It’s the Culture, Stupid! How We Got the Wuhan Coronavirus

 

With Novel Coronavirus spreading like wildfire everywhere in the world now, perhaps you are wondering where this virus came from in the first place. You might wish to know how it was that last fall in China, someone in the medical establishment there noticed some cases of a particularly nasty pneumonia cropping up around Hubei Province in central China; the capital city of Wuhan in particular.

Let’s start, then, at the beginning. Chinese culture is very old, going back many centuries, and many of the culinary characteristics of today’s China are throwbacks to a much more primitive time. In the long past, like in most countries, the Chinese people lived closer to the forests. In those forests lived many species of animals, and the people killed and ate those animals. When the Chinese people became more civilized and moved into villages and then into cities, they brought many of their culinary tastes with them. Chinese people today still have a taste for unusual foods like pangolin, bats, and shark fins. It is well-known that Chinese will pay good money for some very unusual foods, and that has led to their encouraging of poaching of some endangered species.

Cultures in Africa also have a taste for some exotic wildlife, and many tribes today still live in or near jungles and forests, where they hunt and eat wild animals, sometimes including primates. Here is a picture of a market stall in Africa, where they are selling exotic wildlife for food.

In Africa, this is called “bushmeat”, and you can see the face of a primate among the specimens in this market. It is well-known that some diseases can be spread by the consumption of exotic animals, and that eating the flesh of primates may carry what is known in humans as Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. This is a particularly gruesome, incurable condition that causes the brain to deteriorate.

Getting back to the beginning, scientists for decades have known that many exotic species of forest and jungle wildlife carry their own kinds of viruses and bacteria. In these species, the pathogens often do not cause any kind of adverse effects or illnesses. In fact, we humans also carry many harmless, and sometimes beneficial, viruses and bacteria (bacteria are what actually allows us to digest our food). It is only when humans consume, or live among, these exotic species that their viruses and bacteria can “jump” to humans, and then they can cause very harmful diseases. This process is called “zoonosis”.

In the early 20th Century, it has been determined, the virus that causes AIDS first jumped from African primates to humans. It remained localized for a long time, but eventually made its way into civilization, and was spread very rapidly by homosexual humans and their multiple sex partners (the original “spreader” was a flight attendant who boasted of over 2,500 partners). The Ebola virus, whose name refers to a river in Africa, was spread by Africans and their penchant for eating bushmeat, and it remains a stubborn low-level epidemic in multiple parts of Africa. Eastern Equine Encephalitis is a virus found in horses that can spread to humans, and African Swine Fever has recently decimated the pigs of China (it is similar to Ebola in humans). Scientists and wildlife experts have been trying for decades to get Africans to stop eating bushmeat, but their efforts have been in vain. Culture is just too powerful.

Well, the same kind of situation holds in modern China. The Wuhan Wet Market is an institution in the large capital city of Hubei Province, where citizens can buy all manner of wild animals for food. Investigators have determined that the virus that is now propagating everywhere in the world originated in bats sold in the market. And the Chinese people have proven similarly resistant to giving up their cultural taste for exotic food. The Communist Party has closed the market for now, but the culture does not change that quickly. Here’s a new interesting article.

China has been a Communist country since 1949, and the Party has added another layer of culture over the original Chinese culture. Their culture of secrecy and arrogance contributed in large part to the spread of this new disease. However, their very-Chinese concentration on “saving face” also helped in a big way to keep this world-wide pandemic going. The Communist Party’s prime directive is tranquillity-they will do anything to avoid unrest in the population. So they did things like suppress news of the disease outbreak, and put the doctor who originally told his medical colleagues about it under isolation, making him sign a confession to “spreading rumors”, and condemning him to death from the virus.

Communism is Evil, and it can lead to situations like we are seeing now. People all over the world are succumbing to this previously-unknown virus, and their deaths can be attributed in part to Chinese and Communist Culture.

Crossposted at RushBabe49.com; always welcoming visitors and potential followers]

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  1. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I was listening the President Trump last night in an extended interview he gave someone. My husband was watching it so I’m not sure where or to whom the president was speaking. I really admired him for his gentle attitude toward China’s culpability.

    We should not turn China into a pariah over this. Western Europe turned on Germany after World War I. To some extent, it was unfair to blame Germany completely. World War I had the fault of many countries. In their isolated status in the late 1920s and early 1930s, they became defensive, impoverished, and belligerent. China will do that too if the world’s reaction isn’t tempered with some degree of shared responsibility.

    The people of China are already impoverished. Only the members of the Communist Party prosper — 94 million out of 1.4 billion.

    I want us economically separated from China — especially independent of medical supplies and pharmaceuticals — until the communists fall and are replaced by a truly liberalized system of governance. If Trump is speaking moderately, I think that’s prudent. But, I’d also like him to do whatever it takes to get us out from under China’s thumb on this medical stuff first — and then we can worry about the rest. I don’t trust that any medicines we’re getting from China are efficacious anymore. Think what China could do if it tricked us by reducing the potency of the medications they’re sending us — placebos over the real stuff. I’m even suspicious of my allergy medications. We’ve put ourselves in a terrible position, and Trump knows it better than any president in my lifetime. I’m praying for him.

