The “wet market”

[Maistre Gracey]

Apparently most, if not all of these strange viruses have roots to the Wet Market.
Why is China allowing this, if true.

 

[Welsh_Dragon]

I wish that there was a ‘medical theorist’ forum. I just don’t know how many people on this forum are qualified to help you to find a reliable and fact based answer.

 

[Maistre Gracey]

I wish that there was a ‘medical theorist’ forum. I just don’t know how many people on this forum are qualified to help you to find a reliable and fact based answer.

Correct. I’m just going by news reports, right or wrong. There does seem to be some fact based evidence, but I’m far from an an expert in this field.

 

[dish rag]

Correct. I’m just going by news reports, right or wrong. There does seem to be some fact based evidence, but I’m far from an an expert in this field.

When reading about wet markets there does seem to be evidence from reliable sources.

 

[HeatherC]

I read that these are hard to shut down because there is also a traditional and spiritual element in them. They have been around for thousands of years and the practice of selling and eating exotic animals has traditions that go back forever. Apparently, certain exotic animals are believed to have healing powers for different ailments. Hard to break thousands of years of tradition.

Not sure if this is true or not, but it sounds logical.

 

[BuckeyeBama]

The problem is not the wet markets themselves - it is the specific wild animals that are eaten around the world. We also eat wild animals in America. Every country does. And we also have "wet" markets in America. Just visit your nearest seafood market. This particular virus took off in a seafood market in China, but we have no idea where the first person (patient zero) became infected.

When animals have to go through a screening process, sick animals are removed from the food supply. When we handle or eat wild animals, we do not know if they are sick or not unless it is extremely obvious.

Even handling sick animals presents risks. Some viruses carry over to humans. Most don't. But the more people there are in the world, the more likely we are to come into contact with sick animals, thereby the greater the risk that we will find the one virus that happens to be exactly in the mutated form necessary to make the jump.

HIV jumped species. Ebola jumped species. Flu strains jumped species. Lyme and the Bubonic plague jumped species with an intermediary.

This has always happened, and it will always happen.

 

[charlie.nj]

I never heard of wet markets before coronavirus.

Someone posted this Vox piece on a NJ website. Yikes.

How wildlife trade is linked to coronavirus

 

[charlie.nj]

ignore double post

 

[mnrose]

I never heard of wet markets before coronavirus.

Someone posted this Vox piece on a NJ website. Yikes.

How wildlife trade is linked to coronavirus

Never been to Asia then? I saw them many places when we traveled to Bali. It's as "natural" to them as going to 7-11 or Kwik Trip is to us. It's how they get their food. And, these viruses have ALWAYS jumped from animals to humans. The difference now is everything is quickly global because of how we now live. The virus moves very quickly from area to area around the globe.

 

[L&Lfan]

I thought the Wuhan virus started because someone ate a bat and HIV started because someone ate a chimp or bonobo.

 

[china mom]

Minor technicality but the virus is spread as a respiratory illness through droplets found is body fluids such as saliva and mucus. It is not from eating the tissue of an animal.

So, while the virus made the jump to humans from people handling an infected bat or pangolin that was being marketed for consumption, it wasn't transmitted by person actually eating it.

I know it is a petty difference but I get annoyed when people say it was from "eating a bat". It was from handling a bat or pangolin

You may now continue with your regularly scheduled discussion

 

[pryncess527]

So, while the virus made the jump to humans from people handling an infected bat or pangolin that was being marketed for consumption, it wasn't transmitted by person actually eating it.

I know it is a petty difference but I get annoyed when people say it was from "eating a bat". It was from handling a bat or pangolin

Same with HIV - hunters came in contact with infected blood while hunting

 

[PollyannaMom]

I never heard of wet markets before coronavirus.

Someone posted this Vox piece on a NJ website. Yikes.

How wildlife trade is linked to coronavirus

Wow!! That's awful.

 

[sailorstitch]

I never heard of wet markets before coronavirus.

Someone posted this Vox piece on a NJ website. Yikes.

