god AMERICA is so fkn racist!!

Except that claim is silly and Italian cases came from China. But China did what it could once it recognized the situation, and it did far more and better than the USA. No one is to blame for the virus. Idiots like Trump are to blame for not taking obvious measures that would have saved lives.

Is China fudging their numbers? Uh yeah

There are reasonable doubts about china's numbers, but also some circumstances that make it very different from Europe. Its population is much much younger. Its old people are not comcentrated in understaffed residencies that have been defunded by privatizing neoliberals. And it is capable of a level of social control and imposition that is more difficult in europe and plainly impossible in the US.

The "wet markets" won't disappear and we can't expect them to. What we can, and should, demand is that those wet markets be brought up to the hygienic standards typical of similar markets in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore, you know, other Asian countries (SAR or whatever) that love their wet markets (and yes, wild/exotic food) but do much better jobs at keeping those markets hygienic.

I haven't seen the pictures but seeing as Wuhan is fairly affluent by China standards I bet that seafood market is perfectly fine and I'd probably have no problem shopping there.

Honestly, you probably shouldn't be, at least when it comes to meat.

This is a video of someone trying to paint Chinese wet markets in a more positive light.


Even he describes the markets as "dirtier." At 3:20 you can see customers touching raw meat (unrefrigerated raw meat btw)... some of the same customers will touch the fresh produce in different parts of the market.

I've been saying from very early on. The focus on exotic wildlife is misguided. The real problem is the Chinese people lack basic food safety/hygiene awareness.

It doesn't have to be that way. The Asian Tigers, in the wake of Hepatitis outbreaks, went on massive food safety education campaigns in the 70s-90s and they worked. Many European countries went through the same thing around the same time. Trace far back enough and US did the same thing (spawning the predecessors to FDA, USDA, and other food safety agencies in the process.)

That place is fine. Yeah, maybe someone is touching raw meat and then some lettuce or something and you'll get sick but it's not breeding the next novel coronavirus and how many spinach ecoli recalls (and deaths) are there in the states every year.
I'd be more worried about US chicken farms breeding some super virus from over crowding birds and pumping anti-biotics into them.

This is a nice market though for sure and I would guess not that uncommon but for sure there are probably some pretty gnarly markets in rural China (and all non 1st world Asian countries) but for the most part "wet" markets are perfectly fine. Billions of people shop and cook from them daily.

grizy spends tons of time with a chinese expat group in flushing, ny (iirc his wife is one) that includes a lot of political dissidents etc and that has dramatically influenced his viewpoint because his only interaction with China is with people who utterly hate it

much like if you were in the soviet union in the 70s and married into the American expat crowd in Moscow who burned their passports and renounced citizenship you'd probably justifiably believe how horrible america is because you're surrounded by a niche group that indeed hates it

you can rest assured literally anything he reads or sees about china, he's going to find something horribly wrong with it and when he can't he'll say it's all lies

he's also perfectly fine with lying and sees no problem with doing it so long as the lie helps emphasize the point he wanted to make - he's even admitted to that in this very thread

just something to realize going forward when you see his posts going forward

and yeah i agree, that market was no different than a farmer's market back home and the video and it's tone was 100% accurate and reflective of my own personal experience as well

we're so used to cellophane packaging and the word wet itself just feels unsanitary (nevermind that's it's an english word, there's no wet market translation in China it's just market or dried goods market) the wet market distinction is something uniquely english language driven

and my god, look at those filthy new yorkers touching the raw meat with ungloved hands






i'm not denying that they are not as clean or saying it's totally chill for people to walk around touching meat - especially customers

i'm just saying those cellophane wrapped steaks you bought at whole foods were easily touched by a dozen ungloved hands

my first venture into tech was setting up an online platform for a food wholeseller and i had to spend a lot of time dealing with the non tech side of the business - it took a long time for me to realize that most of the basic gloves and cellophane procedures you see done in the supermarket are more about presentation than anything else and when not in those customer centric displays the food is no longer given the white glove treatment but rather handled no differently than you would handle iron ore

supermarkets and their sanitary presentations are more about marketing cleanliness to customers with preconceived notions

again, this is not to say that china and many other countries shouldn't have higher hygiene standards at markets - i've been to a few myself where i was pretty shocked - i'm just saying that the aisles at whole foods are not at all representative of how that food was handled, packaged and treated before it made it's way to that shelf

But touching raw meat then vegetables does spread disease and increase probability even if the raw meat is not exotic or wild. Avian and swine flus for example came from meat nobody considers exotic.

Subjected to American inspection standards, I strongly suspect a large portion of the food in that wet market would have to be recalled. If nothing else, the pork at least wouldn’t pass the standards for meat storage.

