I hope it is just you. Maybe east Asia can tighten up on the wet markets, but there are other ways to get human pandemic. If you only plan for the last disaster, we won't be ready for the next one. We need a plan that is nimble enough that it can be quickly customized to whatever the next killer virus might be like. Saying those guys over there need to get their act together doesn't do anything to help keep ourselves safe.
It kinda does tho. If we would have taken steps after SARS, this WOULD have been prevented. No international pressure on China at all.
There are other ways but the wet markets are a real problem. They are the perfect breeding ground as they enable some bizarre jumps across species. Chinese wet markets in particular are notorious because China has quasi-legal wildlife farming. There are farms for all kinds of animals that are never farmed in the rest of the world and most are sold in wet markets where blood, urine and other bodily fluids are easily passed between species. Combine that with the trafficking of foreign animals to wet markets and you create scenarios that simply don't exist anywhere else. SARS also started in a wet market in China as well. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting that wet markets are the only place superviruses are created but they're arguably the most likely place for one in the world.
Someone had a 10 trillion dollar bowl of bat soup. Imagine they just spent 10 trillion modernizing the wet markets around the world. It'd be jetsons level living.
I guess my feeling on it is that we can't tell another country like China what to do and we can't rely on them to take steps to keep us safe. Consider especially that the next epidemic we face might be an intentional case of bioterrorism or biological warfare. We need the apparatus in place to prevent disasters relying only on ourselves.
You can apply pressure in bilateral trade deals as we are one of their biggest customers. Or you can Kowtow to large companies who view china as a money machine. I agree with the last point. These "just in time" supply chains and global sourcing work great during normal times. In crisis their real costs are exposed.
I mean it's a moot discussion. Does anyone seriously think that China is going to let the status quo remain after all this? Forget about their standing in the world, this was a threat to their own gov't - you can bet that they are going to do things differently. Question is not just China but the rest of the world. This has to be a global wake-up call. Not just for China, but everyone. Swine flu came from N. America - maybe the US. No one can be complacent anymore. Any interaction of animals and humans must be rethunk to ensure that this won't happen again.
