the Trump administration. They slammed China very loudly for being such a dirty country, full of germs. However, if it is proven that the virus started in the US, then that makes the US even dirtier. Imagine how extremely embarrassing that would be.

So the US doesn't want to know how many US citizens are infected. (Maybe millions already, if the Tiwanese virologist is correct.) By not testing, Trump is probably hoping he never finds out -- and more to the point, that the US voters never find out. But it may be too late: the pressure to know is becoming quite intense.

Is it time for a major distraction, like a war?
 
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solarz

solarz

Brigadier
plawolf said:
People calling for a ban on exotic animal markets in China are making two major mistakes.

Firstly you are buying to the western MSM manufactured, racially motivated smear campaign against China.

People have been eating wild animals since there were people. Let’s not forget the 2009 American Swine flu and many bird flu outbreaks over the years.

And no, it is not just people in ‘backwards’ communities that eat wild animals in this day and age as the western MSM like to imply with its disproportionate and highly biased focus on the exotic animal meat reporting.

People, rich people at that, proudly hunt and eat wild animals all over Europe and America. Rabbit, duck, geese, pheasant, deer, wild boar and countless other wild animals and hunted and eaten by the same westerners who are trying to pain the Chinese as uncouth and unreasonable for daring to buy their dinner from a market, when they would shoot and eat wild animals who most certainly does not come with a food safety certification.

So long as people continue to eat animals, then there will remain the chance that a virus that originated from animals would jump species. The obsession focus of the western MSM on the seafood market has nothing to do with science or safety and everything to do with victim blaming to try and create the narrative that China somehow ‘deserve’ this outbreak.

Secondly, just look at the war on drugs. How’s prohibition working on that front?

And yes, exotic meats are not addictive like hard drugs such as cocaine or heroin, but it is very similar to ‘softer’ drugs like cannabis in that it is a lifestyle choice. OTOH, highly addictive substances like alcohol and nicotine are legally sold all the time. So legalisation has zero correlation to the additiveness of something.

If we look at the cannabis case study, legalisation has massively reduced crime, improved safety and even generates tax revenue and boosts local economies.

As such, the key to combating the issue of exotic meat trade and consumption should be not prohibition, which would only drive such practices underground, which would make the health and hygiene dangers far worse instead of better; but instead commercialisation, reduction in price and more stringent food safety standards is what real world case studies prove is most effective at reducing the risks from such consumption habits.

However, I suspect that for some or most of those who loudly demand a ban and ridiculously disproportionate punishment for offenders; at least part, if not the whole reason for your stance is an emotional reaction to the aforementioned Western MSM smear campaign and you somehow think that banning exotic animal meats would make the western MSM stop making disparaging remarks about China

If that is the case, I have some truth for you, no society is or can ever be perfect. So long as the western MSM is determined to find something, anything to attack China with, they will find it. Nothing China does will ever change that. Not even total capitulation to the west.

No matter how far China goes to appease such people, it will still never ever be remotely enough.

The only effective response is to give zero what the west thinks and instead only look at what is most beneficial for China. When China is rich and strong enough, what the western MSM thinks or says will matter as much as what the Indian media thinks or says about China today.
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I disagree.

I personally know someone who boasted about eating endangered animals. This means that his behavior is so widely accepted that he has no fear about being punished for it. This is not about Western MSM, this is about China's environment and ecosystem!

Yes, people in the West also hunt animals for food, but hunting is a highly regulated pastime. Park wardens regularly survey animal populations for numbers and diseases. Hunters usually do not butcher the meat themselves but send it to a game meat processing plant. This is a far cry from people selling live wild animals in wet markets.

Banning the eating wild game has zero social cost in China as hunting is not a valued activity, and has the benefit of both protecting the ecosystem and reducing the risk of more zoonotic disease outbreaks. IMO, it's a no brainer, and it seems the Chinese government sees it in the same way:

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hydrogenpi

hydrogenpi

Junior Member
Registered Member
solarz said:
I disagree.

I personally know someone who boasted about eating endangered animals. This means that his behavior is so widely accepted that he has no fear about being punished for it. This is not about Western MSM, this is about China's environment and ecosystem!

