Lindsey Graham Demands China Ban Wet Markets: “Stop Eating Bats”
Lindsey Graham called for China to finally and decisively ban the ‘wet market’ practice from which coronavirus is suspected to have originated during an appearance with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum on Friday.
Many scientific experts believe the coronavirus entered into human circulation at a wet food market where exotic animals from diverse categories of the animal kingdom are sold in Wuhan, China. It’s thought that the virus descends from diseases common to bats that adopted to the genetic structure of a pangolin, an anteater-like animal. There, it modified in a form that made it transmissible to humans.
Watch the segment here:
Graham wasn’t having any of the stifling political correctness that seeks to shut down criticism of questionable Chinese culinary habits, candidly saying that those in the country who patronize wet food markets in the country should stop eating bats.
“Bats carry this stuff and they literally eat bats. Stop eating bats.”
There are competing theories on the origin of coronavirus that involve research gone wrong at medical laboratories in Wuhan. But in any case it seems clear that the Wuhan Wet Market was the original venue in which the virus entered into wide human circulation.
Graham is calling upon President Trump to exert whatever diplomatic pressure is necessary for China to finally ban the dangerous exotic wildlife trade. The 2002 SARS epidemic originated from a Chinese wet market as well, and it appears more than possible that in a future a disease that is even more lethal than coronavirus could enter into human circulation from one of these biological threats to mankind.
China has announced a ban on the country’s increasingly controversial exotic animal trade in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic, but the industry came back from the dead following a ban after the SARS epidemic. Remarkably,
footage of exotic animals being sold for consumption in Wuhan itself has surfaced in recent days, suggesting China’s communist government is thus far unwilling to finally enforce a ban on the wildlife trade.