How wildlife trade is linked to coronavirus

That is disgusting! Those poor animals. I'd also never heard of wet markets before this whole thing started. I'd been meaning to Google what a wet market was. I was thinking seafood.

 

[dish rag]

That is disgusting! Those poor animals. I'd also never heard of wet markets before this whole thing started. I'd been meaning to Google what a wet market was. I was thinking seafood.

Yes it’s sick. Nothing like a N American seafood place like was suggested.

 

[L&Lfan]

What a sick practice!

 

[AtlantaDisneyDreamer]

It may be tradition and it may be linked to cultural practice, but there are reasons that traditions and cultures change over time. As we become aware of the dangers and cruelty of certain cultural practices, we work to change those practices. That has been the case for many historical cultural practices which, for good reason, no longer exist. Dr. Fauci says these wet markets need to be shut down immediately. I have read that it is documented that they have created a number of worldwide health problems.

Cultures around the world deserve respect and preservation, but when cultural practices cause great suffering among a great number, it is time to change those cultural practices. There has to be a balance of respect for world culture and security for world citizens.

 

[NotUrsula]

China *could* regulate the markets in such a way as to reduce their risk. As someone else pointed out, butchering to order isn't the issue; it is the conditions under which it done that is.

People everywhere had butchers kill animals to order before refrigeration; that was how it was done. However, those were domesticated animals bred for food, and the operations were very small and locally run. China's wet market situation is different in 2 ways: 1) these are large-scale operations that are not well-regulated for hygiene, and 2) they sell the meat of captured wild land animals, along with domestic animal meat. (If the markets sold only fish that would be pretty safe, but fish are not in the transmission chain for this kind of disease.)

What wild animals get up to and are exposed to before you capture them is a mystery. Any food hunter can tell you that you watch the animal you are stalking, and if its behavior is off, you either don't kill it, or you kill it and (under safe conditions) burn it immediately because it might be diseased. Hunters look for signs of disease in a kill, and if they see them, they don't eat the meat. That is much harder to ensure if someone else is doing the hunting for you. In some cases you cannot see disease but are warned, such as the warnings currently in place in many US jurisdictions about getting prion diseases from the brain tissue of hunted unguents. For example: these are the rules in Missouri for having harvested deer tested: https://huntfish.mdc.mo.gov/hunting...sting-disease-cwd/mandatory-cwd-sampling-2019.

The first key to stopping the rise of diseases from wild animal-human contact is to stop the market selling of the meat of wild-caught land animals. The markets can still exist, but they must be limited to selling only farm-raised animals, and they need to be divided into types, so that many different live species are not mingling under one roof. And, of course, they need to upgrade their facilities and practices to provide for much higher hygiene standards not only for the animals, but for the humans who handle them. There are challenges, though: a few years ago after SARS, many local governments in China tried a push to convert the primitive wet market facilities to western-style buildings with Western-style hygienic practices, but the movement failed because the new rules drastically increased food prices, so people avoided markets that had adopted them.

My feeling is that If folks still want to follow traditional beliefs about consuming wild animals, then they need to start adding hunting prowess to their repertoires. If you are going to persist in the practice of eating those animals, then you need to also be willing and able to hunt and kill them with your own hand for your own consumption.

 

[luvmarypoppins]

My dh has gone on business trips to China many times.
Once he inquired what the building was across from his hotel and why were there so many trucks there at night.
He was told it was a crematorium and all human ash that remains is hauled away and used as fertilizer for vegetable and fruit crops.
Yup, so much for cultural practices.

 

[a1tinkfans]

The theory that it was a sick animal handled by a human is one theory. There are others that think it was a lab released virus ( which is largely debunked).
New England Journal of Medicine described it ..that an infected bat came into contact with live animals at a specific wet market, in wuhan, which was then closed. What they don’t know is How it got from the infected animal/s to the humans, either ingesting it or being in contact with infected urine or feces. No one knows yet.
Eventually we ll all know. These markets are not unusual in Asia. Cultural differences abound.