Sen. John Cornyn blames coronavirus outbreak on Chinese culture

[dalton99a]

Source: KXAN-TV

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- U.S. Sen. John Cornyn blamed the COVID-19 outbreak on the Chinese culture saying "people eat bats, snakes, dogs and things like that, that's why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses" in an interview Wednesday.

Sen. Cornyn's full comments were recorded by Washington D.C. newspaper, The Hill. Cornyn was responding to a question on whether he supported other politicians calling COVID-19 a "Chinese Virus."

"China is to blame because the culture where people eat bats & snakes & dogs & things like that, these viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people and that's why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses like SARS, like MERS, the Swine Flu," Cornyn said.

Texas Democratic Party Communications Director Abhi Rahman called Sen. Cornyn's comments "disgusting."

Read more: https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/sen-john-cornyn-blames-coronavirus-outbreak-on-chinese-culture/

---

Swine flu was first detected in the United States in 2009, and MERS was first identified in Jordan in 2012, according to the CDC.

[Xipe Totec]

1. Xenophobic ignoranus. nt

[NoMoreRepugs]

2. If RUMP said the virus was from aliens these

frickin Rethug Congresscritters would support the lie.

[AlexSFCA]

3. I wonder why did those viruses originate in China

[Dream Girl]

14. Wet markets. I have heard that it origated from comsuption of Pangolins a wild endangered species

infected from bat guano. Are are thousand of these markets all over China and Ofer marts of Asia.

[customerserviceguy]

15. So

maybe Cornyn has a bit of a point? Yes, he's despicable for so many reasons, but that broken clock that is right twice a day...

[BeyondGeography]

33. This is a political loser for us if all we do is scream racism

Stop calling it the Chinese virus. Meantime, encourage changes in behavior that reduce the potential for a repeat. China has suffered the most, so it shouldn’t be that hard.

[Lonestarblue]

36. Yes, he does.

A friend who has traveled to China said that markets with bats and other animals we would not eat are everywhere. But we should also remember that China has been a very poor country, and people eat what they must to survive. Their live markets do facilitate the animal to human transmission of diseases, but the world needs to work with them to improve conditions rather than hurl insults at them.

[ChiTownDenny]

59. +1

Very reasonable response. But China is no longer a poor country. I've read that China is recently re-thinking how business is conducted in these markets as a result of Covid-19.

[Turin_C3PO]

37. It's still despicable to be racist against the Chinese.

For one thing, Swine flu and MERs didn’t even originate in China.

[Igel]

48. The distinction is sometimes blurry.

Take the consumption of bush meat in Africa, which is (a) a cultural trait and (b) responsible for a couple of Ebola outbreaks, with a hemorrhagic fever or two thrown in for good measure.

It's a bad cultural practice and there was the chance for Ebola to kill not just thousands but millions. It did not. The safe criticism isn't based on culture but based on an irrelevancy, "Some of the bush meat comes from poaching," so we can point to poachers and condemn them. But it's in the same class of cultural practices as Chinese wet markets.

We're careful to point out that bush meat is often provided by poachers, because the attempt was made to say condemning that practice was also racist.

There was no trouble condemning meat eaters for BSE in the '80s, and if 'possum introduced a disease vector we'd have no trouble condemning them. Not every practice specific to a racial or ethnic group is so meritorious that the only reason to condemn it is racism. But "racism" these days is a purity crime, and these are difficult to discuss. In the 1600s if you were accused of being a witch, denial was a confession and to accuse an accuser of being wrong was to defend the witch and be accused of being a witch. It's like being called a heretic in 1500s Europe, say you didn't defame the Prophet in 2010s Pakistan, or defend yourself against being an enemy of the people in 1930s Russia or 1960s China. One accuser is proof enough, defense worsens the crime, and guilt is assumed. Why? It's like having the plague--better to overreact and protect from contamination than to maybe allow the unclean thing to spread its contagion.


Note that by this week's standards, "MERS" is an act of ethnic hatred and to use it is to out yourself as a racist. I mean, really, you're blaming Arabs and Muslims for "MERS"? ("Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" must inherently ascribe intent to produce a pandemic to Middle Easterners as a group, right? Because we don't name things by place. I kid, but if it got picked up the only recourse would be repentance.)

[customerserviceguy]

49. Well put.

Yes, and calling it Lyme Disease is not defamatory to the people of Lyme, Connecticut, either.

[captain queeg]

4. There's the first sucker to bite into Trumps bait.

[intrepidity]

5. So what's our excuse? nt

[IronLionZion]

6. Heart disease and diabetes come from American culture

[whathehell]

27. They're not contagious.

Just sayin'.

[Igel]

52. And the groups have been condemned for the harmful practices.

And they've been condemned as "culturally contagious".

If your ancestry is mostly New World you're both almost certainly lactose-intolerant and at a very high risk of diabetes for entirely genetic and evolutionary reasons.

Lactase persistence after early childhood is a genetic mutation that struck 3-4 times (used to be 3, I think I've heard a fourth was identified). Two in Africa (one NW-central, the other E-central, one in N Europe. If you can eat ice cream without a problem, you have at least one gene from those 3 or 4 places.

