If the lettuce killed people and then everyone who interacted with the people who at the lettuce also got sick and the economy had to be shut down the United States would strictly ban selling lettuce immediately.

If China can enforce the largest lockdown ever and enforce a one-child policy for decades, they can easily ban live animals at markets.

A) COVID-19 doesn't kill everyone it comes in contact with. Depending on where you live, more people in the last 3 months may have become seriously ill from a food-borne illness than from COVID-19.

B)Food-borne illness actually does kill around 150,000 per year worldwide. It is a serious concern, and difficult to track/contain. There are also concerns around regulations being too lax, not enough inspectors, and living conditions of those who harvest food.

C)Maybe China should ban wet markets, but then maybe people should be home for Easter Sunday and not at a church. Now we start to ban "cultural norms" and "ways of life", which people get fussy about.

A) Saying the "last three months" is intellectually disingenuous because the virus hadn't even been introduced to most states three months ago. I'm sure in some areas more people have died in the last three months from ski accidents but that is irrelevant. Name one state where you honestly believe the next three months will have comparable cases of food-borne deaths to Covid-19 deaths.

B) I'm not disagreeing with you.

C) People should not be at an in-person Easter Sunday. I realize a percentage of churches decided to not close. That being said, wanting to eat bats is not comparable to wanting to practice religion.

> intellectually disingenuous...

Given poor testing/tracking, it probably was floating around in the USA 3 months ago. I am not saying that COVID-19 is not deadlier, but that food-borne illnesses are serious and rife in the food supply, and can lead to death for compromised individuals, yet we have not shutdown our markets or meat processing facilities despite outbreaks of food-borne illnesses being somewhat common. Those illnesses can indeed lead to death for thousands of people each year, especially those with pre-existing health conditions.

Also the cruise industry is notorious for food-borne outbreaks of Norovirus. These cruises typically have multiple incidents every year, and are great vectors for spreading viral infections, yet the cruise industry has never been shutdown.

You think eating bats and going to church are not comparable, because that's your opinion on what's culturally normal. Others might say eating a bat is delicious and going to church is dumb. Both have risks and I am not a fan either. No one should be eating bats or going to church right now, but that's going to offend people on both sides.

> Depending on where you live, more people in the last 3 months may have become seriously ill from a food-borne illness than from COVID-19.

This is a ridiculous claim if I ever saw one as food poisoning or food related diseases have never overwhelmed hospitals anywhere in recent history. Unless you are talking about some remote place where COVID has not landed yet, in which case the comment has no point. And we are not even talking about the past, COVID19 is still pretty much active and killing people still as we speak. We'll draw comparisons when it's over, which is not now.

i believe they have now banned wildlife.