‘It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we just don’t shut it down…’
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Sen Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned the Chinese Communist Party that the U.S. trade relationship with China will “change” if the nation does not ban wet markets, the New York Post reported.
Graham said Tuesday on “Fox and Friends” that he planned to write a letter communicating the ultimatum to Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S.
Anthony Fauci, one of the leading disease experts on the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, echoed Graham’s concerns on Friday, saying the Chinese government should shut down wet markets, where vendors slaughter and sell wild animals, including bats, Fox News reported.
“It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we just don’t shut it down,” Fauci said Friday on “Fox & Friends. “I don’t know what else has to happen to get us to appreciate that.”
Health officials suspect that the novel coronavirus, the source of the current pandemic crisis, originated in Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market from a bat that was carrying the disease.
But the Washington Times revealed on Monday that the Wuhan wet market is about three miles away from the world’s largest bat virus research facility.
The head researcher, Tian Junhua, said the facility has discovered and isolated about 2,000 virus strains in the past 12 years.
Graham dismissed the claim that the virus came from the nearby bat-research laboratory.
“I don’t think this came from a Chinese military lab, but these wet markets are gross, they’re just absolutely disgusting, selling exotic animals that transmit viruses from animals to human beings,” he said. “Those things need to shut down.”
Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a wildlife and public health organization, described wet markets in more graphic detail: “You’ve got live animals, so there’s feces everywhere. There’s blood because of people chopping them up.”