Diabetes is the same way. Europeans/Asians had concentrated source of starch to a greater extent much earlier than those in the New World. They probably had a great diabetes die-off before the Romans, in Europe, and Sumerians, in SW Asia. New World, not so much. So indigenous New Worlders have higher rates of diabetes for every subpopulation than Europeans. White folk spreading their evil culturally-appropriate Western diet is responsible, not genes. (Then again I knew some idjits years ago who tried to tell me that my ancestry dictated my diet in other ways. I should eat apples, not oranges, because Neolithic. This was before the Neolithic diet was a thing, by the way, in '82 and '83. My response was they should eat rye and oats, not wheat or corn, thinking I was being bad-ass sarcastic. Instead they checked and stopped eating wheat and corn. Idjits gonna idjit.)

It's not a just a human thing. Take dogs, for instance. Find the closest wild populations and you'll see their genome has a gene for digesting starch. One copy. So they can digest (some) starch. Look at domesticated dogs and they have 2, 3, even 4 copies of the gene, and can digest that much more starch. This isn't a "yes/no" kind of thing--more copies means more carbohydrase. So dog chow can have a high degree of starch and Rover's fine. If you produced wolf chow with that much starch and fed it to Wolfie you'd have one sick puppy.

[LiberalFighter]

7. Yet the Chinese culture is good enough to outsource production to China.

[GatorDem82]

8. He's not wrong....

Look, I hate the GOP with the intensity of a thousand suns.....but he's not wrong. It's not xenophobia or racism to call out the fact that MERS, SARS, Swine Flu and now COVID-19 have originated there. These infectious diseases live in a lot of animals such as bats, pangolins, snakes, and others. There are two good documentary videos on YouTube about it. This is one

&list=WL&index=116&t=0s

[dalton99a]

10. MERS and Swine Flu did not originate in China.

See above

[IronLionZion]

12. H1N1 originated in Mexico and hit the US harder than anywhere else

you're probably right about the others coming from those nasty looking wet wildlife markets in China where every animal looks miserable and sick to begin with. China needs to permanently stop that practice and find a responsible way to raise and sell meat safely.

There are Americans here in the US who eat wildlife but we don't have that style of markets. Vice had some experts who think eating the famous Texas wild hogs will spread diseases one day if done irresponsibly.

[Justitia]

16. I loathe Cornyn & he's not wrong

He’s my senator, unfortunately, and a complete asshat - which I write to him all the time.

Having said that, I am involved in the animal welfare / rights space and these wet markets are a huge problem, and yes, the wildlife trafficking that happens there is ground zero for these catastrophic viruses. Ebola came from wildlife in Africa, MERS from camels in the Middle East.
If you could see the wet market videos I have seen, it would erase all doubt, trust me.

Cornyn is just using that very unfortunate reality to gin up racism.
If we are ever going to be able to do something about these nightmarish markets, it’s going to require the assistance of our Asian partners.

[cannabis_flower]

19. Well..

They are a problem but so are the giant poultry and swine factory farms in this country that hold animals in deplorable, unsanitary conditions.

[Igel]

55. Condemnation of one

doesn't mean justifying the second.

Unless it's in response to condemning the first. Then it's de facto defense.

At least this time the Chinese government is saying the right verbiage about stopping the practice.

Oh, and it looks like after a huge percentage of the Chinese swine were killed off by African swine fever (there we go, blaming the Africans for wanting to kill our pigs, I guess) and exporting that contagion to nearby countries China's finally got a grip on that epidemic. China's just had a bad year or two for death by virus.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siminamistreanu/2019/12/28/chinas-swine-fever-crisis-will-impact-global-trade-well-into-2020/#2259f58a31ae
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/february/african-swine-fever-shrinks-pork-production-in-china-swells-demand-for-imported-pork/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/11/african-swine-fever-destroying-small-pig-farms-as-factory-farming-booms-report

Notice that the centralized government isn't missing a trick--use the crisis to extend control by administrators. Xiism is a really bad practice, but there you go. (Yeah, I have to be careful, but Xi is pronounced differently from Shi, and I have that distinction in my phonic arsenal so Xiism doesn't isn't the same as Shiism. Close enough for just having a bit of pun, however.)

[MosheFeingold]

26. Yep

The Chinese food practices are unhygienic and environmental disasters. Not to mention extremely cruel to the animals.

It’s absurd to knee-jerk and claim racism.

The Chinese need to clean up their food practices and end the cruelty to animals if they desire to be a part of the modern world.

[dalton99a]

35. Modern world? You forgot there is a Jewish Refugees Museum in Shanghai

Shanghai was about the only place in the world that let Jews in without a visa in WWII. Some 20,000 European Jews lived there.

Look, I am no friend of Xi Jinping or the Chinese regime, but Cornyn is not talking about specific practices, he's condemning China and the entire Chinese culture. Incidentally I don't know of any Asian person who eats any of the abovementioned animals, and there is plenty of animal cruelty here in the U.S. meat industry

[MosheFeingold]

56. Oh some what aboutism!

Wet markets keep bats and rats in horrid conditions.

