Updated 2 years ago
Bubonic Plague, Lyme Disease, Malaria, Ebola, 1918 Spanish Flu, AIDS, SARS, H1N1, Coronavirus – a small list of diseases that came from animals. Identifying the problem is half the solution.
Texas Republican John Cornyn is correct, and deserves credit for speaking candidly about the problem in a non politically correct way, and who, along with Ted Cruz, supported aid for Coronavirus relief. Many Texan congressmen did not.
If any action can be taken to stop China’s major contribution in making exotic animals go extinct, exacerbated by their huge presence in Africa, (and who wants to volunteer to go door to door in Africa telling tribesmen they can’t eat bush meat!?) I am fully behind it, but with a huge caveat.
The other half of the solution? Eating meat is increasingly the problem.
If you start blaming Chinese for Coronavirus, you’re also going to have to blame deer hunters if Chronic Wasting Disease, AKA “Zombie Deer Disease” jumps to humans like Mad Cow Disease did. It is a disaster in the making. It IS on the horizon and it’s going to be bad.
Prions are next to impossible to”kill,” even with fire.
This hits home. My aunt died young of the related Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is Mad Cow Disease. To this day we cannot go anywhere near her body.
China’s wet markets and Africa’s bush meat trade need to be shut down or regulated. But are we really prepared as a nation to outlaw eating venison from deer? Imagine the reaction from the NRA. I just don’t think John Cornyn has the cajones to say what he just said about China, to American hunters and gun owners.
If you want to blame someone, blame meat eaters. But are we really ready as a nation to go vegetarian? I know I’m not. I love eating meat!
The problem with attacking cultures is that we could end up in a situation similar to the incarceration of Japanese during WW2. Already, the ugly stereotype of those weird Chinese who eat cats and dogs is starting to propagate. A while back I did some extensive digging and could find zero evidence of Chinese restaurants in America serving cats or dogs.
This isn’t new. Jews and Muslims look at Christians as dirty for eating pork. Pork spread diseases in the old world. This is where parts of our Old Testament come from. And Pigs are as about as smart as dogs! Hindus look at us as monsters for eating cows. Imagine how they think of Midwestern farmers eating cow testicles, which is a thing – it’s called “Mountain Oysters.”Jainists think all meat eaters are abominations.
The list goes on. It’s all culture, but the cultures that enable extinction and the spreading of disease need to be addressed.
This will be exceedingly difficult in the West, as the culture of Europe living in a symbiotic relationship with close quartered livestock has a history going back thousands of years, and was the reason it so easily conqeured the New World.