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Wild-Animal Markets Pose Rising Pandemic Threat (nature.com) 85

Posted by msmash from the deja-vu dept.
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.
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Wild-Animal Markets Pose Rising Pandemic Threat More

Wild-Animal Markets Pose Rising Pandemic Threat

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  • Wait, wait... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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.

    • 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.

      • Just to get this out of the way.

        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

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by larwe ( 858929 )

          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.

          • That would be somebody who works in a biohazard level 4 lab showing up to work and not wearing an n95 mask and not washing their hands when handling samples.

            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
            • I am not passing any opinion on the origins of COVID; I have no information and hence no way to make a meaningful opinion. I don't believe in conspiracy theories either, and I think "man eats bat, virus spreads" is a much more plausible scenario than "multiple layers of biohazard protection fail, sinister bioweapon escapes" simply from Occam's Razor. ALL I was saying is that protection is probabilistic.

            • 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.

        • 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.

        • 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.

    • They simply believe someone took dead animals from the lab and sold them at the market. But no, you cry, how could someone possibly travel day and age from a lab in Wuhan they do not live at, back to own their home, let alone to a market with over 1,000 shops selling freshly dead animals.

  • Not just wild animals.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Vegan Cyclist ( 1650427 ) on Tuesday June 03, 2025 @10:42AM (#65424425) Homepage

    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.....!

  • Live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, yet scientists lack support to study the risks they pose.

    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.

    • 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?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Their problems become our problems because microbes don't respect borders, and are not sending their best.

      • And that means they can shift responsibility and costs to the US? No. Nations are responsible for their own internal health and safety standards. They need to do more, not me.

        • 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

          • Or everyone can just keep their own house in order. I don't like this, "it affects everyone, so the US has to pay for it", nonsense. Each country is responsible for its own domestic affairs. It doesn't matter if an issue is global, response and management is still ultimately a domestic issue for each government. The US has no authority over sanitation standards in Thailand, thus no responsibility for them. That authority and responsibility lies with the Thai government. If they want to pay for our hel

            • 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

              • Yes, we should have some sort of Department of Agriculture and some kind of administrative body monitoring food and drugs. Oh wait, we do. Not to mention State-level agencies, the CDC...

                Your argument is ridiculous. It boils down to, "you aren't doing a good enough job domestically, so you should be doing it globally."

                I'm saying that each nation is responsible for the health and safety of its own citizens, a truism.

                • I'm saying that each nation is responsible for the health and safety of its own citizens, a truism.

                  Or a falsehood, depending on what you mean by "responsible".

                  Every country (and every person) is responsible for the effects of its actions, in the sense of, "has a duty to consider them and mitigate the negative effects." Actions by one country affect other countries. A disease outbreak in one country will quickly spread to others. Therefore, every country is responsible for the health of every other country, because its actions impact the health of every other country.

                  Or put aside the moral questions an

                  • You do realize that the same outcome is achieved if each nation takes care to prevent their own domestic outbreaks, right?

                    Nations have a responsibility not to let domestic outbreaks spread beyond their borders. That's the end of it.

                    It's one thing for nations to assist each other in fighting outbreaks, but quite another to be monitoring sanitation standards in a nation like Thailand that can damn well afford to do it themselves.

  • I have it on good authority from randos on the internet that the only known cause of pandemics is people in white coats using technologies that don't exist to engineer viruses for bio weapons. And under no circumstances are you to question the efficacy of a bio-weapon versus good ole fashioned bombs because who are we to question random people on the internet?

    I mean you really think somebody would do that? Just go on the internet and lie?
  • “the Commission confirmed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology [europa.eu] (WIV) – where the COVID-19 virus is reported to have originated – benefited from EU funding in 2015 and 2019. An EU delegation also visited the virology lab for the launch of its ‘high-risk pathogen biosafety research facility’ in 2015.”

    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
  • What Lessons can Be Learned From the Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic? [ssph-journal.org]

    “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

  • "Wild-Animal Markets Pose Rising Pandemic Threat"

    • Is the prevalence of wild-animal markets rising? (Unlikely, if the Chinese crack-down is even moderately effective.)
    • Is the threat (per animal, or per market ; define your measures) rising?
    • Or is perception of the hazard rising.

    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

  • 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

    • 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?

      • 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.

  • Come on people this is just more predictive programming to try to plant the expectation for another man-made plandemic. Don't be sheeple!

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