Wild-Animal Markets Pose Rising Pandemic Threat (nature.com) 78
Live-animal markets across Southeast Asia continue operating as natural laboratories for deadly pathogens despite warnings from public health experts about their role in disease transmission, according to new research published in Nature.
Scientists studying markets like Jakarta's Jatinegara found that coronavirus detection rates in trafficked animals increase dramatically along supply chains, with rats sold at Vietnamese markets testing positive at rates ten times higher than those caught in fields. Pangolins confiscated in Vietnam showed a seven-fold increase in coronavirus infections compared to animals seized earlier in the smuggling process.
The research comes as political headwinds have severely reduced funding for pandemic preparedness, with the Trump administration terminating a $125-million disease monitoring program and cutting all USAID functions. Scientists report growing reluctance from government officials to authorize publication of pathogen discoveries, fearing stigma and trade restrictions, while wildlife traders increasingly avoid participating in studies that could reveal new health risks.
Scientists studying markets like Jakarta's Jatinegara found that coronavirus detection rates in trafficked animals increase dramatically along supply chains, with rats sold at Vietnamese markets testing positive at rates ten times higher than those caught in fields. Pangolins confiscated in Vietnam showed a seven-fold increase in coronavirus infections compared to animals seized earlier in the smuggling process.
The research comes as political headwinds have severely reduced funding for pandemic preparedness, with the Trump administration terminating a $125-million disease monitoring program and cutting all USAID functions. Scientists report growing reluctance from government officials to authorize publication of pathogen discoveries, fearing stigma and trade restrictions, while wildlife traders increasingly avoid participating in studies that could reveal new health risks.
Wait, wait... (Score:1)
Didn't the current US administration maintain the "global plandemic" was a result of a laboratory development that went into the wild?
These so-called "scientists" must either be bought by the CCP or be a part of the global elite.
Unpossible for a new and deadly virus to emerge from the gut of a bat!
The banana was made to fit the hand.
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The virus was completely unknown until it happened to surface in Wuhan, near a lab doing research on ACE2 binding chimeric corona viruses in cooperation with Baric and Daszak. That it's everywhere now, including in other animals with ACE2 receptors, has little bearing on the origin.
God the bots are going to be in rare form today (Score:2)
1. We do not have the technology to engineer viable viruses. Gain of function research results in changes that do not persist across generations. Any country that solves that problem wouldn't be wasting the technology on bio weapons that could backfire on their own troops they would be patenting it making a killing off of advanced medicine.
2. Covid is defeated by mask wearing and hand washing. The only reason it was such a mess is we having competent buffoons in charg
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a biohazard lab would have had no issues containing covid whatsoever
Point of order: mistakes are made. Take the Sverdlovsk incident for example - which released anthrax, much easier to contain than a virus. You can add layers of protocols and equipment, but if the holes in the Swiss cheese eventually align, there will be an incident.
Dude that wouldn't be a mistake (Score:2)
As incompetent as human beings can be you are just not going to convince me that somebody who works in a biohazard level 4 lab is going to do something like that.
If you can't see that then you are so far gone I don't even know where to begin. This is an identity marker for you it has nothing to do with reality.
Believing in the lab leak has bec
Re: Dude that wouldn't be a mistake (Score:2)
Re: Dude that wouldn't be a mistake (Score:2)
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As incompetent as human beings can be you are just not going to convince me that somebody who works in a biohazard level 4 lab is going to do something like that.
I'm generally with you on this, but this part of your argument is bananas. That Wuhan lab has had leaks before, so we know for sure that they are incompetent.
The record of the USA v Covid is not so bad (Score:2)
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
clearly shows that the cases per million population is significantly below average whilst the death rate isn't especially high. Given the poor state of the USA's population's heath, the high death rate compared with cases isn't a surprise.
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You wouldn't even get a sick animal if it couldn't survive through generations. It can not stabilise to a less virulent natural form, because the natural form isn't infectious in the animals being experimented on. The changes persist and stabilise or the virus disappears.
The boatload of HIV variants they created through serial passage for macaques persist across generations just fine. There is good reason the NIH initially suspected serial passage, that's just what you do to stabilise an engineered virus.
The Chinese view (Score:1)
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"Disgusting" is an emotional condemnation, and it's ridiculous. It's not disgusting when a tiger does it, why should it be disgusting when an omnivore like a human does? This is just misapplied hatred for your species - it's wrong if we do it, even when the vast majority of animal life ends with being eaten."You" might find it disgusting... and that's fine. But the blanket condemnation is not yours to make on behalf of everybody. 2% of the human population is vegan, about 15% vegetarian.
