It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a government with no respect for any kind of life — human or animal — would threaten the mass extermination of cats and dogs.
It’s par for the course in China, where authorities in dozens of cities and provinces are urging people to “deal with” their pets in the wake of the Coronavirus threat — or the government will, media reports say.
The warnings have been issued in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Coronavirus, as well as Shanxi, Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong, Hebei and Shanghai, according to the Humane Society International.
Yet there’s no evidence the virus has been transmitted by domesticated pets like cats and dogs, and no evidence those animals can catch it from humans, experts say.
In Wuhan, residents have been told to keep their pets indoors, and warned that any cats or dogs spotted outdoors will be “killed and buried on the spot,” the UK’s Metro reported.
But experts say it’s the government’s fault that the virus jumped from wild animals to humans in the first place. China has refused to shut down so-called “wet markets,” where live animals are sold next to the carcasses of recently-slaughtered animals, despite the fact that SARS and other viruses originated from those markets.
Officials believe the Coronavirus originated at the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, one of many “wet markets” described as “filthy, crowded places where animals are displayed alive in small cages” and “are often slaughtered on site.”
China has been “mired in long-held beliefs about the benefits of eating exotic and often endangered animals for good health,” the Humane Society said in a statement, referring to traditional Chinese “medicine” and other folk practices that use animal parts in ineffective and dangerous tonics and elixirs.
In addition to creating the circumstances for viruses to jump from wild animals to humans, the illegal wildlife trade has pushed animals like tigers and pangolins to the brink of extinction.
“Chinese society is boiling with anger at wildlife policy failures,” said the Humane Society International’s China policy specialist, Peter Li. “Social media is full of posts condemning the refusal to shut down the wildlife markets. This is the worst Chinese New Year in China’s recent history.”
Pain In The Bud 
Ugh… this is scary. 😦
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Agreed. I’m not a fan of the Chinese government to say the least.
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This part just kills me, “Chinese society is boiling with anger at wildlife policy failures,” said the Humane Society International’s China policy specialist, Peter Li. “Social media is full of posts condemning the refusal to shut down the wildlife markets. This is the worst Chinese New Year in China’s recent history.” Yeah right. They bitch about it on social media, but you can bet they still shop at markets that do this stuff. Sickening.
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And they buy the parts of endangered animals like tigers, pangolins and elephants. And they eat dogs and cats. And they torture animals as a matter of routine because of the absurd belief that the meat tastes better if the animal suffers before death. IMO these attitudes are a product of a culture that has no respect for life in any form, human or animal.
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Yea Western media report on anything China related is even worse than fake news, basically just fucking make up whatever to make China look bad.
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China makes themselves look bad without anybody else help. They lied to their own people, lied to the world, jailed the first 8 doctors that warned about this happening (a MONTH before the outbreak!), just so they wouldn’t look bad. Any country that does shit like that deserves to chided in the media. It’s not fake news, it’s spot on!
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Every time a Chinese netizen shows up disputing a story — whether it’s the Coronavirus outbreak, or the Uyghur “re-education” camps, or the Hong Kong protests — they make the same argument, claiming western media is inventing the story to make China look bad. It’s really getting tedious, not to mention absurd: They’re accusing hundreds of media organizations from dozens of countries of working together to invent stories.
It shows they don’t understand how western media works, and they don’t understand that they’re alleging a coordinated propaganda effort on the part of hundreds of independent outlets that don’t even share the same interests or the same political bents.
But that’s all they know. Since the Chinese government runs all media in China, and nothing is published without the approval of the Chinese government, the Chinese people think media organizations in the free world operate the same way.
Of course if they really took a look at our media, they would see adversarial reporting on government figures, routine mockery of political leaders, skeptical attitudes toward government assertions and endless criticism of western governments. All those things would be unthinkable in China, where criticizing the government will earn Chinese journalists a one-way ticket to political prison and hard labor camps.
China’s government is so notoriously thin-skinned that Winnie the Pooh is banned in China because of a meme comparing President Xi Jinping to Pooh Bear. That’s hilarious, but also sad.
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