For some weeks now the re-opening in Wuhan, China of the now infamous ‘meat markets’ has been widely reported by news agencies across China and the rest of the globe, stating that things are slowly getting back to ‘normal’.
The reason for inverted commas in the sentence above is that ‘meat markets’ could be replaced with ‘animal cruelty centres’, and ‘normal’ is being emphasised as it seems… no lessons have been learned.
It is easy in times like these to lose some balance in perception, and the media, especially social media is full of people lashing out at anything and everything they can right now.
China is certainly a target for venting at the moment, and in many ways, you could ask if have they got off lightly, or at least so far.
SARS a warning ignored
To quote the UK NHS website:
The SARS pandemic
“SARS originated in China in 2002. It’s thought that a strain of the coronavirus usually only found in small mammals mutated, enabling it to infect humans.
“The SARS infection quickly spread from China to other Asian countries. There were also a small number of cases in several other countries, including 4 in the UK, plus a significant outbreak in Toronto, Canada.
“The SARS pandemic was eventually brought under control in July 2003, following a policy of isolating people suspected of having the condition and screening all passengers travelling by air from affected countries for signs of the infection.
“During the period of infection, there were 8,098 reported cases of SARS and 774 deaths. This means the virus killed about 1 in 10 people who were infected. People over the age of 65 were particularly at risk, with over half of those who died from the infection being in this age group.
“In 2004 there was another smaller SARS outbreak linked to a medical laboratory in China. It was thought to have been the result of someone coming into direct contact with a sample of the SARS virus, rather than being caused by animal-to-human or human-to-human transmission.”
Researching numerous credible medical sources the simple fact of the matter is: people in China who eat rare and exotic animals run a very high risk of a coronavirus infection.
The SARS pandemic gave the world a severe warning of what could happen if the Chinese meat markets were allowed to continue trading. They were, and we are all now living through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rubbing salt into injured wounds
To add insult to injury, and rub plenty of salt into countless wounds, as we opened with… the ‘animal cruelty centres’ in China have now been re-opened while the rest of the world is paying a very dear price for their existence.
The outcry has been somewhat muted so far, amongst the reasons for this we suspect financial ones are paramount. China produces goods that most countries want to buy and conversely want to sell goods to also.
China can manufacture products far less expensively than most economies. Huawei playing a role in the UK’s 5G network is the perfect demonstration of price of manufacture being first in the UK government’s list of priorities in this decision. The minutiae of, if this is a security risk is not the point of this article, it is used purely to underline that price was everything in the decision.
China is the second most powerful economy in the world, and this will buy them some immunity from criticism by the countries, global businesses and global media owners that want continued or greater access to trade with them.
But what about populist opinion, what do people think? Is sensibility taking priority over sense? Is criticising China seen as politically incorrect?
What if this was going on in the United States of America under Donald Trump?
Let’s imagine that the infamous ‘meat markets’ in Wuhan were in Tennessee, and SARS emanated from Tennessee at the beginning of the 21st century. The US government then does nothing and keeps them open.
Winding the clock forward to today, let’s now also imagine that the current COVID-19 pandemic had also emanated from Tennessee.
The question is… Would Donald Trump and the US be receiving more widespread condemnation than Xi Jinping and China are right now?