Yes, people in the West also hunt animals for food, but hunting is a highly regulated pastime. Park wardens regularly survey animal populations for numbers and diseases. Hunters usually do not butcher the meat themselves but send it to a game meat processing plant. This is a far cry from people selling live wild animals in wet markets.

Banning the eating wild game has zero social cost in China as hunting is not a valued activity, and has the benefit of both protecting the ecosystem and reducing the risk of more zoonotic disease outbreaks. IMO, it's a no brainer, and it seems the Chinese government sees it in the same way:

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Click to expand...


Smoking needs to be banned too, there is zero benefit gained from smoking and a tremendous health and resource detriment.

I get it that smoking is a cultural thing in China just like sports is a social thing in the West, but they should replace smoking with something else... some other passion hobby or pasttime, maybe Weiqi
 
shanlung

shanlung

Junior Member
Registered Member
solarz said:
I disagree.

I personally know someone who boasted about eating endangered animals. This means that his behavior is so widely accepted that he has no fear about being punished for it. This is not about Western MSM, this is about China's environment and ecosystem!

Yes, people in the West also hunt animals for food, but hunting is a highly regulated pastime. Park wardens regularly survey animal populations for numbers and diseases. Hunters usually do not butcher the meat themselves but send it to a game meat processing plant. This is a far cry from people selling live wild animals in wet markets.

Banning the eating wild game has zero social cost in China as hunting is not a valued activity, and has the benefit of both protecting the ecosystem and reducing the risk of more zoonotic disease outbreaks. IMO, it's a no brainer, and it seems the Chinese government sees it in the same way:

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And Americans join in as well.

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hydrogenpi

hydrogenpi

Junior Member
Registered Member
Nutrient said:
From the article:

The net effect of these choices is that the country’s true capacity for testing has not been made clear to its residents. This level of obfuscation is unexpected in the United States, which has long been
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
.

Very true. I think the reason for the tardy US testing is that they don't really want to know how shockingly prevalent the virus is already.

This thought triggers another one. Earlier, somebody (sorry, I've lost the reference) linked to an article that raised the possibility that SARS-Cov-2 may have started in the US. The article made a strong point, citing a virologist frim Taiwan: the virus has five strains -- and ONLY the US has all five in great numbers. (China has two strains.) Other countries have some combination of the five -- and only the five -- but no other country has all five in abundance. This means it is likely that the US is the source of SARS-Cov-2.

If the US is indeed the original source, imagine the consternation in the Trump administration. They slammed China very loudly for being such a dirty country, full of germs. However, if it is proven that the virus started in the US, then that makes the US even dirtier. Imagine how extremely embarrassing that would be.

So the US doesn't want to know how many US citizens are infected. (Maybe millions already, if the Tiwanese virologist is correct.) By not testing, Trump is probably hoping he never finds out -- and more to the point, that the US voters never find out. But it may be too late: the pressure to know is becoming quite intense.

Is it time for a major distraction, like a war?
Click to expand...

Regardless of origin, every nation does whatever it is in their percieved best interest.

I see America having roughly four times less the population compared to China, and the US has a lot of suburbs which China also tyupically doesn't have. In addition, it seems the prevalent strain going around in the US right now is one of the milder strains, and the fact that US homeland is much more genetically diverse (China is like 90% Han Chinese, whilst the Chinese American pop in the US is about 3%) means that the strategy that America might deem most prudent to overcome COVID may not be what would work best for China.

Also consider other differences such as the gun ownership is allowed and a Constitutional right in America whereas in China it is banned/outlawed altogether. So the Chinese government in theory has a much easier time enforcing strict quarantine than say in the US where it can get very physical very quickly since the populace is well armed etc...

America also last I checked has 70%+ GDP as "consumer" based... most of American GDP is consumption... if the consumer loses confidence that will hit the markets and Trumps re-election timing at the worst possible moment....

China also got hit first in the Wuhan area, whereas there in the EU/US the cases are now just ramping up, meaning if there is any truth to the notion at all that warmer climate/springtime will help alleviate the spread of the virus then it would work in the US favor to ride it out until the weather took care of it

So for all the aforementioned reasons and more, I believe the US has assessed that its strategy is going to be just ignore the problem, hope it doesn't get too bad, and let it burn itself out....
 
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