"Unhealthy" is very
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When I die, I want someone to take my body out to the woods and dump it, so the wild animals can eat me. It's only fair.
I'm serious.
Unfortunately, that's not legal. So I'll be burned or buried and I can't give something back.
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Not so bad: burial is just another form of wild animals eating your body.
Worm food isn't as sexy as Vulture food, or Hyena food, and both of those are less sexy than Tiger food, but unless you want to go be painfully fresh meat, Tigers won't eat you anyway.
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Too expensive. I'm going to tell my kids to donate my body. That's free. Even cremation costs thousands.
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When I die, I want someone to take my body out to the woods and dump it, so the wild animals can eat me. It's only fair.
I'm serious.
Unfortunately, that's not legal. So I'll be burned or buried and I can't give something back.
Your view is short--sighted. Look at the bigger picture: Matter can be converted to energy and energy converted into matter, but no matter what, you can not destroy them... therefore, you will be giving something back regardless. All that will be lost is the organization of matter of energy that comprises you.
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It's not disgusting when a tiger does it, why should it be disgusting when an omnivore like a human does?
let me think about this profound question about half a second. yes: because a tiger has no other alternative, doesn't know better and just hunts what it can eat, as opposed to omnivores like humans bringing on an industrial scale millions of sentient beings into a miserable life under conditions which often amount to torture just so that other omnivores can stuff one slice of bacon after another into their drippy mouthes without any effort and increase their chance of a happy and satisfied death by cardiova
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Your post just reeks of that same personal bias. And you've move the goalposts a very long way.
Agency doesn't nullify basic biology. Being aware of the fact that you are eating an animal doesn't change the situation.
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because a tiger has no other alternative
Nor do we. Some people think we do and malnourish themselves.
doesn't know better and just hunts what it can eat
They also kill each other territorially, and males kill offspring of other males.
as opposed to omnivores like humans bringing on an industrial scale millions of sentient beings into a miserable life under conditions which often amount to torture
OK, object to people who eat factory produced meat, then. That would be consistent with your argument.
can stuff one slice of bacon after another into their drippy mouthes
Yes, our mouths become "drippy" when we eat bacon, because bacon is delicious and makes one's mouth water.
and increase their chance of a happy and satisfied death by cardiovascular "disease"
We're all gonna die, like that crazy congresscreep said, except she was talking about running other people's lives... oh, and so are you.
it is reckless, inefficient, antieconomic
Antieconomic? It produces
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>Nor do we. Some people think we do and malnourish themselves.
This is a fallacy and shows you great bias. Of *course* we can eat a perfectly healthy diet and not eat meat. Been Done. Boring. It's not even a question.
AND yet here you are trotting out this tripe.
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You do realize that vast amounts of scientific knowledge are needed in order to not eat meat... right?
You have to know about vitamins and muscles and cells and electrolytes... or, you could just eat meat and not need to know any of that scientificy type stuff.
Numerous people have malnourished themselves while trying to abstain from meat. The fact that some have not malnourished themselves does not make what OP said tripe.
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It's also disgusting when a tiger does it.
Nature is a horror show.
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... it's unhealthy and disgusting.
I bet you buy all of your meat cleaned and neatly wrapped in plastic at the grocery.
You're missing the whole blood, gore, and violence part of the process.
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But unhealthy? No, you're built to consume meat. Consuming the food you're built to consume is inherently healthy.
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Fish is healthy.
Meat is not healthy (as shown by literally thousands of studies of health vs. diet)
Humans are "built" to be omnivores. That is, they can eat and survive on both plants and animals.
Pre-agricultural humans hunted meat, fish, insects and plants and survived.
The problem is that meat consumption doesn't scale.
What worked for small bands of hunter gatherers doesn't work for modern humans. As soon as agriculture was developed, land was cleared and burned to raise crops and feed for animals. Over ti
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>The problem is that meat consumption doesn't scale.
That's a different problem than the one you were citing earlier. So which is it. It doesn't scale (which it could), or we aren't built for it (which we are)?
Lol. You people are so funny.
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Your problem isn't with meat; it's with the policy decisions of some South American nations. Deal with the actual problem, not a side effect some vegetarian with an agenda wishes was the actual problem.
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Fish is healthy but it doesn't scale.
