Monthly Archives: March 2020

Trudeau made a HUGE exemption for foreigners arriving with fevers and coughs

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Trudeau made a HUGE exemption for foreigners arriving with fevers and coughs

 

Here is some shocking news that has gone unreported by the mainstream media: Justin Trudeau has made huge Canadian border entry exemptions for foreigners with fevers and coughs, but only if they apply as refugees!

You and I have to shelter in place. No going to restaurants. No going to the mall. No theatres, no schools, no playdates for the kids, no non-elective surgeries. We’re being treated like kids with a curfew.

But illegal immigrants with a fever and a cough are specifically and legally exempted from Trudeau’s border entry ban.

I know you don’t believe me because I could scarcely believe it myself. So let me prove it to you by showing you.

Here — check out this video from my nightly show, The Ezra Levant Show, where I dive right into this dangerous development:

So, Trudeau said he banned foreigners from coming to Canada if they’re sick. That is true. But then he immediately un-banned them, if they claim to be refugees.

Quick question, though — did you see this news on the CBC? (Yes, that’s a joke.)

Yours truly,

Ezra Levant

Toronto police charge man involved in coronavirus fraud investigation — the Wong man pulling coronavirus testing kit scam

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Toronto police charge man involved in coronavirus fraud investigation — the Wong man pulling coronavirus testing kit scam 

Toronto police say they have charged a 43-year-old man in connection with a coronavirus fraud investigation on Friday.

Police said on Wednesday, the Toronto Police Service Financial Crimes Unit got word from the United States Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Toronto, and the HSI National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPRCC), about a package that was intercepted at the Canada/U.S. border.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: Worker at Hamilton McDonald’s charged after fake positive COVID-19 test closed restaurant: police

Police alleged the package held 25 illegal coronavirus testing kits.

Upon further investigation, police said it was determined the package came from a Toronto address and that several parcels had been shipped across Canada into the U.S.

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On Thursday, a search warrant was executed in the east-end Toronto area of Cosburn and Pape avenues.

Jesse Wong was charged with fraud under $5000 and possession of a forgery device.

READ MORE: Canadians targeted by scams taking advantage of COVID-19 fears

He is scheduled to appear in a Toronto court May 28.

Police said they want the public to know that there are no such thing as coronavirus home test kits.

Anyone who may come into contact with someone selling such a thing should contact police.

Medical experts warn against claims by Winnipeg acupuncturist advertising ‘coronavirus prevention tea’ — Another Coronavirus-Chinese Connection

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Medical experts warn against claims by Winnipeg acupuncturist advertising ‘coronavirus prevention tea’

Hidden camera reveals acupuncturist claimed tea prevented doctors in Wuhan from catching COVID-19

Guojian Huang, a Winnipeg acupuncture therapist and Chinese medicine specialist, has claimed drinking an herbal tea made from a blend of six ingredients can prevent COVID-19. (CBC)

Medical experts are warning Canadians not to believe the hype after a hidden camera investigation revealed a Winnipeg acupuncturist was selling an herbal tea that he claims can prevent COVID-19.

In an email blast to clients last week, Guojian Huang, an acupuncture therapist and specialist in traditional Chinese medicine, said drinking a blend of six herbs in a tea over six days would keep people safe.

“COVID-19 is here.… So is herb tea to prevent COVID-19,” said the email, which was sent March 18.

It told clients of the acupuncture clinic to “order your coronavirus prevention tea now.”

A Facebook post from the same day made a similar claim.

“This is quite outrageous,” said Cedric Cheung, the national president of the Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Association of Canada, when told about the claim.

“You cannot make a statement that can possibly mislead a patient.”

Ankang Acupuncture Healing Centre emailed customers on March 18 claiming to have a tea that prevents COVID-19. The clinic said drinking a blend of six herbs in a tea over six days would keep people safe from the illness. (Ankang Acupuncture Healing Centre Inc.)

Health Canada has not approved any product to prevent, treat or cure COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

“Selling unauthorized health products or making false or misleading claims to prevent, treat or cure COVID-19 is illegal in Canada,” a Health Canada spokesperson said in an email to CBC News.

“We take this matter very seriously and we are taking action to stop this activity.”

Tea bags sold to reporter

Using a hidden camera, a CBC reporter posed last week as an interested customer and visited Huang’s clinic to pick up the tea. The recommended six-day treatment cost $60.

