Is there some legitimacy to the idea that the Chinese importing poached animals from Africa caused this?
Many blame the live animal markets in China. Maybe, but the facts are obscured by much activism to ban such markets for other reasons than diseases.
Yes but those markets should be banned, especially the ones involved in poaching and ridiculous religious practices that are involved.
The areas that are hardest hit are very densely populated.....going back to what we talked about months ago, this was a powder keg just waiting to explode. I hope this changes our society permanently and people take the positives of these changes and create a more positive and less polluted environment, as has seemed to have happened the last few weeks.
We need deep healthcare reform. it's also why minorities have lower life expectancies and far worse coronavirus outcomes. Underlying conditions due to a diet high in processed foods (diabetes, heart disease and obesity from cheaper fast foods and soda, because they face income inequality and that's what they can afford) and higher pollution levels (and higher rates of asthma) are partly responsible.
While the UK united after WW2, America became much more divisive. UK got the best healthcare in the world, America went south.
Mid take a look at these for why viruses should be considered alive:
https://www.sciencealert.com/are-viruses-alive
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-viruses-alive-2004/
Just to add to the above, I watched an excellent interview with the CDC's director about how both our bad lifestyle habits and pollution have made this so much worse than it had to be. High levels of air pollution from car exhaust especially near densely packed cities with high levels of NO2 causing high levels of asthma made our lungs weaker to begin with. On top of that, half of all Americans have existing medical conditions like obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc, because of a bad diet. Urban dwellers are more likely to consume ultra processed food with HFCS, high levels of salt, etc., which has caused these underlying conditions to begin with. On top of that, not having universal healthcare, where many people have not even ever gone to doctors to treat these underlying conditions has caused this virus to find every weakness in our society and exploit it.
When I was in high school and college I used to travel a lot and saw these disgusting open air markets in Asia. Hygiene is in a very short supply. Not only are the animals very poorly treated, the atmosphere is dangerous to the health of human beings. No wonder so many Far Easterners wore face masks long before this virus raised its ugly head. Glad I'm a vegan now and dont have these disgusting habits and my blood pressure has gotten a lot lower (without meds) since I eliminated processed food from my diet.
Both the UN and the American Journal of Microbiology and Dr Fauci of our CDC have all said that China needs to end these nasty dirty "wet markets" on exotic mammals. I saw a video where thousands of these disgusting bats were being showed off in a slaughter shop- the same ones where this virus supposedly came from. We need to stop encroaching on lands that belong to wild animals or we will keep having these pandemics. Dr. Rick Knabb who was the head of the National Hurricane Center said that unless we put a check on our population growth, climate change, pandemics and pollution will ALL be much harder to fight.
At the Bronx Zoo, the disease has spread from animal workers to 4 tigers and 3 lions, they have developed a dry cough and lack of appetite. So obviously transmission between creatures can and does happen.
Ironically our pollution levels have gotten a lot better because of this pandemic. I hope we learn our hard learned lessons and hold onto that after the pandemic ends.
Found this out the other day, did you know that 8 MILLION people a year die from pollution?!