General Politics Discussion VII [ARCHIVED] • Page 569

And they say white people don’t have culture.

 

Seems like as scientists are finding out more it's looking more and more like it was actually from bats. Its in the NPR article I just posted. There is an article about it but I just posted the audio.

 

What the fuck did I walk into?

 

It's still a conservative majority, right? Just back to being 4-3 instead of 5-2?

 

There's a 100 percent chance ESPN could run with rat battles and the ratings would be through the roof.

 

People ignoring that covid has a pretty good chance of starting due to unsafe interactions with bats.

 

For me, the problem is perpetuating the racist trope of “bat eating chinese” and doubling down on it by utilizing a clip from one of the most famous islamaphobic, misogynistic POS in Bill maher. It’s akin, imo, to making a statement about black people liking chicken or watermelon, which I think you and everyone would agree is racist as fuck.

disease outbreaks have stopped being named after where people think they originated from. Spanish flu was called that because Spain was neutral in WWI and was the only country to not suppress news of the outbreak, which made people assume it broke out there when it really was just the only country not suppressing the fact that there was a dangerous flu sweeping through the world. Naming a disease after the country it originated in just perpetuates and gives the green light for racism and violence towards people of that country. H1N1 originated in America and no one was banging the table to call it the North American Flu. Hell, it’s been recognized that calling it Swine Flu brought on many unwanted complications and it’s since been officially reclassified as H1N1. It’s the same reasoning that hurricanes stopped being named exclusively after female names in 1978. People finally came around to the fact that that was incredibly sexist, perpetuated negative stereotypes against women, and the meteorology community decided to stop doing that.

Yes, Viruses Used To Be Named After Places. Here's Why They Aren't Anymore.

The racial scapegoating of Chinese immigrants has been a large problem ignored by the majority of the country for over 120 years. When Chinese immigrants came to America they were met with racist resentment, forced to live in tight quarters in dirty conditions, which allowed disease to spread through the Chinese immigrant community. This just added more fuel to the racist fires and white labor unions spent decades forcing Chinese people out of the labor market in America by calling them dirty, insinuating they eat rats and don’t wash or clean themselves.

calling the virus the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus” only serves the purpose to permanently link this to the Chinese and further ostracize them from western society. The virus is a virus. It has no nationality and ascribing one to it unfortunately is just a ticket to racism against people who have nothing to do with it. I’ve posted in many threads with you and I know that you’re better than this.

Progress is why viruses aren't named after locations anymore, experts say

 

The unsafe interactions with bats stems from deforestation and a global population that is running out of space for people. We’re destroying bats habitats without knowing what issues that will cause. Bats used to be much more secluded and outbreaks — which have happened for centuries — would be isolated to smaller communities. That’s not the case in such an interconnected world. It’s less to do with “eating bats” and more destroying the animals worlds every single day.

 

This is a very good explanation. Thank you Mike! Don't want to perpetuate anything by calling it that name and I'm glad it stopped like you said.

On the other hand I trust NPR on this that it did possibly originate from bats and people need to be more careful. I don't blame anyone tho. It's not like anyone knew...

 

Yes I know. People were keeping bats in their houses tho and hanging out in bat caves.

I mentioned previously it was due to deforestation.

 

Wildfires in northern Ukraine are raging and have been for the last week at least. A lot of them can’t be put out because of Chernobyl. Really upsetting situation in general. I haven’t seen any of this in the news but my relatives in Ukraine have been posting about it

 

Everyone will agree with Mike on what he said about the environmental impacts but that's literally part of what I was saying which I got no credit for before. Also the new NPR research will be ignored since it means I was somewhat right about where it might of originated from. It just shows some if you just want to be right rather than caring about actual research.

 

I guess I'm just not sure why this whole bat thing is worth fixating on to begin with? Like, outside of the unintended racism & xenophobia that it carries, what does it matter to us, here, right now, whether or not the consumption of a bat or something connected to a bat kickstarted all of this?

Caring about healthy living in a healthy, proper way is never a bad thing, but this kinda goes a bit beyond that.

 

Omg that's awful, so sorry for your relatives :(.

 

Thank you! Luckily Ukraine is very big and they are more in the center, about 1.5 hours south of Kiev so they aren’t affected directly.

 

I’m unsure why you want “credit” and what for because this is just an online forum

 

I can’t speak for the thread, but your talk of deforestation was buried under some pretty racist remarks about Chinese people. Also the NPR link doesn’t say it came from bats, but that it’s possible, assuming I’ve gotten the right article to match your audio link (I can’t currently listen to the audio link, so I could be 100% wrong here):

Yeah, people going to caves bats isn’t great (plenty of caves in America house bats, too, and cave trip businesses are all around America) but bat-human contact is more likely to be farmers growing fruits coming into contact with bat poop/saliva/etc in those fields or in their barns where the bats take up residence because of the abundance of cultivated food.



also none of this is said with snark or malice! Just discussion.

 

Yikes.

Feel like that person in that picture on the beach with the giant ass wave about to hit them. Did not expect so many pages of bat talk lol

 

Credit as far as agreeing with me and talking about it instead of just ignoring me and then suddenly agreeing with Mike/David like I literally didn't even say the same thing.

 

If u at some point can listen to the link they state they tested some bat samples and found a very close match with the current Coronavirus.

 

Man that just reminds me of going to Mammoth Cave NP and Wind Cave NP.

I was excited to take my son to Mammoth Cave when he got bigger but now...

That was the first NP we camped in. I usually need background noise to sleep and I was gonna play a noise maker on my phone especially since I’m a terrible sleeper when it’s not my own bed, let alone camping...but the ambience of all the bugs and animal noises was so loud it was perfect.

 

Is the racist remark that I said it could come from people in Wuhan eating bats? Is that racist because other people in China eat bats but they don't in Wuhan so I was just stereotyping them? I know now it didn't originate from that so i apologize! I just know we all need to be more cautious of our environmental practices in every single country and China should not be exempt from that.

 

Poor lil bats