Wet markets in Asia are a ticking time bomb and it is a scandal that the world has not closed down these infection hot spots, writes Danish daily Politiken in their editorial piece last week.
The newspaper states that although we do not currently know everything about how Covid-19 originated – a question we may never get an exact answer to – we do know that it most likely spread to humans via one of the so-called wet markets in Southeast Asia.
Whether it came from the wet market in Wuhan or was imported into China from a market in Thailand or another country in the region is, in a way, not important. The fact is that we know Covid-19 is here, we must learn to live with the malicious virus that will most likely never disappear completely again so it is our job to do our utmost to prevent future pandemics from occurring and spreading, the newspaper writes.
Covid-19 has cost millions of lives and plunged the world into the biggest crisis since World War II. As a society, we can not afford for it to repeat itself. The open markets in Asia where exotic animals are sold and slaughtered are not only picturesque but deadly. The combination of animals that in nature would never come in contact with each other and the extreme density give malicious viruses and diseases ideal conditions to jump from one species to another, as happened with Covid-19. If there were ever previous doubts, it is now more clear than ever that the wet markets in Asia are a ticking time bomb and it is a scandal that the world has not closed them down, writes Politiken.
