Is it time to ban meat?

[Redthies]

The CIA created it and released it to lessen the Chinese/North Korean “threat”. I’m guessing it got away from them.

Oh, what’s that noise? It’s a black helicopter circling my house... Damn, where did I leave the tinfoil hat??

[dak0ta]

It's thought SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats to Pengolins, then to humans. If you pack a bunch of exotic animals together in cages and butcher facilities with unsanitary conditions, there's a much higher probability of pathogens jumping species.

Novel viruses spawn all the time in the wild, therefore even if you previously eaten bats or other exotic animals, your immune system is only resistant to what it has encountered previously and developed antibodies against. Also, you need to consider that these viruses have higher rates of mutations allowing them to change rapidly (similar to the flu annually) to escape immune detection which is a selective advantage. Its other advantage is its virulence, having an Ro of 1:2.5. Lastly, even if you've been exposed to a virus previously, "lifelong" immunity wanes over time if not re-exposed, hence why you get booster shots for pneumonia, varicella zoster etc. in your later decades of life.

With regards to eating bats, they can carry rabies in their saliva and neurological tissues, which will definitely kill you in the most inhumane way.

[IronNoggin]

Chicken little.What if, what if ?
What if you get stuck by lightning and you get smarter ?

[Squamch]

Just finished some deep reading about the make-up and physical state of this "Bullet from Wuhan" (James Bond anyone?) we are all dealing with. One thought keeps re-occurring to me, it seems like all the characteristics and delivery methods of this microbiological assasin are designed to take out humans, like it was designed specifically for us? (other than mutating to airborne pathogen yikes) Anyone else doubting the Ace Ventura Bat meat bat shit story?
Ace?

No kidding. Chinese protests had quite a bit of steam behind em for a minute there. No more though!
Whoops, sorry, not sorry, rest of the world!
No one gonna talk about the biochemist professor Charles lieber, arrested for passing info to the chinese, who was working in Wuhan?