4 ms·
Can I just say, people have been eating bats for millenia, and there's never been a global pandemic arising from bat eating in recorded history. In fact, in rec
by hotpockets 6y ago
Can I just say, people have been eating bats for millenia, and there's never been a global pandemic arising from bat eating in recorded history. In fact, in recent history, there's never been a definite zoonotic global pandemic even 1/10th as serious as covid. Swine flu and Bird Flu weren't close in severity, and came from eating common farmed animals.
Perhaps eating certain animals should be curtailed (I'm no expert) as long as it doesn't result in low protein intake. But, the anti-China sentiment is xenophobic.
- walrus01 6y agoThe 2014/2015 Ebola crisis in West Africa has also been definitively traced to people eating bats. There's biological reasons why bats are reservoirs of viruses that are not harmful to themselves, but to many other mammals.
- stareatgoats 6y ago> There's biological reasons why bats are reservoirs of viruses Interesting. Source?
- walrus01 6y agoSee references linked here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_virome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_virome
- RaiausderDose 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_virome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_virome https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1539106/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1539106/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200210144854.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200210144854.h... https://www.the-scientist.com/notebook/why-bats-make-such-good-viral-hosts-64251 https://www.the-scientist.com/notebook/why-bats-make-such-go...
- hotpockets 6y agoBut not a global pandemic, and I'm guessing less serious than swine flu and bird flu, which we still eat.
- modeless 6y agoYou can't just take every species that hasn't caused a global pandemic in the past and declare them all equally safe. There are differing levels of risk in different species, and not only that but in different farming and food preparation practices, and in captive vs. wild populations.
- hedora 6y agoThe common cold and flu come from domesticated animals every year. Pretty much all serious pandemics started in some other species of mammals, and then transferred to humans. Examples: SARS, bird flu, ebola, hiv, spanish flu. (I agree that blaming Chinese culture for the problem is xenophobic nonsense though.)
- NeutronStar 6y agoSARS: 8k cases Bird flu: 861 cases Ebola: 28.6k cases