He claimed that about 200 doctors and medical staff travelled to the Chinese city of Wuhan — where the virus was first detected in December — and treated patients infected with the disease, but none of them got sick.

“Before going to Wuhan everybody drink this kind of tea, everybody safe after they come back,” Huang told the CBC reporter. “They stay almost one month there.

WATCH | Hidden camera video inside Winnipeg’s Ankang Acupuncture Healing Centre:

Hidden camera video inside Winnipeg’s Ankang Acupuncture Healing Centre

  • 4 days ago
  • 0:42

Last week a CBC Manitoba I-Team reporter posed as a customer to ask Winnipeg acupuncturist Guojian Huang about a tea he claimed could prevent the COVID-19 virus. 0:42

He said in two days he had already sold “hundreds” of packets of the tea, which he mixed at his Winnipeg clinic, Ankang Acupuncture Healing Centre.

Huang said he used herbs from Vancouver and Toronto and followed a recipe crafted by Chinese doctors who had travelled to Wuhan.

“Sometimes experience is more important than science,” Huang told CBC’s reporter.

Huang declined a later interview request but told CBC News via email that his belief in the tea’s healing properties comes from teachings.

  •  Got a tip for CBC Manitoba’s I-Team to investigate? Email or call the confidential tip line at 204-788-3744.

“All info I told you on the phone or in my clinic, I got them from online seminar as well as lots research articles, online-news, etc. where Chinese medicine doctors shared their experiences and knowledge of using Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture to prevent and treat coronavirus,” said Huang’s email.

He later walked back his comments in another email to CBC.

Guojian Huang told CBC News he makes a specialized herbal tea at his clinic, Ankang Acupuncture Healing Centre in south Winnipeg, that can prevent COVID-19. (acupuncturewinnipeg.ca)

“Please don’t misunderstand the Chinese herbal tea benefits,” said Huang in the later email.

“For prevention, most important is to keep social distance, hand washing, self isolation, wear masks, gloves, eye goggles as needed. Herbs can’t instead of those things.”

‘Now they think they’re invincible’: physician

A Toronto physician who treated patients during the SARS outbreak cautions people against believing claims about COVID-19 cures.

“My concern is that they’re desperate,” said Dr. Peter Lin in a Skype interview with CBC News. “They take this stuff and then now they think they’re invincible, and they don’t do the precautions that will actually protect them, because now they’re trusting in this particular tea.”

‘They take this stuff and then now they think they’re invincible, and they don’t do the precautions that will actually protect them,’ says Toronto physician Dr. Peter Lin, who treated patients during the SARS outbreak. He cautions against believing claims that certain products can treat or prevent COVID-19. (CBC)

Lin runs two family practices in Toronto and is a regular CBC columnist. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, he’s heard everything from claims that standing on your head will keep the virus away, to claims that drinking warm water and vinegar will prevent infection.

“Everybody wants to find that magical ‘take vitamin C and you’ll be OK’ … kind of thing,” he said.

“But unfortunately, with this particular virus, it gets into your lungs and it attaches there. So the best thing is to avoid it coming into your lungs. In other words, protect your personal borders.”

Lin said what is effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19 is washing your hands often, avoiding touching your face, and keeping your distance from others.

Could There Be A Connection?

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And in Canada, the three hotbeds of Covid19 are Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver — sanctuary cities all! You self-righteous virtue signallers and open door immigration fanatics, see what you’ve brought us!

Violent felon freed, avoids deportation & detention, for own “protection” during coronavirus lockdown

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Violent felon freed, avoids deportation & detention, for own “protection” during coronavirus lockdown. Meth head, carjacker career criminal released from jail due to pandemic. Trudeau threatens Canadian who don’t self-isolate with fines or jail
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVsElGcjyto
 
Violent felon freed, avoids deportation, for own "protection" during coronavirus lockdown
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Violent felon freed, avoids deportation, for own “protection” during coronavirus lockdown
Sheila Gunn Reid of Rebel News with the shocking story of this “walking crime spree.” MORE https://bit.ly/2WPueLd Go to https://www.RebelNews.com for more gr…
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The Coronavirus: Counting the Cost

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The Canadian Red Ensign

The Canadian Red Ensign

Saturday, March 28, 2020

The Coronavirus: Counting the Cost

Let us suppose that tomorrow Justin Trudeau were to make the following announcement:

