Do "lab leakers" really think the 1918 influenza and AIDS pandemics, Ebola, MERS and SARS needed lab creation to exist? How about malaria and avian influenza? Are they ignorant of both science and history?
Don't they remember the 2012 bestseller, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic in which science journalist David Quammen predicted the Next Big One abbreviated NBO? Quammen said a new, zoonotic, RNA virus disease was due to emerge "sufficiently virulent and transmissible to cause a pandemic capable of killing tens of millions of people."
While lab leakers fixate on a mad scientist scenario in Wuhan, they ignore the widespread "mad scientist" culinary culture that brews viruses like COVID-19, especially in Asia. In Indonesia, for example, the Asian country with the most COVID-19 cases, wet markets were "still openly selling bats as well as snakes, rabbits, turtles, ferrets, beavers, cats, dogs, hamsters, hedgehogs, parrots, owls, crows and eagles," despite government warnings reported Marison Guciano, founder of Flight, a bird protection organization. The sights, sounds of smells of these callous markets are reported to be shocking.
"At some markets, we saw animals taken from cages, killed on countertops streaked with blood from other species and workers not wearing gloves, no hygiene at all," said a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) investigator. The stress that the animals experience "weakens their immune system and makes them more vulnerable to diseases that can jump across species and then to humans," the investigator said.
TRAFFIC, a group that monitors illegal wildlife trafficking, found 78,000 illegal wildlife parts in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar in 2019 and 2020 such as bear paws and rhino horns.
Diseases Do Not Need Labs to "Species Jump"
According to Live Science, COVID-19 is hardly the only disease to jump species from animals to humans. Pandemics from influenza to AIDS to the prehistoric plagues came from animal hosts, as did Ebola and Lyme, says Live Science. Mainstream livestock operations are not immune
PEDV, a coronavirus, killed seven millions pigs in the U.S. a few years ago and was endemic in Italy long before COVID-19, perhaps a mutation explaining Italy's early affliction in the pandemic? Alphacoronavirus SADS-CoV, an animal coronavirus similar to COVID-19 is indigenous to China and U.S. livestock producers dread its arrival on our shores.
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