F&$K Wu! Chinese Wet Markets Reopen

Phil Stilton

Cats, Dogs and coronavirus infected bats are back on the menu in China.

WUHAN, CHINA-Reports are coming out of China this week of the wet market industry reopening, despite being recognized for many years as a high-risk activity when it comes to spreading human pandemics.

It is also suspected that the current global COVID-19 pandemic which has killed nearly 40,000 people worldwide and infected well over one million people globally started in the Wuhan wet market in China.  According to Fox News and other reports, those markets are now back in business.    It’s a place where you can find dogs, cats, bats, rats, and pretty much anything you want.  Videos show animals in cages in unsanitary conditions, slaughtered on site, skinned and prepared as you wait.

Wet markets were identified as a high-risk activity in a scientific report conducted back in 2013.


Human infections with the then-emerging avian influenza A H7N9 virus were traced back to wet market poultry.


“Human infection with avian influenza A H7N9 virus emerged in eastern China in February 2013, and has been associated with exposure to poultry,” according to a study conducted by the Lancet. “We report the clinical and microbiological features of patients infected with influenza A H7N9 virus and compare genomic features of the human virus with those of the virus in market poultry in Zhejiang, China.”

That global pandemic started just like the COVID-19 pandemic.  Between March 7 and April 8, 2013, hospital inpatients had a new-onset respiratory symptoms, unexplained radiographic infiltrate, and laboratory-confirmed H7N9 virus infection.

“We recorded histories and results of hematological, biochemical, radiological, and microbiological investigations. We took throat and sputum samples, used RT-PCR to detect M, H7, and N9 genes, and cultured samples in Madin-Darby canine kidney cells,” the study concluded. “We tested for co-infections and monitored serum concentrations of six cytokines and chemokines. We collected cloacal swabs from 86 birds from epidemiologically linked wet markets and inoculated embryonated chicken eggs with the samples.”

It was the smoking gun.  China had infected the world.  The southeast Asian wet markets are once again the next pandemic waiting to happen…and this one isn’t over yet. Maybe the next time, the third time will be a charm!

“It’s a time bomb,” Tucker Carlson reported. “China continues to threaten the rest of us.”

Chinese wet markets with live poultry trade have been considered as major sources of pathogen dissemination, and sites for horizontal transfer of bacterial and viral pathogens according to a scientific study by Chineses researchers X.L. Gao and M.F. Shao.

According to Professor Robert Webster at the Division of Virology, Department of Infectious Diseases, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, wet markets are a continuing source of severe acute respiratory syndrome and influenza.

“Live-animal markets (wet markets) provide a source of vertebrate and invertebrate animals for customers in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Wet markets sell live poultry, fish, reptiles, and mammals of every kind. Live-poultry markets (mostly chicken, pigeon, quail, ducks, geese, and a wide range of exotic wild-caught and farm-raised fowl) are usually separated from market selling fish or red-meat animals, but the stalls can be near each other with no physical separation,” Dr. Webster said. “Despite the widespread availability of affordable refrigeration, many Asian people prefer live animals for fresh produce. Wet markets are widespread in Asian countries and in countries where Asian people have migrated. Live-poultry markets were the source of the H5N1 bird-influenza virus that transmitted to and killed six of 18people in Hong Kong.”

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Webster predicted more pandemics originating from China’s wet markets after the SARS pandemic. It wasn’t a difficult determination as most of the pandemic flu outbreaks of the 20th and 21st centuries originated in China, according to published studies.

It’s not just China these days.  Webster also warns of the emerging wet markets in New York City.

“Live-poultry markets in the USA have been associated with the emergence of H5 and H7 influenza viruses, which are a threat to commercial poultry. To date, neither the highly pathogenic H5N2 nor the emerging H7N2 viruses in the USA have been shown to be pathogenic for human beings,” Webster reported. “Notwithstanding, ongoing surveillance provides information on the role of these markets in the continuing evolution of H7N2 viruses with pathogenic potential for poultry, and the difficulty or seemingly impossible task of eliminating H7N2 influenza viruses from markets, despite many attempts. Additionally in New York, the number of live-poultry markets nearly doubled from 44 in 1994 to over 80 in 2002. Surveillance in live-poultry markets in the USA serves as an early-warning system of emerging influenza viruses that are a threat to the poultry industry and potentially to human beings.”

The Asian Flu of 1957-1958 killed one million people.  The Hong Kong Flu of 1968-1970 also killed one million people.  SARS killed 770.  The H5N1 Avian flu spread globally but killed few and now COVID-19 has killed 40,000 people globally and it’s not done killing yet. Those deaths lie squarely in the hands of the Chinese government and their irresponsibility to their own people and the people of the world by allowing the wet markets to continue operating the way they have been for many decades.

Long after patient zero, Wei Guixian, a shrimp vendor at the Wuhan wet market died, the world is left with the death and cost of protecting its inhabitants from China’s recklessness and to that, we say, “F%$K Wu!”.

 

 

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