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the experts have told us that it will take twenty years of extreme social distancing for us to be certain COVID-19 will not resurge. The good news is that we have developed the technology to fully automate production of all essential goods and the delivery of the same. Everyone is therefore ordered to remain in their homes for the next twenty years. All of your needs will be met. Robots will produce all the food and toilet paper and everything else you need and bring it to your home. There is no need for you to go outside. Armed drones will patrol the streets nonstop to enforce your compliance with this order. I am sorry that you will not be able to see your friends or loved ones outside of your immediate household who live with you again, except through video communication, for two decades, but it is necessary to prevent COVID-19 from resurging and flooding our health care system. I will remain in office for the duration of this period to see to it that everything functions smoothly. See you in twenty years.


Would we tolerate this?

Would we agree that the total loss of our freedoms of movement and association for two decades was a price worth paying in order to protect us from this virus?

I hope – which is probably a safer word to use here than assume – that most of us would answer “no” to both of these questions. Yet, with one significant exception, the differences between the hypothetical announcement and what we are actually being told are ones of degree rather than kind. It appears, however, that most of us would answer these questions “yes” had they been asked of what the government is actually saying.

This raises the interesting question of where the line falls between what we are willing to put up with from the government in terms of suppression of our basic freedoms in order to contain or combat this pandemic and what we are not. At what point does the price become too high?

The reluctance of many to think in terms of this question comes from the mistaken notion that the cost of the measures that our country and many others are taking to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is entirely, or at least mostly, economic. Those who hold this mistaken notion, then argue from the maxim that lives are more important than money, property, the economy and the like, that no economic cost is too high to achieve the end of saving lives from COVID-19. As I observed in my last essay, the premise of this reasoning is a lie concealed behind a moral truism. While it is true, of course, that lives are more important than material goods, if you wipe out material goods you will end up destroying lives.

Let us consider the point that I sought to make in the hypothetical Trudeau speech above by that one item that is a significant exception to the rule that it differs from what he is actually saying only by degree rather than kind. In the speech, Trudeau has found a technological solution to the problem of providing people with their essential needs while everyone is locked in their homes for their own good. Robots will do it all. No such solution is available in the real world. If it were, however, it would remove the economic element from the equation entirely. Yet the problem remains. How many, even with the assurance that all their material needs will be met, would consider living under a house arrest enforced by the most Orwellian of means for twenty years to be an acceptable cost to pay in order to stop COVID-19?

My point is that the cost of “extreme social distancing”, “isolation” and “shut down” over too long of an extended period of time, even with the economic element subtracted from that cost, is too high a price to pay. It is not a rational solution to the problem of the pandemic. Which is not surprising considering that it was quickly put in place by governments, on the advice of epidemiological experts, when they suddenly found that their earlier inattention to the outbreak when it was confined to China had brought it to their own doorsteps. Decisions made in haste are not likely to be thoroughly thought out rational decisions. Especially when you are trying to compensate for having earlier underreacted to a potential crisis. That is what leads to overreaction.

Andrew Cohen of the Ottawa Citizen in his recent comparison of the Canadian and American methods of handling this crisis clearly expresses his preference for the Canadian way of doing things over the American. I too prefer the Canadian way, although for me, that way is and always will be, defined by the Canada of 1867, whereas for Cohen, the Canadian way seems to be defined by whatever the Liberal Party says Canada is all about in the present moment. He mentions that Canadians tend to listen to and respect experts more than Americans, or at least the sitting American president. Perhaps that is true. In this case, however, the Canadian government is acting like it has been listening to only one kind of expert.

The kind of people we call experts today are the result of the centuries long process of the specialization of knowledge. If you are looking for something to do in your time of isolation you might want to consider reading Richard Weaver’s discussion of this process in Ideas Have Consequences. We have gone from prioritizing the ability to see the big picture to prioritizing the mastery of small subsets of knowledge. The person who has so mastered his own field of knowledge is the expert. Being an expert in one field does not translate into being an expert in all, or even competently knowledgeable in fields other than his own, and, while this is an over-generalization, of course, it is nevertheless the case that experts tend to have a kind of tunnel vision and are often grossly ignorant of other fields than their own.

