Hacker News Reader

Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

At some point it’s the job of the government to protect people when they can’t protect themselves.

Live and let live is fine until your actions are causing people to die all over the world due to completely new, evolved and deadly viruses.

All the brutal shit starts in places like this where humans and animals are mixing in dirty environments and freak meetings literally birth a destructive new threat instantly.

So on one hand you can interpret this as a “first world comment” but on the other hand you need to acknowledge that this level of negligence is no longer limited and isolated in scope to one tiny part of the world. It goes global overnight. There is absolutely no excuse for that.

View on HN

It's about tradeoffs, if you ban live animal markets all over China for long periods of time, you will instantly cause far greater destruction on peoples' daily lives in China as people will suffer from poverty. There's probably millions of people going to go hungry because they lost their source of income and poor farmers in China don't have that much social mobility to get another job.

And it's a part of their culture as well. They probably use these markets to socialize, these are primitive social networks and strengthen ties between neighbors and visitors alike.

I think you and commenter above have some weird romanticized (and uninformed) notion of simple country farmers who are scraping a living, country peasant style, trading stories on their grizzled/smiling faces as they keep a 100 year old family tradition alive.

The Wuhan market in question was a professional concrete block building with heavy trucks bringing in stock and organized stalls with fluorescent lighting and walls.

I'm sure they value your concern for their primitive social networks as they pay each other on Alipay and swap family stories on Wechat.

My advice is to stop using your desire for some fiction to be true to tell people how you think things shouldn't be done.

I'm always suspicious of "modernization" types like yourself. Mainly because they're quite often fascists in disguise. Populism and libertarian principles go hand in hand, because ultimately they leave the individual alone to live their life as they see best. They don't need your help, neocolonialist.

Personal attacks and name-calling will get you banned here, no matter how wrong another comment is or you feel it is. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. We've had to ask you this before.

You've got the kernel of a fine comment here, but the first and last bits cross into personal attack, which is not ok on HN. Especially the last bit.

Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.

What is this patronizing take. Wuhan is not some backward 1700s farmers market with maidens carrying pales of milk around on their shoulders. It's a fully developed bustling city.

This and the parent comment are weird romanticized (and uninformed) notions of simple country farmers who are scraping a living, country peasant style, trading stories on their grizzled/smiling faces as they keep a 100 year old family tradition alive.

The Wuhan market in question was a professional concrete block building with heavy trucks bringing in stock and organized stalls with fluorescent lighting and walls.

I'm sure they value the concern for their primitive social networks as they pay each other on Alipay and swap family stories on Wechat.

> All the brutal shit starts in places like this where humans and animals are mixing in dirty environments and freak meetings literally birth a destructive new threat instantly.

The solution isn’t as easy as you think it is.

These “mixing areas” are part of their culture. It’s part of their cultural context. Trying to impose Western cleanliness standards will take a very long time, it was tried in India with “Poo in the Loo” and I guarantee you there are people still taking a shit in open areas. And not washing their hands after either.

> These “mixing areas” are part of their culture. It’s part of their cultural context. Trying to impose Western cleanliness standards will take a very long time

Can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to let your citizens shit on the side of the road and not wash their hands, or run open markets where human/animal waste and raw meat are mixed -- that is cool but then we need to say sorry no more planes are gonna be allowed from Wuhan because y'all don't know how to act.

First off, the US lets people shit on the side of the road too, maybe you've never visited SF. My point is that having a regulation does not entail its enforcement or its compliance by the populace.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com