Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

All they have to do is provide their guest workers with proper housing, PPE, and disinfectants, and educate them on how to avoid coronavirus.

 

Commentary on the need to get rid of wet markets in China.

'A loaded gun:' Wet markets, wildlife trafficking pose threat for the next pandemic

Trump seems to be dropping the ball on this.

 

NY is full up with wet markets. They’ve been there for years.

Why don’t we eliminate them here? Then we can start telling others countries to get rid of theirs?

 

Neil Ferguson's Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time

Pretty costly error

 

Bolsonaro snaps photos with kids at Brazil protest defying health advice

 

Dumb people are eliminating themselves.

Good?

 

New York has 70 wet markets, and none of them offer exotic animals. Apparently, they are commonly used for Muslims that insist upon Halal meat. I don't know that we need to force China to completely get rid of wet markets, but maybe we could limit them to one type of animal per wet market, and keep the markets a minimum distance from each other, while setting minimum requirements for sanitary conditions. They should not have cats and dogs wandering around the market, and they should not have cages stacked on top of each other where the feces will drop from one cage to another. That is something that we could easily require of our wet markets, and we could persuade China to do the same.

Live animal "wet markets" in New York City face protests amid coronavirus pandemic - CBS News

Getting China to stop eating exotic animals is also necessary to prevent any more wildlife extinctions, and to minimize the exposure of humans to the viruses that some of these animals carry. Let them sustainably farm a population of exotic animals and maintain a testing program if they want to continue eating them. It's not cheap, but it's the right thing to do. If China wants to be a superpower, then we should force them to act like one and be responsible for their actions.

 

I’d be good with it if they didn’t clog up hospitals and probably end up infecting people that wanted no part of that crap.

If it gets really out of control there, I’d think health workers should almost just walk off the job. Just close all the hospitals and say “good luck all”. The politicians failed them, if their health systems collapse that is on politicians like Bolsonaro. It shouldn't be up to the doctors to sacrifice themselves to prop up a failed system, when different decisions could have been made.

I feel the same here. If we make bad decisions, same should apply. Hopefully, despite Trump, we will respond to the data on the ground and not allow any relapses or overwhelmed hospitals.

 

It's part old habit, part necessity in places like China. To sell butchered meat you need refrigeration whether through fridges/freezers or ice, and there are many parts in China that still do not have ready/cheap access to refrigeration.

With that said, the cost of is clearly too high not only to China but to the rest of the world to continue current practices. Whatever the investment necessary, sanitation and exotic animal trade rules need to be tightened. It can't possibly cost more than what COVID has already cost us.

 

Maybe they should tighten up safety protocols at the Wuhan Lab while they are at it.

 

China locks down 100M people? Second wave I guess. Gonna be a long year.

More than 100 million people in renewed lockdown in China after spike of new coronavirus cases

 

Locking down over ONE death and 34 cases? Yeah right.

I think we need to just start assuming a couple zeros are missing from any Chinese data.

 

man they must really hate Trump to do this.

 

Columbian company invents cardboard bed that converts into a coffin. This should be popular.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/south-...an-convert-into-a-coffin-20200516-p54tlv.html

"What? I get the coffin-bed"? My odds of survival are one in a million? So you're saying there's a chance!"

 

Brazil has just taken 2nd place for number of cases and has become a country size human trial of hydroxychloroquine.
South America a new COVID epicenter, Africa reaches 100,000 cases

 

You correctly point out that it is not just China, but these same wet markets all over south east Asia. In fact, one of the early videos circulating on the web allegedly showing the Wuhan Wet Market was filmed in Indonesia (yep, everyone lies to everyone and the makers assumed most Americans were too ignorant to know the difference between China and Indonesia).

 

New coronavirus quarantine hobby: treasure hunting (a.k.a., finding grandma's gold bars).

While in lockdown with their family, two French children reportedly found two bars of gold that could be worth more than $100,000

My daughter is about ten, so I am having her dig up the back yard to look for treasure. She's doing much better after a few hours with the backhoe.