Zakar wrote:I don't think it's ridiculous to be pissed off with China about this. It's their medieval food hygiene practices that got us to this place in the first place.
That's possibly a bit unfair. There is a tiny minority of mainly rich and old Chinese people that consume "exotic" meats such as bat and pangolin, but the vast majority find it abhorrent. Hopefully the consumption of these meats will die out with the younger generation. However, your typical Chinese person has a much closer relationship with the food he eats than a Westerner. Instead of buying turkey twizlers or bits of chicken wrapped in plastic and foam from the supermarket, they will go to the wet market and select a handsome healthy looking chicken, get it slaughtered in front of them and take it home. Many, even ones living in an urban environment, will raise their own fowl in their gardens. Coupled with high density living conditions, zoonotic infections do therefore have a good chance of emerging. Also, there is over 1. 4 billion of them. As has been mentioned, many zoonotic diseases also arise from other places, HIV, ebola, h1n1, mers etc.