Around 15% of the common cold is caused by a coronavirus. Pretty sure everyone has been infected at least once by a coronavirus, which is just simply a name for the group of viruses due to their characteristic "corona" (crown) appearance under the electron microscope. The specific one causing problems now is SARS-CoV-2.
I don't think the virus is a serious threat, but it's infectious enough it'd be good to learn how to deal with something that actually did pose a danger.
Going to disagree with that. This is a serious threat. The disease causes a flood of patients that can easily overwhelm the capacity of hospitals and is easily infectious enough to readily infect hospital staff and require them to be taken out to avoid infecting others. This means that you’re losing the capacity to deal with all the other medical emergencies that happen regularly and that means lives that wouldn’t have died will die from this disease.
k2NeXTTUNE said:
The worldwide outbreak of COVID19 shouldn't be simply attribute to China.The First outbreak center ,WuHan,has been sealed from Jan.23.Every citizen are prohibited to go outside and their living nessarities are provided by the government and volunteers.WuHan actually has a population of around 14 millions of people,so the action of locking down is a very risky move and it did create much casualties on economic but controls the situation . Now there are only 4k people in China were infected ,yet in America and Europe,the number of patients and deaths are quickly increasing.Maybe some people will say Chinese government has falsified the data,but according to what I have seen in Guangdong province of China,the epidemic situation has been controlled effectively and the price of face mask has dropped to around 0.15 USD for one.The war between mankind and COVID19 needs the cooperation of different countries and races.
My issues with China was that they created the conditions for this to migrate from their original host animal to humans through their exotic animal markets due to having a rather strong cultural belief that eating exotic animals gives you "strength" or other attributes related to what you eat. This is of course due to the beliefs of the mysticism of their traditional Chinese medicines (TCM). Furthermore the government will not have learned their lesson on this, because they're tying in on TCMs as a part of approved traditional Chinese culture and that being pro-TCM means being pro-China. They're "crack-downing" on these markets for food, but they'll just leave the door wide open for these same markets for their medicines. Which is a growing business in China and something that their government has been heavily trying to push into other countries. Even being a major part of their "Belt and Road" initiative. In fact their government is using COVID-19 to be able to make further claims that TCMs work and mandated that TCMs had to be made a part of the treatment nationally for COVID-19, which in turn they're now using to push out "studies" that "prove" TCMs work.
Furthermore China manufactured something like 80% of the masks worldwide, and who knows what percentage of the ventilators. It's easy to make readily available the equipment and lower the prices when you're making probably most of the world's supply of these devices. It was smart on them to lock the exports of these things for their own use, but I find it rather insulting when people think there is any "good will" when China "donates" supplies to other countries to fight COVID-19. It's easy to donate supplies when you control the market on those supplies, and it's very easy to be out and low on those supplies when you gave up your production base to China to save on costs.
My issues with China was that they created the conditions for this to migrate from their original host animal to humans through their exotic animal markets due to having a rather strong cultural belief that eating exotic animals gives you "strength" or other attributes related to what you eat.
yes, but Chinese don't kill/eat bats, simply because "蝠"(bat) is the "福"(blessing; happiness; good fortune) also a stronger cultural belief. I don't know why Parauk & Indonesians eat bats so I won't go on about it.
yes, but Chinese don't kill/eat bats, simply because "蝠"(bat) is the "福"(blessing; happiness; good fortune) also a stronger cultural belief. I don't know why Parauk & Indonesians eat bats so I won't go on about it.
You don't need to kill/eat the animal for it to spread disease though. Just keeping live animals in unsanitary conditions where they could contaminate surfaces or other types of foods is enough. Even living in close proximity with the live animals allows the animal to spread disease. The issues with having these kinds of markets is sanitation and proximity of live animals of different kinds together. The sanitation is obvious, but the close proximity of different kinds of animals might not seem obvious. Lets take the flu as an example. Birds are the natural reservoir for influenza and all subtypes. The jump from birds to humans though is rather hard, but its easier for the flu to jump from birds to pigs. Pigs are much closer biologically to humans than birds, so pigs act as a great stepping stone for the flu to mutate and then be able to make the leap to infecting humans. Sites where humans raise lots of pigs and chickens in close proximity are actually great breeding grounds for new strains of flu. Placing exotic animals and just other animals in general in close proximity in unsanitary conditions act as breeding grounds for disease like this by reducing the health of the animals to make them more prone to illness and by increasing the exposure of disease from one animal to another to allow for them to make inter-species leaps of infection.
Anyways, I never specifically singled out bats. While there is some research to suggest that is the origin of the disease, I'm not going to specifically single them out when its the markets setup as a whole that is the breeding ground for disease. I'd personally wait until more conclusive studies come out on the origin of the disease before attributing them to bats. Although it's going to take a long time before that happens, if at all. As I understand it now the Chinese government has begun cracking down on Chinese studies of the origin of the disease and now requires that the central government approve the results of the study before they're allowed to publish it.
Edit: just to add some additional information. SARS and MERS are also believed to have originated from bats, but they were transmitted to humans from civets and dromedary camels. Having a direct link to bats is definitely not a necessity, but close proximity of these different animals certainly can allows these things to happen.
ネ申 said: I don't know why Parauk & Indonesians eat bats so I won't go on about it.
I mean, bats taste pretty good. I'm not Indonesian myself, but you'd be surprised by how many seemingly odd dishes can actually be appetizing. Sea cucumbers, for one, tastes very interesting if prepared correctly.
I mean, bats taste pretty good. I'm not Indonesian myself, but you'd be surprised by how many seemingly odd dishes can actually be appetizing. Sea cucumbers, for one, tastes very interesting if prepared correctly.
Indonesian here, and i can say, some of us DO eat exotic meats (mostly on the eastern part of Indonesia), and there is a well-known market there that sells some exotic meats like Wuhan ( Fox, crocodile,...dog, wolf, salamander, snake, rat, bat, peacock, porcupine,...koala, phyton, monkey, ...cat, wild boar, any possible meat you can ask, probably). Last time i heard the sales are booming, despite the on going pandemic.
SOME (mostly a small part of the non-muslim) of us eats them as some kinda folk medicine, but others eat it because it's delicious, and usually there are some regional recipes for each kind of meat. Bats are usually cooked as Paniki (spicy coconut milk soup with fruit bats/Kalong) or Sate Kalong (Skewered bat meat). Tried both of them and yeah, it's good.