What’s with all the wet market chatter? Okay they are dirty and unsanitary. It is really looking like the virus escaped from the lab accidentally. The problem is the CCP delaying information, preventing accurate information from being widely disseminated and putting out misinformation and propaganda. This is a real nightmare for the CCP and it will hopefully get much worse for them. The caveat is that facts seem to matter less and less in today’s world. If a fact doesn’t fit with the team narrative, then that fact may be disregarded to prevent head explosions, because god knows heads will explode before anyone absorbs facts that might cause a change of mind. Easier to ignore facts than confront reality.

It’s my truth damnit!

The pandemic is secondary bro. It has only served to expose these markets of raw flesh and vegetables intermingling.
People are touching raw meat with their hands. Raw meat damnit!
Viruses escaping labs happens, we can understand that but any government that allows these types of health standards must be stopped. We also need to get some people on the ground to collect evidence in North Korea. God knows what their markets look like

The problem is that it is standard in China to feel and touch the raw meat before you buy it.

true, but this is the case is many parts of the world

the real issue is that of all those wet market shock videos - almost none were in China (most filmed in Indonesia and they just said it was China for the views) because the stuff going on in Chinese markets is quite tame and nothing compared to that of Indonesia, Egypt, Ecuador, etc etc

and for what it's worth, the weird food stuff in china is highly concentrated in two provinces in the south, not at all representative of the rest of the country as a whole - it actually really upsets a lot of Chinese

just imagine if every time you traveled abroad everyone was convinced you lived in a trailer park and banged your cousin and you had to explain that wasn't normal every time

Yes, it should have been obvious that the entire "wetmarket" narrative was bogus from the second the CCP put it out and our own media latched onto it. China is a big place, and regions vary.

There are no wet markets (of the kind we are all thinking of), coronavirus carrying bats or pangolins in that part of China. Smart money has always been this virus was carried into Wuhan by scientists (where it may or may not have been modified), most likely in bats from SW China.

Wet market isn't the CCP narrative. Their narrative is, in essence, the uncultured southerners in a couple of provinces are eating wild animals.

As I have repeatedly said... it's scapegoating and trying to divert the issue away from something the CCP has been under pressure to deal with: food safety.

It's a very quick sleight of hand that worked to perfection and people bought it wholesale. It's actually pretty incredible.

Will there be legitimate pushback and punishment from the rest of the world for the virus and all pain in economic and health outcomes it has caused?

If so, what will it be?

I tend to think not much.

Wet market focus is a red herring. Meat eating is the real issue.

China doesn't have any wet markets. According to China.

The wet market BS has always been a red herring, that the CCP deliberately promoted to deflect from the real source.

wait what?

china is no longer allowed to have places to buy food?

That's quite a leap...

yes it is quite a leap declaring that china shouldn't allow people to buy any food that is not dried

it's even further a leap for an unquoted and unsourced vague statement of "china says" followed up by "they are a source of livelihood" so which is is it?

again, no quotes attached to anyone, it's just "china said"

the only guy they actually name and quote is not chinese

meanwhile they are showing images of indonesia in the background

gotta love the patronizing "you heard what he said?" nonsense too

then when they finally do go to a quote the official said something very different from what was earlier stated - they are saying China claims they don't have markets in general, the guy clearly said there are no markets to buy wildlife - which is 100% true, there are no legal open air markets like that because it's illegal, anything of that sort wouldn't be in an open market but done behind closed doors

he then goes on to describe the wet markets they do have, the journalist then says "oh he is still claiming they don't have wet markets"

she keeps acting as if a wet market is something that exclusively sells live wildlife captured from the woods and yet she even then defines it correctly as "sells perishable goods" so it doesn't even make any sense

then she shows a bunch of farm raised aquaculture seafood as if it's something crazy, showing a bunch of stuff you can buy at any seafood wholesaler in NYC - wow those people have live crawfish, what a danger to society!

seriously man, are you ******ed? i'm genuinely concerned for you

Did I just see a goalpost being moved?
Cite where it's said verbatim that
I won't hold my breath.
If it's illegal then China should be doing something about that, don't you think? Rather than letting it go on. (But I'm $ure they have their rea$on$).

Seems that any source which doesn't speak about China in glowing terms just isn't reliable enough for you...

Wet markets per se shouldn't be banned, and cannot be realistically banned.

Same thing can be said, to lesser extent, of the wild life trade.

China needs to significantly improve food safety/hygiene education and enforcement. Why they haven't done so despite various food safety scandals (not even counting SARS and Avian flus, they've had enough to bring any democratically elected government down) is beyond me.