    I agree with you on the need for economic distancing from China but wanted to add a cautionary note.  The prosperity in recent decades in China goes way beyond communist party members which explains the regime’s continued support, or at least tolerance, by many.  For those born in the 60s and growing up in terrible poverty, the material transformation is astonishing, both for party and non-party members.  For the younger people in urban areas all they know is growing prosperity.  The regime has been much better in keeping its economic promises than the Soviets ever were and people are proud of China’s growing international power after centuries of chaos and disgrace.

    • #61
  2. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I agree with all of the above. But I think we should go easy in the social isolation of China. Otherwise, we could be trading one problem for another. We should stick to trade and manufacturing and business reforms with specific goals and purposes and stay clear of sweeping pronouncements China as a whole.

    • #62
  3. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):
    The prosperity in recent decades in China goes way beyond communist party members which explains the regime’s continued support, or at least tolerance, by many.

    This is not what I heard at Hillsdale’s CCA on Understanding China.

    I think it’s important in these circumstances to ask, “compared to what?” Compared to China’s pre-communist and pre-blended capitalist past? Yes, more people have a higher standard of living. But, for many, many Chinese, it’s still pretty awful, and that’s not even mentioning the Uighur concentration camps, where men are isolated from their families, indoctrinated, and given one hour to cry each week. Ordinary Chinese are living in concrete garages, basically, working long hours and in dangerous conditions for little compensation. 

    The regime just might have continued “support” because it’s dangerous to the Chinese’s health not to show support. 

    • #63
  4. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Mostly I was trying to say that I think President Trump is striking the right tone on this issue.

    • #64
  5. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):
    The prosperity in recent decades in China goes way beyond communist party members which explains the regime’s continued support, or at least tolerance, by many.

    This is not what I heard at Hillsdale’s CCA on Understanding China.

    I think it’s important in these circumstances to ask, “compared to what?” Compared to China’s pre-communist and pre-blended capitalist past? Yes, more people have a higher standard of living. But, for many, many Chinese, it’s still pretty awful, and that’s not even mentioning the Uighur concentration camps, where men are isolated from their families, indoctrinated, and given one hour to cry each week. Ordinary Chinese are living in concrete garages, basically, working long hours and in dangerous conditions for little compensation.

    The regime just might have continued “support” because it’s dangerous to the Chinese’s health not to show support.

    If you mean it is terrible for some people, yes.  If you mean people need to be careful what they say, yes.  But if someone at Hillsdale is telling you only party members have prospered over the past 30 years they are delusional and therefore mistaken in their analysis of the strength of the regime.  There are hundreds of millions of Chinese who are not living in concrete garages.  Given China’s population that can still mean there are hundreds of other millions who are struggling. 

    And the comparison is not just to China’s pre-communist past but to its communist path well into the 1980s.  The reduction in global poverty since 1990 is unprecedented and the largest segment of that occurred in China.

    China is not our friend but we need to actually understand what is happening there to counter it effectively.

    • #65
  6. JuliaBlaschke Lincoln
    JuliaBlaschke
    @JuliaBlaschke

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):
    The prosperity in recent decades in China goes way beyond communist party members which explains the regime’s continued support, or at least tolerance, by many.

    This is not what I heard at Hillsdale’s CCA on Understanding China.

    I think it’s important in these circumstances to ask, “compared to what?” Compared to China’s pre-communist and pre-blended capitalist past? Yes, more people have a higher standard of living. But, for many, many Chinese, it’s still pretty awful, and that’s not even mentioning the Uighur concentration camps, where men are isolated from their families, indoctrinated, and given one hour to cry each week. Ordinary Chinese are living in concrete garages, basically, working long hours and in dangerous conditions for little compensation.

    The regime just might have continued “support” because it’s dangerous to the Chinese’s health not to show support.

    If you mean it is terrible for some people, yes. If you mean people need to be careful what they say, yes. But if someone at Hillsdale is telling you only party members have prospered over the past 30 years they are delusional and therefore mistaken in their analysis of the strength of the regime. There are hundreds of millions of Chinese who are not living in concrete garages. Given China’s population that can still mean there are hundreds of other millions who are struggling.

    And the comparison is not just to China’s pre-communist past but to its communist path well into the 1980s. The reduction in global poverty since 1990 is unprecedented and the largest segment of that occurred in China.

    China is not our friend but we need to actually understand what is happening there to counter it effectively.

    Unfortunately trade with China has not countered any of the evil consequences of a communist regime. The secrecy, the spying and theft, the propaganda machine with its long tentacles into our own media and government and the aggressive build up of their military. They are well known for “helping” poor countries by offering to give them things like a nice new soccer stadium and shipping in boatloads of Chinese who never leave and find ways to pressure and exploit. The people are better off but I’m guessing that the people of Wuhan wouldn’t think so. We still don’t know the extent of the coverup or just how many people are dying or infected all over China. 

    They are nobody’s friend. They are not even the friend of their own people.

    • #66
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