Thus, the epidemiologists called upon to advise on how to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent the medical system from crashing by being swamped have provided a solution that would work according to the knowledge available to them. That knowledge is limited to their own field. They are incapable of calculating the number of lives that would be lost due to problems such as mass starvation if we crash the economy in order to practice extreme social distancing. Note that the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization is already warning of a looming global food shortage caused by these Communist anti-COVID measures. Indeed, they seem incapable of understanding that if you crash the economy to save the medical system, you lose the medical system too, because it is the economy that pays for the medical system. The people advising this strategy clearly do not possess even a basic understanding of economics, history (other than the history of disease outbreaks), and constitutional law. The government is clearly not listening to experts in these fields. If it was, it would not be so quick to take measures that could potentially recreate the Great Depression and the inflation of the Weimar Republic. Nor would it have attempted, as it did earlier this week, to pass a bill eerily similar to that which made Adolf Hitler into the dictator of Germany eighty seven years ago.

The government needs to listen to voices knowledgeable in these areas as well as those knowledgeable in containing epidemics. It would do well to pay heed to Dr. Garrett Hardin’s First Law of Human Ecology – “You cannot do only one thing”, which means that anything you do to produce a particular end or solve a particular problem, will have other repercussions elsewhere.

We also need to be listening to those who can tell us something about the long-term consequences of conditioning people to fear normal human contact – the friendly handshake, the warm hug, etc. – as the harbinger of death, and to treat electronic, long-distance, communication as an adequate substitute to be preferred. We had a big enough problem with people gluing their eyes to their smartphones or other electronic devices, immersing themselves in an online virtual world, and shutting themselves off from the real world and the living, breathing, people around them, before this crisis. “Extreme social distancing” will only make it worse. Perhaps someone can tell us what the likely repercussions will be of instilling in our populace the exact opposite mindset to those who went to war for us in 1939, willing to sacrifice themselves and die a horrible death rather than that we lose our freedoms. Karen Selick has made a convincing argument that one of the results of the shut down and stay home approach will be a huge rise in domestic violence. Obviously she is talking about the effects on people who have families. It would also be good to know from mental health experts what the effect on single people who live alone – a much larger percentage of our population than ever before – of cutting them off completely from human contact for months will be. How long will they be able to keep their sanity? How long before the suicide rates skyrocket? How long before people start to snap and do terrible things?

All of this must be factored into the cost that the government is forcing us to pay for stopping COVID-19.

One wiser and more knowledgeable than all the experts put together once said:

“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matt. 16:25)

He was speaking of those who believe in Him and are martyred for their faith. Perhaps we should be considering the broader implications of the principle.

Now That Canada Is Rationing Masks, Trudeau Faces Backlash for Donating Medical Supplies to China

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Now That Canada Is Rationing Masks, Trudeau Faces Backlash for Donating Medical Supplies to China

 

[The problem with Minorityitis — putting the interests of privileged minorities before those of your own people — is that you eventually reveal your suicidal bad judgment. Despite kidnapping our citizens and trying to damage us economically, Red China still has many friends in high places in the Liberal hierarchy. The Chinese CAUSE of this virus got medical supplies Canadians now desperately need. Hence our slogan: CANADA FIRST!]

 
Tobias Hoonhout
a box on a table: Boxes of N95 protective masks for use by medical field personnel in New Rochelle, New York, March 17, 2020. © Mike Segar/Reuters Boxes of N95 protective masks for use by medical field personnel in New Rochelle, New York, March 17, 2020.
Canada’s Official Opposition Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer took aim at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for shipping tons of medical supplies to China in February, calling the move “outrageous” with current concerns that Canada is running short on supplies amid its own fight against coronavirus.“Drs. across the country are facing urgent shortages of critical supplies. PM must explain why he sent 50,118 face shields, 1,101 masks, 1,820 goggles, 36,425 medical coveralls, 200,000 nitrile gloves and 3,000 aprons from Canada’s own gov’t reserves overseas in Feb,” Scheer tweeted.Canada’s Foreign Affairs department announced on February 9 that “Canada has deployed approximately 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment, such as clothing, face shields, masks, goggles and gloves” overseas to China, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

The move came after the World Health Organization warned the international community that “further international exportation of cases may appear in any country” and that “severe coronavirus-related disruptions” would occur as a result.

“It was absolutely certain in early February that we would need this equipment,” Amir Attaran, a professor at University of Ottawa’s school of epidemiology and public health and its faculty of law, told The Globe and Mail. “This decision went beyond altruism into high negligence and incompetence because Canada did not, and does not, have surplus equipment to spare.”

