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Pangolins found to carry viruses related to Covid-19
- marvindanig 7y agoThe bats will fly away but the Pangolins will be massacred now that BBC has officially pinned the blame on this otherwise harmless (at a distance) and beautiful animal. I don't know how to feel about this scientific note now.
- typon 7y agoIt's already the most trafficked animal in the world. Murdered by the millions in the name of psuedo-scientific traditional medicine. Hopefully after this world governments put a strict ban on its trade.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoWhat good are strict bans, if they are subverted and ignored on a regular basis? China already had a wild animal trade ban after SARS and yet, here we are. The only thing that can solve this, is actual medical education, eradicating this witchcraft traditional medicine...
- marvindanig 7y agoI think China banned consumption of all wildlife meat recently. Set me straight if this isn't correct. Governments banning trade and consumption of wildlife meat would be a great outcome but for that the note had to reach only the policy makers.
- dna_polymerase 7y agoIt says that in the article as well, yet since it was already contraband simply banning sales will just make this a more exclusive luxury.
- Der_Einzige 7y agoIt's a temporary ban. They need a permanent wet market ban but they won't because the CCP loves this stuff too! Fuck the CCP and their disregard for human health!
- TrackerFF 7y agoThe Pangolins are not to blame - it's the smugglers and illegal markets that are.
- ficklepickle 7y agoIf anything, the pangolins are getting their revenge.
- blondie9x 7y agoPeople of China, please step up and protest the government to stop the sale of wild animals such as this to prevent future outbreaks and protect humanity from animal-borne illnesses.
- blondie9x 7y ago中国人不需要吃这样的动物。我们一起会改变中国。
- lordnacho 7y ago"Chinese people don't need to eat these kinds of animals. Together we can change China" * Still learning Mandarin.
- sidesquid 7y agothat's correct
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoTCM in general is becoming harmful while the good it does isn’t clear at all, these renegade cures that involve wild endangered species even more so.
- soperj 7y agoThe 2009 swine flu epidemic originated in the states. Are you asking to shut down pig farms in the US as well?
- jlawson 7y agoNo, it originated in Veracruz, Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
- Ritsuko_akagi 7y agoyes
- vicmiclovich 7y agoIt should be titled, "The Revenge of The Pangolin"
- swsieber 7y agoThere's actually a really nice documentary on Netflix about pangolins. It's mostly a black market for being able to eat them. They are mostly being poached/smuggled/etc.
- jorge-d 7y agoEmphasis should be put on the fact that it's both an endangered and internationally protected specie (from which China is a signatory [1]). It had nothing to do in those markets in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CITES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CITES
- jeltz 7y agoSo does that mean that the sale of pangolins at the market in Wuhan was entirely illegal? If so this seems like a huge enforcement issue if endangered animals could be openly sold at a market.
- rhombocombus 7y agoIt was entirely illegal and remains so. It is a huge enforcement issue, and hopefully this encourages the Chinese Gov't to crack down on these wildlife markets, but it didn't happen after SARS-CoV-1 (which IIRC also came out of a wildlife meat market in China) so I don't hold out a lot of hope.
- corndoge 7y agoThe wildlife markets are permanently banned now, as I understand it
- bobthepanda 7y agoThey also did this after SARS for a short bit. Let's see how long it lasts.
- duxup 7y agoWell it says related viruses... so I'm not sure there has to be a connection between Pangolins and the market directly. Although that's probabbly a good route to investigate.
- jorge-d 7y ago
- jcims 7y agoMichael Osterholm called this out during his episode on the Joe Rogan podcast back on 3/10, presumably from prior research - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw&t=1180 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw&t=1180
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- balola 7y agoGood luck telling the rich and powerful they shouldn't eat this what they believed is the most tonic and upscale meat of late. Remember that girl who paid 6.5 million dollars to get into Stanford last year? Her dad's listed company sells billions of dollars of TCM every year that claims to cure thrombus because the ingredients used (earthworm, scorpion and leech) are adept at digging things. Yes TCMs don't need to go through any FDA-like process or trial to prove anything, coz it's national treasure. Pangolin meat and scales are prized in TCM coz you know, it dig rocks.
- andybak 7y agoTCM = traditional chinese medicine I presume. regards, your friendly neighbourhood abbreviation hater.
- dmix 7y agoAnd Wikipedia lists Pangolins as the most trafficked animal in the world (edit: as does the BBC article).
- robbyt 7y agoI read they're prized for curing male impotence, because you know... They have hard scales.
- dcolkitt 7y agoThis is kind of an off-the-wall idea, but... what about creating artificial meat substitutes for these prized exotic animals? Couldn't Beyond Meat create a pretty close facsimile to pangolin or bat or snake or whatever? Obviously this wouldn't eliminate 100% of demand. Particularly among those eating the animals for their magical properties, instead of their taste. But even if artificial versions of exotic meats could cut consumption by 20-30%, the corresponding risk of zoonotic virus transmission should fall linearly along with that.
