Rocker Bryan Adams under fire for tweet about 'bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

greedy bastards’

Eighties rock star Bryan Adams was under fire Monday night after he posted a bizarre social media rant about the coronavirus that many perceived to be racist.

“Tonight was supposed to be the beginning of a tenancy of gigs at the @royalalberthall, but thanks to some f***ing bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold, not to mention the thousands that have suffered or died from this virus. My message to them other than ‘thanks a f***ing lot’ is go vegan,” Adams captioned an Instagram video of him acoustically performing his 1983 hit “Cuts Like a Knife.”

The comments on Adams’s Instagram were largely sympathetic, at least at first, but the singer also shared the tirade on Twitter, where it stirred up more outrage. Seemingly blaming the pandemic on China (where the coronavirus is believed to have originated) for selling live animals and consuming meat, Adams quickly became a top trending Twitter topic. Countless people called him out for his nastiness, self-centeredness, or even blatant xenophobia, although some tweeters defended him as well.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/rocker-bryan-adams-under-fire-for-tweet-about-bat-eating-wet-market-animal-selling-virus-making-greedy-bastards-074934980.html

[Drahthaardogs]

1. The Chinese relationship with wildlife is bad

And he is, to some extent, correct. Rhino's are on the verge of extinction because of traditional Chinese medicine. The wet markets are disgusting and harbor disease. Pointing that out is not racism.

[enid602]

7. torch

Yet they've opened Disneyland/Shanghai. We're months away from that.

Next week they've committed testing all 11 million inhabitants of Wuhan, because there has been a staggering 6 new cases reported there, after months of none. We can't even commit to testing the House of Representatives.

Their major cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guanzhou and Hong Kong) have reported very few cases during the pandemic, despite being larger and more densely populated than any of ours. Sure, they've been accused of lying, but with tens of thousands of foreigners and expats based there, don't you think we'd know if they really had hot spots in China like New York?

It's no surprise that Latin American countries such as Mexico and Argentina have looked to China for guidance during the pandemic. The Chinese are leading. We are not.


Trump has really passed the torch to the Chinese.

[Drahthaardogs]

8. You're correct

But that has nothing to do with the way the Chinese people treat and interact with wildlife. The bottom line is the wet markets have proven to be a threat to world health and need to close.

[enid602]

13. racist

The practices to which you allude are abhorrent, but cannot decisively be considered the cause of Covid 19, as Covid entered NYC (our biggest hotspot, with almost have of US deaths in metro NY) from Italy, not China. Although Italian officials initially attributed Italy's patient 0's infection to the fact that his manager had recently traveled to Wuhan to attend a trade show, said manager never developed the antibodies to Covid, and has consistently tested negative. Furthermore, Italian officials are now investigating Italians who died of covid like infections in October of last year, fully a month before the initial cases in Wuhan. The rocker's comments are indeed racist, and meant to cover up our own feelings of impotence.

[Checkered Giant]

15. Are you suggesting it didn't originate in Wuhan?

[Blue_true]

24. People in this country hunt and eat wildlife.

What is the difference with what is happening in China, other that we have life life management here that reduce the inherent risks. Another thing is that some of the practices in China are thousands of years old, that can't be turned off in a few short years, it may take a generation or more. Given the realities, China took the correct path in trying to study viruses in wildlife that is regularly eaten there, that route yields faster protection, IMO.

[Drahthaardogs]

25. We don't exterminate rhino to get a boner

Or boil tiger bones to cure arthritis. If you somehow want to equate that to killing a deer or hog for food...

[Blue_true]

26. That wasn't my point.

Culturally, in some sectors of that massive population, doing stuff like eating keratin to get a boner (have no idea how that happens , other than in someone's head) is many thousands of years old, that stuff takes time to turn off. As China has gotten a larger middleclass, many people there are pushing back on things like eating dogs and cats, in some cities there, I think eating dogs and cats has been outlawed.

Just telling China to shut down wet markets pronto is like Hindis in India telling the USA to stop people here from eating beef. People will go away from beef for their own reasons, but if the government tried to shut eating beef down, people would be rioting.

[Drahthaardogs]

28. Yeah, but when mad cow disease hit Europe shit changed

And those controls are still in effect. So, I think you are wrong

[Blue_true]

30. People didn't stop eating cows, there just some controls implemented

to prevent slaughter of some cows, while a lot of beef was imported during that time.

