Pangolins Effected Spread of Coronavirus to Humans?

Interesting news report about initial spread of Coronavirus:

Pangolin identified as potential link for coronavirus spread

 

Regardless of what animal is the link to the spread of Coronavirus, I do seriously hope that this raises the awareness about the illegal wildlife trade and hopefully leads to a serious operation and reduction in it.

 

Sadly the Asian obsession with abusing absolutely any animal as food, faux medicine and pet trade has led to this latest outbreak. It comes from bats originally, Pangolins are merely a ‘middle’ species. But then the absolutely disgusting trade in Pangolins are driving them to extinction. I just hope the Chinese government starts to clamp down on this very soon.

 

China is 'Asian'. But so are Sri Lanka, Russia, Oman, Turkey, Brunei, Japan, Uzbekistan and funnily enough two British territories. Please think about the language that you use. Welcome to the forum.

 

The current research cannot come to that conclusion by headline. The former SARS epidemic research at a French lab was based on thousands of trials and samples and then presented the facts that a bat species was the vector.

Lest this be demonstrated: it is without argument that China needs to look very much at stopping all wild animal consumption and illegal marketing as it is partially responsible for promoting extinction of whole animal families and has made many Asian and African species into endangered and/or threatened species due to unsustainable wild capture and consumptive patterns at home!

 

Strange. Turkey is 'Asian', but you were hectoring them about joining your Schengen club for decades.

The majority of those countries might be on the Asian plate, but they aren't "Asian". The phenomenon of eating endangered species for 'ish and giggles is definitely an "Asian" thing. So are mega-cities for that matter, but that's beside the point.

Starting in Tomohom, in the highlands of North Sulawesi, through to Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and, yes, China the amount of species on display to buy for consumption or medicine is staggering. Even Japan's desire for marine mammals is astounding. Would you like some curry seal? Japan hunted their own endemic sea lion into extinction in the early 70's, so now they're on to the Stellar's Sea Lion.

To suggest this isn't an "Asian" problem is disingenuous. It doesn't affect all areas equally -- China has all the money -- but every Asian country has this problem.

The bear cuscus thanks you.


Fun aside: a significant number of Filipinos consider themselves to be Pacific Islanders, not Asians.

 

Wildlife products usage - for lack of a better word - and consumption is not strictly an Asian "thing". Almost all major Continents have an issue with wildlife consumption in various forms. Now, I am not discounting that Asian consumptive patterns are playing a significant role in species' declines globally, but it is not strictly an Asian pathology (and I am certainly careful not to single out the Asian populations alone in this matter).

There are many examples of unsustainable wildlife products usage and consumptive patterns: F.i. the African bushmeat trade for starters as well as the many wildlife hunting fraternities across the Continents can be termed promoting species declines' and illegal hunting and capture (rather than sound wildlife management practice).

In essence, human greed and overexploitation in every manner and ways possible is a very Homo sapiens issue ... to put it mildly.

 

Sadly, my personal involvement in the UK's European policy has been quite limited. Dare I say it we are seeing the fruits of that now.

It seems to me, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that rather than using the accepted definition of what an Asian country is, ie the country is in Asia, you are instead saying that a country is Asian only if its citizens 'look' Asian.

Now, I could plead innocence and ask, 'But how can that be? Surely someone from Uzbekistan, an Asian country, must look Asian?'

However, I won't because I know exactly what you mean. You mean 'East Asian', ie looks like Japanese, Chinese or Korean. There are lots of problems here. First of all, you are extending your definition of 'looking Asian' all the way down to the tip of South-East Asia, and Indonesia, but as you must know, most Indonesians (and Malaysians) don't 'look Asian' at all. It's telling that your racialised view of what 'Asian' means dovetails with where you see the problem to lie, but this fails even by your own definition.

Furthermore, the idea that this is even an East and South-East Asian problem is absurd. Are things going great for wildlife in India? What about Brazil? West Africa? And where is your megafauna Europe?

TCM is not an 'Asian' problem, it's a (culturally ) Chinese one. Whaling is not an Asian problem, it's a Japanese one. The song-bird trade is not an Asian problem, it's an Indonesian problem*. I know a huge number of Chinese people. None of them deliberately go out and eat endangered species. Are most of them aware of the horrors of the sharkfin trade? No, but they are also likely to never eat shark fin soup (it's incredibly expensive). I have met people in Indonesia who eat endangered species. Why? Because they live on small islands and still practice a traditional hunting lifestyle.

There is no great racial problem here. All that is happening is that many parts of Asia are advancing at historically unprecedented rates, and so modern lifestyles and traditional attitudes are colliding in ways that are disastrous for conservation. Prove to me that this wouldn't, or didn't, happen in other parts of the world.

*Actually, I'd like to see more on this, because captive songbirds can be found in China and Vietnam. But, anecdotally, not to the same extent.

 

I'm sure it is more widespread than that. I remember reading that the songbird trade is a significant factor in the widespread Afro-Eurasian migratory bird crisis.

 

True, the flyways and indiscriminate wholesale unsustainable hunting practice in souther Europe, North Africa, Middle East and some eastern Mediterranean nations is taking massive numbers of migrating birds out and significantly impacting the numbers and robustness of hundreds' if not more populations of migratory species.

And this is not even taking into account wetlands en route and stopping over sites where migratory birds feel the hand of man in every kind of way. Not to speak of the threats at home in temperate climes where these migratory birds stay over spring and summer, nest and breed and try to bring up new chicks in the next generations.

 

To add some more information to the possible zoonotic origins of COVID-19, here is an article showing how 96% of the virus's genome matches that of a coronavirus strain detected in horseshoe bats from southern China: A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these same bats are also likely responsible for the SARS outbreak in China during the early 2000's: Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus. SARS is a different strain of the same virus as COVID-19, with both having been transmitted from animal host to humans separately.

The Chinese team warns in the paper's discussion section that there is a risk of another disease similar to SARS arising from the colonies, and that human population monitoring and behavioral risk surveys should be conducted and strategies developed to avoid future outbreaks from occurring.

The article was published in 2017.

 

There is a lack of evidence that pangolins are actually involved in the COVID19 pandemic, but they have similar coronaviruses within them. The causal linkage of how the virus jumped from animals to humans is not yet understood.

Significance of Pangolin Viruses in Human Pandemic Remains Murky

 

The research I've found is similar to what is expressed in the article, especially regarding the genetic material of COVID-19 being identified in horseshoe bats and likely being transmitted through an intermediate host in a wildlife market. The same situation likely happened with SARS in 2003, only then I think it was civets that were the intermediate host.