A spokesman for Foreign Affairs explained to the paper that the decision was made “when the spread of COVID-19 was primarily limited to China,” and that Canada had since “welcomed donations from Chinese companies” to boost its own stockpiles.

Local European news outlets reported this week that the majority of rapid coronavirus test kits supplied by China to Spain and the Czech Republic are faulty.

 

 

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John Ibbitson & Other Immigration Addicts Deplore That Coronavirus Has Temporarily Halted The Immigration Invasion

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Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) contractors, including translators, wait for the arrival of Syrian refugees at the Welcome Centre in Montreal in December, 2015.

CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/The Globe and Mail

Until last week, there was a very good chance Canada would accept more immigrants this year than at any time in living memory. Instead, this could be a year when fewer people make Canada their new home than in the past.

The ambitious plans of this Liberal government to expand immigration targets and create new programs have been dashed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The challenge is to ensure the downturn is only temporary, that Canada returns to its open-door policy as quickly as possible. Otherwise, closed borders could be the most damaging legacy of this disease.

In late February, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino outlined aggressive plans to further increase immigration to Canada. To the problems created by an aging society, low fertility and growing labour shortages, “immigration is the only solution,” the minister said in a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto, as he outlined proposed new programs, including one that would allow municipalities to recruit immigrants.

Canada accepted 341,000 immigrants in 2019, 10,000 above target and the most since the great immigration surges that filled the Prairies before the First World War.

On March 12, the department released targets for this year and the next two years of 341,000, 351,000 and 361,000 – so a little more than a million people over three years.

About 60 per cent of those would be economic migrants, with most of the rest family members. About 50,000 would be admitted each year as refugees.

But March 12 was so long ago. Today, most of the country is in lockdown under provincial states of emergency, and the Canadian border is closed to newcomers.

“Workers, students and approved permanent residents who haven’t landed should not travel yet,” the Immigration website states, although there are plans to admit some temporary foreign workers.

Ottawa is also turning away those who had been making irregular border crossings in order to seek asylum.

It’s likely now that Canada will not meet its target of 341,000 immigrants this year – an unfortunate but inevitable consequence of the pandemic.

What will happen in 2021? Will the Liberal government greatly increase the target to make up for 2020′s reduced intake, keep to the current level of 351,000 or set a lower one? In the midst of the chaos created by this pandemic, it’s too soon to know.

Kevin Lemkay, a spokesman for Mr. Mendicino, said in a statement to The Globe and Mail that the restrictions on entry to Canada are only temporary, and that the department was continuing to accept and process applications. “Our government will remain focused on welcoming highly skilled people who can help build a stronger country,” he said.

Given its past record, it’s reasonable to expect the Liberal government will try to make up lost ground. The leading Conservative leadership candidates, Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole, have also stressed that their party remains as open to high levels of immigration as it was when Stephen Harper was prime minister.

But Samuel Hyman, a Vancouver-based immigration lawyer, worries the pandemic could fuel nativist sentiment. No country is immune to the rising tide of nationalism that’s attacking liberal democracies and their institutions in Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

“We must be vigilant in never forgetting the lessons of history,” Mr. Hyman warned in an interview.

In 1913, when the population of Canada was only 7.2 million, more than 400,000 immigrants arrived in Canada – over five per cent of the population. But the First World War was followed by both recession and the devastating Spanish flu, which killed 55,000 people in Canada. Attitudes toward immigration hardened: by the late 1920s, the intake was down to 160,000 a year, and it cratered during the Depression.

Canada is a much more diverse and tolerant country today. In last October’s federal election, Maxime Bernier’s nativist People’s Party of Canada secured a scant 1.6 per cent of the popular vote – an impressive tribute to the continuing openness of Canadians toward newcomers.

Logically, there should be no change in attitudes toward immigration as a result of the pandemic. But logic doesn’t always guide public policy. Sometimes, policies are governed by fear.

Politicians in all parties need to fight that fear by supporting a return to wide-open immigration once this pandemic has passed.

