Proposed Lawsuit Relating to the Coronavirus

About as likely as the petroleum industry being sued for damage to the earth's atmosphere due to pollution from hydrocarbons, particulates, and CO2 emissions.

Nonexistent.

Has Spain ever paid for Spanish Flu? Or Germany for German Measles?

And don't get me started about those Legionaries. And what country are Swine from?

And... if you are a White American, you might want to read about the devastation brought about by Smallpox before you go around blaming other people for their diseases.

I was reading there is genetic evidence that H1N1 originated in Kansas as the result of the United States "keeping certain animals and humans in close proximity and of humans eating those animals".

This thread is stupid. I am trying to decide if it is offensive.

What actually might make sense is an international campaign to outlaw the poaching of wildlife for human consumption and traditional "medicines". The sale of "bushmeat" is not only decimating the remaining populations of endangered animals but it is also the primary vector for the spread of new communicable diseases to humans.

I don't think it is that simple.

1. In the US we hunt wild deer, as well as some species of birds. Far from "decimating" population, hunting deer in many parts of the US is better for the deer (the wild population has to be culled or it gets sick).

2. Many of these diseases are from farmed animals... for example swine flu. Some are from mosquitoes.

I thought I made it clear that I'm speaking of the "wet markets" in Asia. We have nothing like that here. We don't eat bats, civets, and pangolins, nor do we use them for traditional medicine. We don't have an active trade in poaching endangered species. Our game laws are designed to protect wildlife. We don't consume "bushmeat" as a status symbol. Even in China, the problem is not with farmed animals. When the latest swine disease emerged the Chinese ordered farmers to kill all of their pigs. Mosquito-borne illnesses are well understood and have nothing to do with the trade in wild animals which is responsible for the various corona virus diseases.

I will say it straight. I think there is a danger of racism.

1. It is a fact that global pandemics can, and have, originated from any part of the world... including the United States.

2. We actually do consume "bushmeat" as a status symbol in the United States. There are large parts of the United States where deer hunting is proud part of the culture and venison is part of the diet. Americans eat wild deer, quail, duck and squirrel.

It is very easy to criticize other cultures as exotic or barbaric (particularly when you are White). I don't think it is reasonable.

Trafficking wildlife is a recognized problem in Southeast Asia and Africa. It's ridiculous to think that drawing attention to this is "racist". Even the Chinese have banned the sale of wildlife in the wet markets following this latest outbreak. (But they still allow the sale of wildlife for traditional "medicines".)


It's not referred to as "bushmeat" and it's not available in markets. There are poaching rings which traffic in deer but the vast majority of wild venison consumed in the USA is obtained through legal means by licensed hunters, as with the other species you mention. Eating game is not a status symbol because USAmericans have more than enough choices of meat available to them. In addition, state wildlife departments issue warnings when diseases are prevalent in the game population, such as deer wasting disease and creutzfel-jakob disease (which can be contracted by consuming the brains of squirrels) so that the public is protected from harm.

The meat of scarce and endangered animals is considered a status symbol in Asia because in those cultures meat was unavailable for consumption in large quantities and being able to serve meat-based dishes made from rare animals is a way of flaunting one's material success. I blame the Asian market for the extinction of the northern white rhinoceros and the wholesale poaching of elephants as well. And there's more than enough blame to go around but this discussion is about coronavirus and its origin in China.


So what? In this case I'm not criticizing any culture as "exotic or barbaric", I'm merely pointing out that these practices contributed to the emergence of at least two coronal viral diseases as well as ebola. When we were busy slaughtering the buffalo and extirpating the passenger pigeon do you think those practices shouldn't have been condemned because the hunters were white and it would have been "racist"? If there were an active market for squirrel brains would we be wrong to oppose the practice because it's a time-honored cultural tradition?

The Man Who Saw the Pandemic Coming

I don't see any moral equivalence between "a licensed hunter who is complying with game laws" and "a poacher who is trafficking in endangered species".



I think it is perfectly reasonable.

Whenever you bring a lawsuit, you are basically designating someone to be responsible for preventing something similar from happening again in the future.

So if you could sue the Chinese government for not having prevented coronavirus, it would put the government in a position of trying to control future pandemics. Do you really want the Chinese government stepping up its control paradigm?

Now the question is what if the disease was manufactured by secret genetic engineering and released via a long supply chain of terrorist networks so that it's not traceable back to its actual origin?

Then you have the problem that someone might have engineered the virus for the sake of political-economic manipulation; and any government or whomever you hold accountable for not preventing it from happening was never actually in a position to stop the terrorists who did it.

If that is the case, then the only question becomes what the goal was in engineering and releasing the virus, and how to respond. E.g. when terrorists take hostages for ransom, do you pay the ransom or just hold the hostage-takers accountable for whatever they do?

When you pay ransom, it encourages future hostage-taking, i.e. because there is a precedent set for hostage-taking as a successful business strategy.

So basically all we can do is social-distance and hope that whoever is responsible for the virus won't do it again.

I don't know if stopping these 'wet markets,' whatever they are, would ultimately solve the problem if the virus naturally emerged from them, because if they are a cultural tradition that's been going on forever, why would they suddenly begin generating pandemic viruses now and not in the past?