- muizelaar 7y agoAnyone have a link to the actual paper?
- pks016 7y agoFrom top comment. https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-biology/CURBIO_CURRENT-BIOLOGY-D-20-00299-compressed.pdf https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...
- TrackerFF 7y agoI wish we could direct focus on those responsible, the smuggles and illegal (or legal) markets that enable this kinda of stuff - but without getting into heated "that's racist" arguments, because certain places traditionally value these animals so high.
- throwawaysea 7y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-china-cause.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opinion/sunday/coronaviru... > A second cultural factor behind the epidemic are traditional Chinese beliefs about the powers of certain foods, which have encouraged some hazardous habits. There is, in particular, the aspect of Chinese eating culture known as “jinbu,” (進補) meaning, roughly, to fill the void. Some of its practices are folklorish or esoteric, but even among Chinese people who don’t follow them, the concept is pervasive.
- vvram 7y agoPeople having been practicing these for centuries, what has changed recently that it has become a global pandemic ?
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoPopulation densities, ease of travel long distances around the world.
- twomoretime 7y agoNow you have more than a billion people poaching rare animals to extinction because of superstition, in totally unsanitary wet markets that, frankly, have no place in a modern country. What changed are the numbers.
- typon 7y agoIt's possible that these viruses jumped to humans all the time in the past and killed a particular village, town, city. Now we have global travel enabled by planes/cruises/cars. The spread is what's killing us with this latest pandemic.
- MikeAmelung 7y agoClusters of villages being turned into major urban centers, connected by high-speed rail, further connected to the rest of the world by air?
- vikramkr 7y ago
- dna_polymerase 7y ago"The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored." https://cmr.asm.org/content/20/4/660.abstract https://cmr.asm.org/content/20/4/660.abstract A paper from 2007.
- chrisco255 7y agoThis article actually says nothing new. It does not draw a direct Covid-19 evolution path from pangolins to humans. That pangolins and bats carry coronaviruses is well known. That these viruses are related is well known, but it's still not clear that pangolins are the source for Covid-19. Very misleading headline on no new information.
- drtillberg 7y agoSince we already know the virus shared up to 96% of the same DNA as horseshoe bat virus collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2003 from a cave 600 miles away ... why are researchers still agonizing over all these alternative theories? The only place near Wuhan the virus existed prior to the outbreak was at the institute of virology. And the first places the outbreak occurred were in the immediate neighborhood of the institute. I'm really genuinely curious why bigtime news outlets keep talking about Vietnamese pangolins. [1] E.g., https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-lab-bats-attacked-scientists-peed-12252873/ https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-lab...
- narrator 7y agoIt fits the narrative that this is mother nature's revenge for our abuse of cute animals. A lot of people believe this narrative, that mother nature will seek revenge for environmental degradation, especially when it involves cute animals, and it being true reenforces their feeling and hope that justice exists in the world, so it naturally occurs to them and they will look for information to confirm its truth. The way that harm to cute stuff can energize political ideology and activism should never be underestimated. To bring it back to Hacker News territory: One can use a cute mascot for one's company, especially if it's a consumer brand, so people will tolerate your bugs and frustrations more easily and have an irrational love for your company. Wufoo did this with dinosaurs and stuff. There's a great startup school video on this.
- haunter 7y agoVice had a nice report from the Ebola outbreak in Liberia 2014. Showing how people can just buy bush meat from the markets: monkey, bats etc. Worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XasTcDsDfMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XasTcDsDfMg
- dirtyid 7y agoAt the start of this outbreak, people were blaming Africans for eating bushmeat from wetmarkets using less than civil rhetoric, then later scientists traced the source of the outbreak to kids playing in an hallow tree where bats roosted. Wetmarkets do need to be either modernized or eliminated, but that doesn't mean initial speculation is correct.
- luxuryballs 7y agoMore like BANgolins now amirite
- gadders 7y agoI wish Chinese medicine would just die already. An absolute pile of horseshit invented by Mao etc because he'd killed the actual doctors in his cultural revolution [1] It's main purpose now seems to be to claim that the rarer the animal you eat, the harder it makes your dick. [1] https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/traditional-chinese-medicine-origins-mao-invented-it-but-didnt-believe-in-it.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/traditional-chinese-med...
- sunkenvicar 7y agoChina last year formally banned fentanyl shipments to North America. Fentanyl shipments are still pouring in today. Who really believes China will ban pangolin trade? We know the Wuhan Virus probably originated from the Wuhan BioLab or the Wuhan Wet Market. CNN and MSNBC broadcasted this exact story a month ago. President Trump agrees and the MSM screams RACIST! But his approval keeps climbing. Now 60% of Americans approve, and are RACIST!
- IdontRememberIt 7y agoI bet PETA & Co will take this once in a life time opportunity to put pressure on all governments (shaming and pressure campaigns) so they put pressure on China to ban wild life and some crazy wet markets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_market). Having visited many markets like this in Asia. I will not miss most of them as long as they are so unregulated/dirty.