So, using the angle that you went after, people just didn't stop eating beef because of mad cow disease. To make elimination of beef eating, people would need to be educated on the risks, that is not something that bears fruit in a year or even five years.

I read that presentation of exotic animals for dinner is a status symbol in China, to stop that practice, every guest at the dinner table would have to be revulsed by the practice and verbalize that displeasure, getting guests to that point takes years of re-education, starting in grade school. If China simply put it's foot down without the re-education, acquisition of wild animals go underground and unless a guest reports a host to police, nothing can stop the practice of serving wild animals that are at the core of the problems that we are seeing. But eating Elk, or wild Quail, or Sage Grouse is seen as a status thing in parts of our nation. What really is the difference between wild animal harvesting for wet markets in China and harvesting of wild animals here? In all cases, the harvester didn't provide a single meal for the dead animal for just one day of it's life - to say that one system is barbaric and the other isn't requires a large amount of cultural arrogance on the part of anyone making such a claim, IMO.

I don't dispute that Bryan Adams didn't have a point and I pointed out that I didn't see racism in what he wrote, Vegan arrogance maybe, but not racism. I don't know much about the guy's worldview, so I have no idea about how he views the general harvesting of wild animals. One can say that hunters help the wild animals by controlling their population, but before humans started hunting those animals, nature did a perfectly fine job of controlling their populations.

Longer post than I normally write. But the gist is that I am not at the same point that you are on wet markets, not that I don't think that they are barbaric, it's just that I don't believe we have enough moral high ground to lecture China about them.

[Drahthaardogs]

31. Killing an elk in an Alpine meadow is about as far away

From a wet market as you can get. I grew up poor and ate elk and deer almost exclusively, so I know.

I really don't care if the Chinese want to eat bats. What I do care about are keeping live bats caught from the wild next to pangolins, live chickens, snakes, and everything else.

The wet markets are unsanitary and need to end.

[Celerity]

37. Last time I checked, the US doesn't, as a rule of thumb, boil or roast dogs, cats, etc alive in

giant pans or barrels, unlike China and other Asian cultures. I have no problem if they kill them first, but FFS, it is cray cray torture to slowly roast them alive. Live dog in a wok style is INSANE EVIL.

YouTube and Google show that I am 100% right in lobbing those accusations.

I shall not post them as people will lose their fucking minds (the videos are SICKENING) and I will get a hide.

[Blue_true]

39. I mentioned that more people in China are revolting against eating dogs and cats.

I am not defending wet markets or eating dogs and cats, I stated those practices are centuries old and won't vanish overnight, I wish they would, but the reality is they won't until a critical mass of people in China shut those practices down.

Except for civits, wet markets aren't related to what you wrote about. Since wet markets are deeply engrained in Chinese culture in some parts of that country, getting rid of them isn't going to happen unless the communist party there shows some major courage. So with that, the best approach is to get ahead of viruses that can jump from animals to people, while choking out the wet markets through societal changes (change how people there view those practices, that is a longterm affair, IMO).

[Celerity]

40. not talking about WHAT they eat, I am talking about HOW they cook the shit

they fucking often roast it alive!

that is FUCKED UP

[Blue_true]

41. I agree that is is screwed up.

I read that people in wet markets like to watch the animal they by get slaughtered. In the West, animals get slaughtered out of our presence and we buy the end product at markets.

I don't defend what happens there, my point is that it most likely will not change in the timeframe that many want it to. So when the issue comes to preventing another virus from skipping from animals to humans, or at least being prepared with potential vaccines, the type of research that the Wuhan Institute of Virology does is the only course that will yield shortterm protection from animal to human transmissions. Long term, Chinese society or Chinese authorities will have to end the barbaric practices that have been taking place for centuries.

[Celerity]

42. Again, not to be tendentious, but slaughter is fine, even watching it. It is the frying, baking,

boiling, braising, even taking a fucking blowtorch (so common) to FULLY ALIVE animals that is the barbarism.

I have seen animals (including reindeer, which is so jummi btw) slaughtered. I am indifferent to it, as it was done humanely as possible, and on family farms, not some giant factory. I am not a vegan (never was, I love leathergoods a lot), nor vegetarian atm. Certainly not on moral grounds, if I was to become a vego. It would be for health or economic/environmental reasons (industrial meat farming taxes the earth's resources so hard.)

