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Comment by asclepi | Hacker News Reader

I agree, demonizing the Chinese people is the worst thing anyone can do. They didn't want this virus either, but they taught us how we can contain it, and they paid the price with countless human lives.

The CCP is the one that needs to be made responsible. However, they will label any attempt from the west as racism towards the Chinese, to avoid having to take up that responsibility.

Change will only happen when it doesn't look like the CCP is losing face by listening to what the west is dictating. Economic sanctions are the alternative, but that would threaten the supply of cheap Chinese labor.

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Should we be sanctioned for creating mad cow?

I am not sure how this is comparable. There is a concept called degree of risk. Bats are known for being reservoir of zootonic viruses unlike common farm animals like chickens, cows etc. Moreover, eating bats is easier to give up provided that we already have lots of other safer alternatives of meats.

Let me think about it... Some people in the food industry fed dead sheep to cows and thus created a whole new form of transmissible, deadly desease. Hmmm... Yes I think that falls into the same category.

Mad cow could hardly be called a pandemic. A whopping 231 total cases. It caused a little economic damage and comparatively no human damage.

A lot of economic damage, over 4.4 million cows were slaughtered [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45906585

Comparatively small. Estimates are that cost about $5.7b USD over the course of 5 years[0]. Conservative estimates are that it's going to cost $2.7t USD, and that was from before it was labeled a pandemic. [1]

[0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/37404/11780_ld... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-pandemic...

All restaurants, museums, bars, cinemas, gyms, airlines and so on are currently closed in Europe.

The economic damage is going to be at least a 1000 times worse.

I wasn't comparing it to nCoV-19, I stated it was a lot of damage in absolute terms.

Not to mention that all the leafy green recalls, such as E. Coli in the lettuce this January [1] and salmonella in the spinach last September [2]. This happens every few months, and has for as long as I can remember.

E. Coli comes from faecal contamination so someone's been pooping in America's leafy greens for years. Not sure there's a whole lot of moral high-ground there.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2019/o157h7-11-19/index.html

[2] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/spinach-recalled-over...

We should and we reworked our processes to try to prevent it in the future.

It wasn't a pandemic, it was dealt with as soon as the problem was identified.

Wet markets have been known to a problem for over a decade, nothing was done until after this crisis started.

The CCP aggressively fought the virus, giving us time (we wasted) to prepare.

They did, but they also wasted a lot of time in January, allowing the virus to travel the world. But as you mentioned, other nations made similar mistakes, and they had the benefit of being warned.

However, when it comes to the question of responsibility for preventing a third SARS outbreak originating from China, the answer lies with the CCP.

The CCP silenced the doctors who tried to sound the alarm and made numerous missteps. They should be held accountable.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-it-all-started-chinas-early...

>giving us time (we wasted) to prepare.

If that's anything to go by, we're fucked when it comes to climate change.

I'm sorry, what? They only started to do the right thing once they realized a cover-up wouldn't be successful [1]. Even then, we're still hearing about attempts to silence scientists and destroy evidence.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavi...

Brave Chinese doctors and healthcare providers fought the virus.

The CCP is a political party whose sole interest is in consolidating power.

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