Most fisheries are over-fished and collapsing.
Farmed fish is an environmental and human disaster.
As far as beef goes.
It is not healthy.
It does not scale. 70% of plants (primarily corn and soy grown on denuded land worldwide) are used to feed cattle.
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Factory farming.
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... humans are disgusting animals which do unhealthy things to themselves and every -thing/ -one around them.
Next question?
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In no small part due to their bad diet.
Re: Go Vegan... And Nobody Gets Hurt (Score:1)
Stop the other omnivores from eating meat first.
I bet you have a cat you feed rice and lentils.
Not just wild animals.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Farmed animals are a fantastic breeding ground for pathogens as well.
Just look at what's going on with the bird flu right now.
It's almost like there's a pattern with keeping animals captive.....!
Why do they act like the US has to pay for it? (Score:1)
Well, tell that to Vietnam, Thailand and China. The US taxpayer is not responsible for sanitation standards in their nations. I can't afford to try to save them from themselves.
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China banned wild animal markets. It has 6 trillion of foreign reserves in the bank though and it's right next to these countries ... I thought China wanted to take a greater place on the world stage, why does it all have to fall on the US still?
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They are: The Health Silk Road - A Branch of China’s Belt and Road Initiative "The HSR reflects the Chinese party-state’s vision of a future China-led order grounded in the rejection of Western systems of belief and their replacement with quintessentially Chinese alternatives." https://www.nbr.org/publicatio... [nbr.org]
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Their problems become our problems because microbes don't respect borders, and are not sending their best.
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Just look at the fiasco that is the US response to bird flu. Farmers not participating in monitoring, states not restricting the movement of infected livestock, the government cutting the agencies responsible for dealing with it. And hey, RFK Jr. just canceled all funding [arstechnica.com] for a vaccine against it. Way to go! If it doesn't turn into a pandemic, it will be purely luck. And if it does, the whole world will suffer.
Everyone is responsible, because everyone affects the whole world. And if you're looking for
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Or everyone can just keep their own house in order.
Does that mean you think the US needs to start taking responsibility for disease prevention within its own borders? That means comprehensive monitoring and reporting of disease outbreaks (both in humans and in livestock), restricting movement of infected animals, strongly encouraging vaccination, reducing contact between humans and wild animals, and so on. That's what it would take to get your house in order.
Or are you just being hypocritical, blaming other countries for not managing infectious disease wh
We're all doomed (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/V7NlFWh7Sz8 [youtu.be]
Unpossible (Score:2)
I mean you really think somebody would do that? Just go on the internet and lie?
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Don't feed the conspiratrolls
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Meanwhile, on the other side
The other side of what? Your sanity? That explains how you can imagine all that stuff to cry about.
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Gain-of-Function research pose pandemic threat (Score:2)
NIH official finally admits taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan — after years of denials [nypost.com]
Rep. Debbie Lesko: “did NIH fund gain-of-function res
Global Mismanagement of COVID-19 Pandemic (Score:2)
“During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2023), governments around the world implemented an unprecedented array of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2. From early 2021, these were accompanied by major population-wide COVID-19 vaccination programmes–often using novel mRNA/DNA technology, although some countries used traditional vaccines.”
“Both the NPIs and the vacci
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Research can lead to strange and unexpected places. Still, something underhanded may have been going on. Hard to tell from the outside.
What is rising? (Score:2)
"Wild-Animal Markets Pose Rising Pandemic Threat"
My bet would be that the last is the most likely to be changing, by the largest amount.
Is preparedness for another pandemic rising or falling globally? I'm not sure - probably it is rising in some nations, and falling in others. Ones wh
Classic market failure (Score:2)
The wild animal trade is a rounding error compared to the cost of a global pandemic. In any rational economic system, we wouldn't tolerate this. Everyone would work together to monitor animals and stop disease outbreaks. It's insane not to.
But our economic system isn't rational. Animal traders don't want to know if their animals are diseased: a positive test could shut down their business. Governments don't want anyone to know if they have an outbreak in progress, because that could lead to trade restr
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They are not part of your economic system. If they were, you would be financing their way out of eating wild animals (jobs? UBI?). I don't see that happening. "Our" economic system has nothing to do with what "they" are doing... so why bring it up?
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Who do you mean by "they"? And who is the "us" that is different from "them"? You seem to be dividing people up in some unspecified way that apparently is obvious to you but not to me.
BS Predictive Programming (Score:1)