[WhiskeyGrinder]

19. Rhinos are not on the verge of extinction because of traditional Chinese medicine.

Rhinos never recovered from being decimated by trophy hunting during the colonial era, and the current black market trade in rhino horn is driven more by wealthy status-seeking collectors than medical practitioners, the majority of whom have signed on with conservation efforts. And farmers markets "harbor disease" no matter what country you're in. Acting like these issues are inherent to Chinese markets is, in fact, racism.

[Tipperary]

20. I agree.

I see nothing racist in what he said. Those markets are horrific.

[Blue_true]

23. I also don't think the intent of his tweet was racist. It

was radical, but not racist.

One of the problems is that once a White person sends out a tweet, even if the intent was not racist, there is no going back, that is why people need to be careful about what they write and how they write it, if the intent of writing it was not racism.

[Raine]

48. EXACTLY

and it's totally DISGUSTING!

[Dream Girl]

2. I don't consider it racist. The same could be said for the origins of Ebola and AIDS all originated

With consumption of wild animals/bush meat.

[rusty fender]

43. If I recall correctly,

AIDS was transmitted to humans via monkeys’ brains/blood. Humans ate monkey brains and drank their blood. We humans are our own worst enemies

[HAB911]

3. Biggest shark fin seizure in Hong Kong history, 26 tons

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3083184/biggest-shark-fin-seizure-hong-kong-history-recovers

The two consignments, which on their own doubled the amount seized last year, represent the slaughter of an estimated 38,500 protected sharks
Most of the dried fins discovered were taken from the protected ‘thresher’ and ‘silk’ species

[HAB911]

4. Poachers Kill More Rhinos as Coronavirus Halts Tourism to Africa

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/coronavirus-poaching-rhinos.html

The past few weeks have not been easy for Nico Jacobs, founder of Rhino 911, a nonprofit that provides emergency helicopter transport for rhinoceroses in need of rescue in South Africa. That’s because times are much worse for the rhinos.

Since South Africa announced a national lockdown on March 23 to limit the spread of the new coronavirus, Mr. Jacobs has had to respond to a rhino poaching incident nearly every day. On March 25, he rescued a 2-month-old white rhino calf whose mother had been killed by poachers. The next day he was called to rescue two black rhinos whose horns had been hacked off by poachers. When he finally tracked them down it was too late — both were dead.

“Just as soon as the lockdown hit South Africa, we started having an incursion almost every single day,” Mr. Jacobs said.

At least nine rhinos have been poached in South Africa’s North West province since the lockdown, he said, “and those are just the ones we know about.”

[Me.]

5. Ask Possible Virus Carrying Pangolins If He Is Wrong

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/02/07/coronavirus-pangolin-virus-host-who-virus-update-friday/4688785002/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/03/pangolins-coronavirus-covid-possibility/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-pangolins-may-have-spread-the-disease-to-humans

[Aristus]

6. Wow. That's really unlike him.

It's he getting a little senile?

He's been an international human rights advocate for decades...

[Drahthaardogs]

9. Why is pointing out that the Chinese have a really bad relationship with wildlife

Racism? It's true. We are losing elephants, rhino's, tigers, and bears thanks to the Chinese penchant for traditional medicine.

Sharks, blue fin tuna, and a myriad of other sea creatures are at risk.

Wet markets harbor disease and this is #3 that escaped.

[kwolf68]

17. It isn't racism

But the PC police are always on the mark to protect someone from getting offended. Tons of viruses are named for where they originated. who gives a shit? I don't hate Chinese people because of it. Yes, I think the medicinal medicine markets will help eradicate all of wildlife, just like western democracies that destroy the rain forest so we can have hamburgers. They ALL sucks, it all sucks...whether its perpetrated by white, black, red or green people. Just call bullshit.

[Tipperary]

21. He is calling out the mistreatment of animals.

Good for him.

[Bluesaph]

10. Pot. Kettle. Black.

We also have bad treatment of animals in our repertoire. It is a theory that the 1918 plague started on a pig farm in Kansas.

I don’t think BA is wrong in calling out wet markets. But he should not have stopped there. Our treatment of the animals we eat is no better than the Asian wet markets.

[moriah]

36. Eh, they determined it was avian in origin, but perhaps human and avian mingled in pigs.

Either way, the US government was encouraging every family to have a flock of chickens for an increase in home-based food supplies to allow for the war effort, then sending young men from everywhere who were exposed to both human and avian influenzas in their home communities to extremely crowded army cantonments. Pigs weren't absolutely necessary here.

My sister utterly spoils her chickens and mainly uses them as a source of eggs, even knowing this.

