Much as U.S. president Donald Trump wants to prove that COVID-19 came from a laboratory in China, the answer may yet turn out differently. No doubt, everyone is probably wondering now why most if not all of the viral outbreaks in recent times always point to China as the source. But is China really producing all these diseases as weapons in contravention of international laws, without even the thought of a vaccine beforehand? Did COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) really leak from some clandestine lab in Wuhan?
Conspiracy theorists are happily feeding the world with this idea. But the real reason may be further from that. Traditional practices, coupled with a burgeoning population and the rapid modernization of the countryside over the last 40 years, appear to be the ultimate trio that has caused the global economy its sharpest decline since World War II. Not even China, with its massive expenditure in weapons of war saw this global meltdown coming and it too will suffer like the rest of us as world markets for Chinese products decline or disappear altogether. What could China have gained for unleashing such a virus without even preparing ahead of time for a vaccine?
An article in the online magazine Real Science (realscience.com) entitled, “Why Do New Disease Outbreaks Always Seem to Start in China” by Ross Pomeroy, reveals how culture, as always, may be the culprit. It appears that the Chinese penchant for fresh meat, even among those living in cities, has long fed a massive market for livestock coming from rural areas that are brought into wet markets like the one in Wuhan, where this latest outbreak was first reported.
Over the last 40 years, China has grown from a poor moribund economy into the world’s second largest, resulting in massive inputs of road infrastructure and the introduction of mass transit systems linking hitherto far-flung and heavily forested rural areas to cities and with it, vital markets for all kinds of forest products.
Among these products, if I may add, were probably due to periods of massive droughts and famines during the early years of the Peoples Republic of China. These periods in the recent past of extreme poverty may also have developed among some a desire for eating species that many outside China find stomach-churning, like insects, dogs, cats, snakes and the assumed guilty party in this instance, bats. (Some Filipinos of course like to eat bats. I remember in my teenage years we used to look for ‘kabog’ [the near-extinct flying fox?] to eat — but I never got the stomach for it.)
Official secrecy, misinformation and the control of information — which people think only began in recent times — have been sterling marks of Chinese governance ever since the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, united parts of China over two thousand years ago. This helps account for the late reporting of the virus and the admission of the Chinese authorities on the virus’s deadly impact in Wuhan, an unforgivable mistake that has now put China in the crosshairs of re-electionist Donald Trump whose conservative base wants China punished.
Pomeroy also pointed to the tendency of Chinese to first consult traditional healers rather than go to modern medical facilities, much like some older Filipinos still do today. (The Chinese, like any other human being, have a disdain for hospitals, it seems. Meanwhile, on Facebook we were bombarded early on almost daily with home-based concoctions to fight this virus, ranging from drinking hot water every 20 minutes, to taking in warm cups of pure calamansi juice. Such traditional medicines may have worked in the less-fatal flu in the Philippines but they are no match for this deadly COVID-19.)
A final reason is simple sanitation in markets. There is no need to explain this to you. You have seen pictures of the live market in Wuhan.
It is clear, however, that China has learned from these mistakes. According to the article Chinese scientists are now publishing more openly their studies to the world. And China finally welcomed the World Health Organization into Wuhan when it became clear reports that the Chinese authorities there had put a halt to the disease were proven premature.
It is no longer question of whether there will be another pandemic in, say, a century or 50 years hence. What China should now avoid is to be blamed again should that happen. And, for China, there is plenty to learn from./dbs
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