Given the potential that a news story about bubonic plague, "the black death" being reported in China becoming a tool of American racists - from Trump on down - the New York Times should have put the last paragraph in their report, today, first.
Plague cases are found in limited numbers across much of the world. In the United States, about seven cases, usually the bubonic form, are reported on average each year, most often in rural areas of western states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
So if an outbreak happens here, blame the friggin' cowboys from cowboy country.
Still, there is a warning in this for Americans because anyone who thinks the Republican-fascists and their supporters would handle an outbreak of the human-to-human form of this or any potential pandemic disease must have been asleep for the past six months. Our news media certainly was for the start of it.
Also important information carried in the story should be something of a clue as to why this is such a dangerous thing.
The Bayannur city health commission said the plague was diagnosed in the herdsman on Sunday, and he was in stable condition undergoing treatment at a hospital.
The commission also issued a third-level alert, the second lowest in a four-level system, warning people against hunting, eating or transporting potentially infected animals, particularly marmots, and to report any dead or diseased rodents.
The city government said it had put in place plague-prevention measures that would remain in force for the rest of the year.
Note the warning consists of advice against "hunting, eating or transporting" animals. This after both the Covid 19 virus is known to have arisen from the "hunting, eating or transporting of animals," as, indeed is the other pandemic potential illness that was in the news last week. You would think that that on top of the other pandemic illnesses that regularly sweep the planet that originate in animal husbandry or the killing and eating of wild animals would do something to make people conclude that meat eating is one of our more serious health risks but I wouldn't expect it will do much to turn the New York Times or any other newspapers reporting on food and dining vegan. I don't get the times till one of my friends is well done with it - generally I read it months later as I'm using it to start the fire but I'll bet they've got some recipes for their mid-brow sophisticates to cook up that include species which will probably soon figure in another pandemic story carried by the news section.
Perhaps the last great prophetic voice in Western journalism, Karl Krauss, noted that war and despotism is carried in on the feuilleton section of the newspapers, he didn't live long enough to really see what the even more destructive influence of the movies, radio, etc. would bring in. Is it any surprise that plagues would be promoted by them, too? I wonder if the Chinese newspapers carried features with recipes for eating exotic animals as provided by the notorious and cruel wet markets. Though, as I've mentioned over and over again, one of the greatest potentials for that in the world is the American meat and egg industry, as well as those found in any other place on earth.
We will be driven into extinction by our appetites, especially as appealed to by the media that exists by selling us through appealing to our worst sides.
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