What I find more interesting is testing done for exposure to bat coronaviruses (the closest to this one was still bat in origin) in rural China showed many people with evidence of infection. Not because they hunted or ate bats, but because bats contaminate a lot of things and have a wide range, plus carry a lot of diseases.

But rural China IS the source of the live animals -- whatever they might be, but probably not bats -- that are sold in the wet markets.

Several of the articles suggesting reasons to disbelieve that this virus came from a lab also suggested it had experienced passage in a human or other-than-bat-but-human-like immune system in order to gain certain mutations for how it binds to the ACE2 receptor.

So while it's potentially possible Patient Zero brought a contaminated animal, which infected other like-immune animals, to a wet market....

Since not all of the original cases had any direct ties to the wet market in question or other ones, it's quite possible the infected animal that spread it all over the city was the human, whilst doing their other business after selling their animals (who might or might not have had it).

[Fix The Stupid]

11. Where's the "racism"?

Let's water this term down even more so true victims of racism get overlooked...

Fucking shame.

[JCMach1]

12. If African governments can shut down bush meat markets

Over disease concerns, what is China waiting for?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

16. Have bush meat markets been eliminated? That would be great, if true.

Do you have a link to this story?

I'm skeptical, I think demand will be met by supply, even if supply is pushed a bit underground.

[Disaffected]

14. A bit over the top alright but

racist? Not at all IMO - simply a statement of fact. The same would apply no matter what country it happened in.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

18. Eco-racism is so gross.

[Blue_true]

22. I read his Tweet.

I consider it more radical Vegan than racist. He took a swing at a class of meat eaters, people that eat bats. He could have worded it to be more specific, but I didn't see racism in it.

[maxrandb]

27. Who? I've heard of "rockers", but one album of sappy shit

does not a rocker make.

[Celerity]

38. lol at 'one album of sappy shit'

I am not a fan of his, but he has sold 65 to 100 million records worldwide, and those links are old, 8 and 10 years old, so probably closer to 100 million than 65 million by now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Adams_discography

[Calculating]

29. He's not wrong

The Chinese wet markets are awful, cruel, causing the extinction of endangered species, and spawn pandemics.

[rockfordfile]

32. I don't see the racism in that

[Iggo]

33. Fucking nazi...oh wait, it's a vegan.

[Coventina]

34. It's not racism to tell the truth. n/t

[flamingdem]

44. He's right about the wet markets and things like tiger bone soup

used in traditional Chinese medicine.

A bunch of hokem and as a result species are endangered. Now that tigers are being depleted the Chinese and other groups are engaging in wildlife trade in Africa and South America. Now it's the jaguar.

We all need to be aware of this and how their wet markets could start another pandemic. Glad he said something.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

46. Where did the article talk about tiger bone soup?

Or jaguars for that matter?

[flamingdem]

47. It's a part of the same mentality

And it's very specific - look up wet markets and illegal wildlife trade for Asian traditional medicine. Tons of articles on the subject.

A lot of illegal selling is done in wet markets. It's connected. It's specifically the Chinese and Taiwanese going into South America and creating a market for jaguar bones and teeth. It's horrific.

http://factsanddetails.com/asian/cat68/sub432/item2491.html

TIGER PARTS, CHINESE MEDICINE POACHING AND THE TIGER BONE TRADE

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

53. Because there are jaguars in China.

Good grief get over yourself. Your sanctimonious tangent just earned you an ignore.

[Initech]

45. Guess he won't be playing the RAH any time soon.

[Baltimike]

49. "Rocker"? Maybe "Pop star", but "Rocker"? I just can't. nt

[RhodeIslandOne]

50. The wet markets are disgusting, full stop.

Although technically it was a bat eating anteater being consumed (the scales) that really did it. Same church different pew.

I know many here (not saying you YMBL) would love it if it was found some rancid hog consuming red hat from Arkansas started everything, but too bad. You can bemoan it doesn't fit the narrative just like the MAGA fucktards who think this was made in a lab.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

51. You can bemoan it doesn't fit the narrative just like the MAGA fucktards who think this was made in

Are you suggesting that's what I'm doing?

I posted an article that's all. FWIW Brian Adams has apologized for his comments.

[RhodeIslandOne]

52. ......

"I know many here (not saying you YMBL) would love it if it was found some rancid hog consuming red hat from Arkansas started everything, but too bad. You can bemoan it doesn't fit the narrative just like the MAGA fucktards who think this was made in a lab."