Is omnivorous a bad word now?

but this is what they are pointing to:

Some sell more unusual fare, including live snakes, turtles and cicadas, guinea pigs, bamboo rats, badgers, hedgehogs, otters, palm civets, even wolf cubs.

Some have more specialization, like vendors sell only spices or only processed slaughtered poultry. Others have a hodgepodge of stalls right beside each other. When I am in such places, I know that sickness may not be farther away than touching a surface or being near someone that breath in your face, or drinking water out of something other than a bottle, the people in those places have developed immunities to things that would cause me to be bed ridden. But instead of coming up with negative terms to describe those cultures, I seek to understand why they developed the customs that they have, many of which were in place many millennia before our continent was settled by Whites, or even American Indians.

I was responding to the choice of the word "omnivore" to describe the markets (not "open air" ).

It is a poor word choice, when the potential disease vectors are all animal. Omnivore merely means eats everything - not eats a wide variety of meats (including meats more likely to be capable of transmitting diseases to humans). In other words - it is variety within the range of meats sold that is the issue - not the fact that the market sells meat, dairy, and vegetables.

Exotic meats is probably not a good description - because the meats sold are not exotic in that location. I didn't (and wasn't) suggesting what an accurate name might be - merely pointing out that omnivore is not a good descriptor of what makes this particular kind of market a potential vector for this kind of disease.

into the headline.

I only thought chicken came in nugget form.

Because some reports show that patient 0 wasn't linked to the suspected epicenter fish market. Now that's odd.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047646/no-link-seafood-market-first-case-china-coronavirus-chinese

or to the other victims by any (yet identified) epidemiological path.

in a delicate caramel sauce?.........

People in some cultures eat things that are strange to us, and eat dogs and young wolves. Those diets trace back thousands of years, but we are somehow arbiters of their appropriateness? Add "arrogant" to the set of choices in my title line.

Maybe people's tolerances to cross contamination has changed as society advanced, but that is a seperate subject. In the West, at some point we seperated stuff, like not sell meat right next to vegetables and fruit, and we killed everything before we mass marketed it, modern supermarkets continue the trend started in the West maybe a couple hundred years ago. I would guess that if we went back in time 200 years in the West, most of us wouldn't survive the food and water.

China is somewhat unique, because when one span the entire nation, or even a market, one sees practices that are modern and ones that are thousands of years old. Maybe what Chinese leaders can do is promote grocery markets where nothing live is sold, everything was killed and prepared offsite and there was specialization, for example, a rat meat supplier only did rat meat in one area of slaughterhouses and types of live animals were seperated and not brought near any wholesale vegetables or wholesale fruit.

A 61-year-old man who was a regular shopper at the Huanan Seafood Market was the first person to die from the virus. Authorities had since shuttered the market where the outbreak of this virus is believed to have begun on January 1 and banned the trade of live animals at wet markets on Wuhan, China on Wednesday.

Before the Huanan market closed, vendors there sold processed meats and live animals, including chickens, donkeys, sheep, pigs, foxes, badgers, bamboo rats, hedgehogs, and snakes. The close proximity of shoppers to stall vendors and live and dead animals in wet markets make them prime breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases, which means they spread from animals to people.

These zoonotic diseases pose a pandemic risk as they are carried by viruses that have not been circulating in humans before, therefore specific immunity to these viruses are absent in humans.

The narrow, crowded markets — brimming with everything from freshly caught fish to live poultry and reptiles — are “a breeding ground” for new and dangerous infections, said Evangelyn Alocilja, a professor and researcher of biosystems at Michigan State University.

The close contact between humans and a wide array of live animals makes it easier for viruses to jump between species, she said.



https://cj.my/115844/wuhan-coronavirus-originated-from-market-that-sold-wildlife-illegally/