It is one thing to have a reasoned critique of certain culinary practices, another to stoke racial animus as (yet another) distraction from your own ineptitude.
So?
China is a country that is following it’s citizen’s every move in order to control them. It’s not a single dictator doing this. It takes a massive human support system to do make it happen. It was this support system that was used to suppress the truth.
I would interpret a dictatorship and it’s human support system intent on dominating the world as the single greatest example of racism. It’s the kind of regime that would turn on it’s own citizens to ensure the master race dominates from within in order for it to expand outward. Just ask 2 million Muslims who were rounded up for virtually no reason. they are unaccounted for. Does rounding up people based on religion and ethnicity remind you of anything in history?
The control China exerts on it’s people is severe. It’s done on a national level with the support of millions who in turn control the rest. 100,000 people are already dead worldwide because of this and somehow you’re worried that someone could misinterpret China’s involvement in this?
This pandemic is a wake up call to the world as to how China operates. If there was ever a need to point out their roll in this, now is the time.
And it is yet another thing to proudly declare your wokeness by screaming “racism” when presented with a simple scientific fact.
That’s the issue which Bill Maher is complaining about.
As he says in the video (at 1:02): if the virus had originated in Milan,“we would be calling it the Milan virus”.
Who could imagine Slacker in lockstep agreement with the Right?
And I have zero influence on what people eat there or how Chinese officials handle outbreaks in that country. “China” does not make decisions. Humans in China make decisions. And I can’t vote them out of office. So yes, “blame China” is a pointless assertion.
“It’s China’s fault”
“It’s not China’s fault”
Neither of these change what we need to to right now or tomorrow.
What the Chinese government does, how they act and react, affects us all - if this pandemic has not made that clear to even the most obtuse then I can’t help you. The world needs to put pressure on the authoritarianism Chinese government to shut down their wet markets. That’s the best start. They, the Chinese government, need to be held fully accountable for this. The only way to do this is to allow free access to what’s going on at ground level there — something the Chinese government doesn’t seemed agreeable to yet. If the rest of the world stands United and places economics sanctions on China their authoritarian government they may change their practices - since it’s now in their self interest to do so. But to sit around, and wrap yourself in cocoon, and claim there’s nothing we can do is probably just asking for this to happen all over again in a few years. Foolish beyond belief.
Not under the naming conventions adopted in 2015, we wouldn’t.
The swine flu epidemic in 2009 was first identified in southern California, and most authorities think it originated in the southwestern US or in Mexico. Calling it “Mexican flu” was briefly popular, and the World Organization for Animal Health wanted to name it “North American influenza,” but swine flu stuck instead. Compare and contrast.
Yes, and the swine flu would likely have been avoidable if people in the US didn’t like sausage and bacon and pork loin (it probably started in factory farms). If OUR cultural practices are the source of other disease outbreaks, who owns that mess?
It’s a loser move to blame China, and only reflects the guilt and incompetence among those who dismantled our pandemic response, just before a pandemic.
What’s the Boy Scout motto anyway?
I think China’s government should be held accountable, but there are ways to do that without stigmatizing people of Asian origin or descent.
It’s also worth noting the fact that current US economic and foreign policy probably had something to do with China’s response. Putting pressure on China’s economy and acting in a hostile to China generally probably further encouraged the Chinese government to hide the pandemic from the rest of the the world.
In any case, some countries were prepared to deal with the pandemic, and others were not. Regardless of how we feel about China, pandemics are inevitable - it’s not if we get one but when. The takeaway should be how to better prepare for the next outbreak, not how to get political mileage out of it.
Just like the Trump administration then.
“Held accountable” is another low-information phrase.
The virus is called the Coronavirus. This is what it’s called in the news, on google searches, on signs, in conversation and on this very board. That is its name. (Sometimes more technical terms are used, but “Coronavirus” is the colloquial name.)
There is no reason to change the virus from this well established name to “Chinese flu” (It’s not a flu) or some other dumbass thing. The only practical effect that stupid move would do is to cause a slight uptick in anti-Asian incidents. That’s it. It will not influence the Chinese government to do a single goddammed thing. How could it? Why the hell would the CCP change anything just because we used a different name for this virus?
Scene: Xi Jinping’s office He bangs his fist on the table and yells at a couple of aides.
“Curse the Americans! Curse those handsome devils! We thought we had them bamboozled, calling this virus the Coronavirus but now they call it the Chinese Flu! Well, we have no choice: We must immediately dismantle the wet markets and insure greater transparency in the face of future pandemics. Well played American dogs. You win this round, [He turns to the camera, a look of steely resolve and pure evil on his face] But you have not won the war! We shall meet again.”
Come on. Everybody knows the virus started in Wuhan, likely from a wet market, and was abetted by opacity and denial on the part of local officials. Changing the name won’t add anything to anyone’s knowledge. It won’t influence the CCP at all.
And why people listen to Bill Maher is beyond me. He is such an obvious idiot, despite his pretensions of being a thinker. I still remember when Marianne Williamson (Yes, that one) was on his show claiming she could communicate with the dead and Bill Maher agreed that she could. You could see Penn Jillette’s jaw drop. If Bill Maher tells you you should wear a coat in cold weather, get a second opinion.
He’s like everyone else in that stupid “Intellectual dark web.” They think they are bold iconoclasts telling Forbidden Truths, but in fact they are tedious slightly* racist bores with a vastly over-inflated opinion of their own intelligence.
*Sometimes not that slightly
Make it Judge Pirro and you might be onto something.
Given how much of our stuff is made in China, I’d say they’ve got a lot more leverage over us than we do over them. So we can blame China all we want, but it’s really kinda meaningless.
And what asahi said: pandemics are going to keep happening from time to time. The key question is what we’re going to do to be prepared (to answer drad dog’s rhetorical question) next time, or even for the rest of this time, for that matter: there’s a lot more we as a nation could do, but thanks to the Orange Idiot, we aren’t doing it.
How long did it take for China to eliminate foot-binding, from the first time the government decided to put a stop to it, to the time it finally ended? 1664-1949? so, 285 years? I hope wet markets take a little less time to end, but you can’t expect it to happen overnight.
Look how long fucking slavery took to end in the US?
So, you are just showing that you will ignore what I posted early in the thread, I’m not letting China off the hook, read the early post I made again. It is that only regarding the naming of the virus, the bastards in the Chinese government do have a point.
Now regarding the wet markets, it is a fact that when the situation became bad the Chinese did close those markets. IMHO this is just about the most justifiable reason to give the Chinese plenty of pressure, like organizing banks and other entities to deny credit or create other international economical pressures to the ones making a living in those markets, while at the same time giving them incentives to leave that line of work.
Maher is enabling a copout. As long as fingers can be pointed at China, and China blamed for this, our own inept federal response gets a pass.