Listen to THE ETHNOSTATE, With William Johnson, Paul Fromm & Kenn Gividen: When Based Boomers Met Woke Millennials

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Listen to THE ETHNOSTATE, With William Johnson, Paul Fromm & Kenn Gividen: When Based Boomers Met Woke Millennials

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Category: Uncategorized

Why They’re Called ‘Wet Markets’ — And What Health Risks They Might Pose

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Why They’re Called ‘Wet Markets’ — And What Health Risks They Might Pose

Jan 31, 2020
Originally published on February 8, 2020 6:35 am

A “wet market” in Wuhan, China, is catching the blame as the probable source of the current coronavirus outbreak that’s sweeping the globe.

Patients who came down with disease at the end of December all had connections to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan China. The complex of stalls selling live fish, meat and wild animals is known in the region as a “wet market.” Researchers believe the new virus probably mutated from a coronavirus common in animals and jumped over to humans in the Wuhan bazaar.

I visited the Tai Po wet market in Hong Kong, and it’s quite obvious why the term “wet” is used. Live fish in open tubs splash water all over the floor. The countertops of the stalls are red with blood as fish are gutted and filleted right in front of the customers’ eyes. Live turtles and crustaceans climb over each other in boxes. Melting ice adds to the slush on the floor. There’s lots of water, blood, fish scales and chicken guts. Things are wet.

At the Tai Po market, a woman who runs a shellfish stall — she only wants to give her name as Mrs. Wong — says people blame wet markets for spreading disease. But she says that’s not fair. Like just about everyone else in the market. Wong is wearing a surgical face mask because of the coronavirus outbreak. She’s heard about the links between the wet market in Wuhan, China, and the coronavirus but doesn’t think something like that would happen in Hong Kong.

“It’s much cleaner in the Hong Kong markets. It’s so different from what’s happening in mainland China,” she says. “When I go to mainland China and I’m trying to eat something, I’m concerned about what’s in the food.”

Meanwhile, this kind of market is not just an Asian phenomenon. There are similar markets all over the world — places where fish, poultry and other animals are slaughtered and butchered right on the premises.

But researchers of zoonotic diseases — diseases that jump from animals to humans – pinpoint the wet markets in mainland China as particularly problematic for several reasons. First, these markets often have many different kinds of animals – some wild, some domesticated but not necessarily native to that part of Asia. The stress of captivity in these chaotic markets weakens the animals’ immune systems and creates an environment where viruses from different species can mingle, swap bits of their genetic code and spread from one species to another, according to biologist Kevin Olival, vice president for research at the EcoHealth Alliance. When that happens, occasionally a new strain of an animal virus gets a foothold in humans and an outbreak like this current coronavirus erupts.

The Tai Po market in Hong Kong does have some live animals besides the seafood but the selection is rather boring compared to the exotic assortment of snakes, mammals and birds on offer in some markets in mainland China. They’re known to sell animals such as Himalayan palm civets, raccoon dogs, wild boars and cobras.

The only live birds in Tai Po are chickens, which are kept behind the butchered pork section of the market.

Chan Shu Chung has been selling chicken here for more than 10 years. He says business is really good right now because the price of pork — his main competition — is through the roof. Pork is in short supply due to trade tensions between China and the U.S. and a recent bout of swine flu.

A chicken for sale at the Tai Po market in Hong Kong. Customers say that buying chickens that are slaughtered on the spot makes them feel that they’re getting meat from fresh, healthy birds.
Jason Beaubien / NPR

So people are buying more chicken. Customers can select a live bird from Chung’s cages. Chung pulls them out by their feet, holds them upside down to show off their plump breasts. If the customer is happy with the bird, Chung puts a plastic tag with a number on the chicken’s foot. He gives the customer a matching tag, sort of like a coat check. Fifteen minutes later the shopper can come back and pick up the chicken meat.

Chung says he and his colleagues do their best to keep the area clean. They wash down the stalls regularly and disinfect the countertops to stop germs from spreading.

Chung, however, is one of the few people in the market who is not wearing a face mask. Face masks have become so common in Hong Kong since the coronavirus outbreak started that pharmacies across the city are sold out of them.

Chung says he isn’t afraid of this new coronavirus. He always gets his annual flu shot so he believes he’s protected against this new disease, even though scientists say the flu shot will not protect people against this new coronavirus.

Chung adds confidently that he’s even immune to SARS — for which there also is no commercially available vaccine.

But he does keep his chicken stalls incredibly clean, which public health officials say is one important step in stopping the spread of diseases. So maybe he’s on to something.

: 2/07/20

An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China as Hunan.