Wet markets

This prompted by an article in the MIT Technology Review, reference 1, written around a paper written by a scientist who had worried about bio-security in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He seems to be a wet market man now and has written up his thoughts at reference 2.

Item 1, it seems that animal markets in China can be rather unpleasant places by our standards, with lots of live animals being held in rather unpleasant condition and being sold for human consumption. China, in the wake of the SARS outbreak, introduced fierce laws about this sort of thing, but they were only weakly enforced. One unintended consequence of which was that live animal vendors at the market concerned who had any information or evidence vanished, rather than talk to the authorities.

Item 2, once again, it is encouraging to see that China has just the same sort of machinery for fighting infectious diseases as is deployed in the West. Much the same science and much the same bureaucracy. No doubt there are some areas that they are good at, and some areas that they are not so good at. Just as there are here. But knowing that they are really quite like us all helps to build relationships.

PS: no doubt Worobey is now to be found on Past President Trump's hit list of subversive pinkos to be dealt with when he is re-elected.

References

Reference 1a: This scientist now believes covid started in Wuhan’s wet market. Here’s why: How a veteran virologist found fresh evidence to back up the theory that covid jumped from animals to humans in a notorious Chinese market - rather than emerged from a lab leak - Jane Qiu, MIT Technology Review - 2021.

Reference 1b: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/19/1040390/covid-wuhan-natural-spillover-wuhan-wet-market-huanan.

Reference 2a: Dissecting the early COVID-19 cases in Wuhan - Michael Worobey, Science - 2021.

Reference 2b: https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.abm4454. This might be free, but beware: lots of stuff in this magazine is not free. 

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_raccoon_dog. A possible vector. The source of the snap above. This particular one from the Ukraine. About the size of a dog; eaten by wolves, eagles and, in the Far East, humans.