And yet that comment IS judgemental.
People have been eating anything that walks, crawls, swims or flies since the beginning of time, it's not specific to one nation.
Not wrong about that! I could argue that many meats we eat domestically are really no different in that regard. Most of the common ones aren't contagious, but they can put you in life-threatening condition pretty easily if the meat is mishandled or you don't cook it right. It's all crawling with nasties. But because everything is very controlled and kept up to a certain standard, we can eat all sorts of things.
Sushi is another example. The ocean is full of parasitic nematode larvae that go from burrowing into fish food, to being transferred to the fish, which are then caught to be eaten before its life cycle is complete. They basically tranfer from being eaten by the littlest things, to the things that eat them, to the things that eat them, all the way up the food chain. Most fish at your local market has them. Almost all fish in general do. If you were to eat one, you could have serious, serious problems and major pain. With certain complications, you could die. They're used to living in fishes' stomachs, not humans. So they kind of freak-out and start burrowing into your GI tract. But they can't get through and wind up dying inside, triggering a sustained immune response that screws up everything in there. Tissue damage both from the worm itself and the immune response. It's called anisakiasis, and a seriously huge proportion the fish you eat carry the parasite. The reason you don't get it from eating sushi is because of the freezing. The freezing temperatures kill it. Of course, so does proper cooking... but fucking up one of those two things can kill you.
A lot of animals have parts you can't eat, or have to be given special treatment to be safe. We all eat weird shit that shouldn't be possible for humans to eat. To be a fly on a wall when the first man gutted and ate a fuckin lobster, man... how did he not die or get terribly sick? And yet that is a delicacy, now. If people really want to eat something, they will usually find a way to make it work. Much of what we eat, our bodies cannot naturally tolerate.
Their way of living and by that mostly we are referring to what they eat. which I will not judge. Is completely different to ours, and is causing these viruses and bacteria we are not ready for and actually them not ready for as well.
From what I've heard (and maybe someone else who's spent time there can comment - I only have press on the matter and anecdotes from people I've talked to who have experience,) a big part of the problem may not be so much in the food itself, but the handling. Refrigeration is supposedly a major problem for them... not only does it tend to be prohibitively expensive, but even if you do have it, if you're in an area with brownouts you're boned anyway. Hard to imagine that here, but obviously if you could have access to refrigeration, you'd take it, right? It would be stupid not to, but maybe it's not all ignorance. Takes a lot of juice to run commercial refrigeration, and in these markets that are hot spots for KWH, poorly-kept units with shitty power probably go down a lot, for too long... and then the food festers. Mix this in with poor handling and generally poor storage, and maybe issues with the way it is prepared (and further, stored after prep) and a lot of nasty things can happen. In these markets, both raw and prepared food is often transported egregiously improperly, before being stored and displayed improperly. Poor handling and nonexistent sanitation practices. That's what I've seen most.
I don't think it's a cultural thing. It being the norm is arguably a fairly large social issue. There might be some ignorance... some people probably legitimately don't know, but I'm betting for most it's just an unfortunate fact of life... it's a willing compromise. What they may not know is how sick you can really get. If you grew up in that culture, there's a good chance it'd be normal to you, too. People tend to downplay certain things more in favor of things they consider necessities. If we're talking trad/alt medicine, I can see that. And of course exotic foods always have a certain appeal too, but it's also 'buy the ticket, take the ride' type stuff. People eat fugu fish in Japan, in spite of the fact that one misstep means you get a fatal dose of one of the most powerful fast-acting neurotoxin occurring naturally.
A lot of people in China prize that stuff and it means a lot to them. But more than anything it is a problem of resources and economics. People can't afford the proper measures, if they have access to the stuff to follow them to begin with. People forget, the Chinese don't have the same socioeconomic framework that we take for granted. I think the government tried to ban it before, which obviously just creates a gray market with worse conditions due to the law constraining activity of people meeting persistent demands for the stuff. They would need to put together a lot of research and start mandating practices and standard for how its all done, which costs everyone money... so there ya go.
That's my take anyway. You can say I'm ignorant, but at least I'm trying to be fair
Going further off, people always say "China must be stopped!" but really there are so many factors to China's issues... it's just like this whole situation... you kind of have to blame everybody. What have you got then? I don't think it's productive, but that's me. Blame games became useless the moment it became a pandemic. Captain hindsight can't save us now. Knowing who to pin it on wouldn't change anything. You could say 'coulda, woulda, shoulda...' for days and weeks and months, but the only thing that really matters is getting ahead of what we're dealing with now. Start looking at what can be done better. The time to reflect on who fucked who's dog is AFTER everything has settled and there is a clearer picture. Obviously, there is accountability to be dished out at some point, and the world needs to seriously re-think how they deal with China. I think if China doesn't want people outside wanting to come in and address their issues/see them addressed, then they can't be involved in our affairs either. You wanna play the "global" ...really
anything game, that's just how it is. It's like, if you haven't showered in a couple of days and then went to a gathering with friends, you know you're not going over there like that without getting called out. Eventually they're gonna stop hanging out with you. If their government doesn't want to deal with things that we care about and affect us as much as them, that's a raw deal for us. If they want to let themselves go in isolation, that's fine. But you can't have it both ways.
But again, right now that is neither here nor there. I'm sure a lot of eyes have been opened, though.
The problem with the latter is that you can't just go around nuking the world. We don't like it. But selling product everywhere? Why not.
I guess its trade related, huh.