It’s unsanitary and cruel.

The way they raise pigs and poultry on top of each other is not much better.

All of it together is a perfect breeding ground for disease. Hence SARS, H1n1, the pig disease that almost wiped out all their pigs, and, heck, even the Black Death that traveled down the Silk Road and destroyed Europe 700 years ago.

With international trade, it’s also a recipe for a pandemic.

They need to clean up their act.

It has nothing to do with race.

[dalton99a]

58. They, they, they. Condemn specific practices in an industry, not an entire culture.

Most Chinese people don't raise pigs or poultry (in fact, the vast majority of their workforce is non-agricultural)

[MosheFeingold]

64. Sure

What percentage of Chinese are vegetarian?

[Turin_C3PO]

38. People are using the fact that it originated in China

to encourage racism against the Chinese. No doubt.

[LizBeth]

9. What does it say about our culture our swine flu?

[IronLionZion]

31. Americans love to eat swine

It's a big part of culture in Texas and the South and some other areas

[Warpy]

11. Pangolins and that species of bat are native to SE Asia

across a dozen or so countries. If the species jump hadn't happened in a Chinese market, it would have happened elsewhere in the region.

Dumbass Cornyn needs to
reflect on the fact that the deadly "Spanish" influenza of 1918 had its most likely origin on a pig farm in Kansas.

Viruses are out there and don't respect national borders or skin color or much of anything else. When they mutate in such a way that they can jump species, they'll do it. Viruses want to replicate and move on and that's all.

And if he thinks our culture is superior and protects us from this sort of thing, he needs to think about cases of spongiform encephalitis tied to eating burgoo in KY or wild elk and deer out west.

[progree]

18. "influenza of 1918.. most likely origin on a pig farm in Kansas" and that was before factory farm

-ing where countless millions of animals (especially pigs and chickens) are crowded together indoors in hot poorly ventilated spaces ... we've been lucky I think that we haven't had some horrible widespread diseases originating from that. There was a recent Mother Jones article about the conditions and the lack of inspections and loose standards and all that. We have very little to feel superior about.

[Warpy]

20. I wholeheartedly agree. Factory farming is begging for trouble

even though most people will tell you that pork is much safer today. Well, yeah, if all you're looking at is the parasite load. Viruses are different, especially the fast mutating viruses like influenza.

[Scalded Nun]

13. I will be sooooooooooooooo glad to get out of this ignorant, hateful state

Cornyn, besides being a racist, is a blithering idiot.

He has not contributed a single positive thing to this country since his election to the Senate. Maybe that is why Texans love him so much.

[Demonaut]

17. are the Chinese the next to be targeted?

I've heard more than one report

[olddad65]

21. He eats shit. He should talk.

[truthisfreedom]

22. The orange idiot is programming his repuke underlings to cover up

his massive leadership failure since last December when he first dropped the ball on 1) ordering tests, masks and ventilators and 2) preparing more hospital space and bringing doctors and specialists on board to figure out other preparations.

[zonemaster]

23. Interesting video by VOX (not Fox) explaining why Chinese "wet markets" are so problematic

Lots of animal different species in close proximity provide a unique environment for virus exchange and mutation

[MosheFeingold]

28. Racist!

(Just kidding. Sarcasm. This old Jew is sick of people hiding bad acts by claiming any criticism is racist.)

[IronLionZion]

32. Antisemitic!

which is what a young liberal woman on social media responded when people called her out for wanting our elderly to die from the virus before the November election

[MosheFeingold]

57. Sounds about right

Religion used to be called the “last refuge for a scoundrel”. ( I think that was Mark Twain.)

It’s now fake claims of racism and anti-whateverism.

[truthisfreedom]

24. America knows 45 dropped the ball and this is just a distraction. 45 should have ordered masks and

ventilators and swabs and extra hospital rooms way back in December when he was being warned about what was happening. But NOOOOOOO... he was campaigning and couldn't afford to have the "numbers" become public. Democrat hoax, remember?

[Maxheader]

25. Maybe not the thing to say...dumb shit

When they have said they might restrict exports of materials necessary to the fight against the coronavirus..moron..

[catsudon]

29. he

he is not wrong, it sounds racist, but if people in Taiwan says the same thing. I agree with it



hell, just because donald turnip likes oxygen, are we going to stop breathing?

[Turin_C3PO]

39. Most of what he said is absolutely

NOT true. Swine flu and MERS didn’t originate in China. He’s a fucking racist who’s full of shit. Asians around the world are being targeted because of this bullshit. It’s not ok.

[Turin_C3PO]

45. Trump's handled it just as bad as China.

So maybe we should call it the Trump virus or Trump flu. Personally, I think we should just call it what it is: the novel corona virus.

[Javaman]

34. cornhole proves once again, that he enjoys being a fucking asshole. nt

[Talitha]

40. Typical Repug - point fingers instead of working the problem.

[Devil Child]

41. Well Cornyn isn't wrong on this one. I'd say the same about US culture and diabetes...

Cultural norms will offer up differing health challenges.

[Turin_C3PO]

43. He is wrong.

He blamed the Chinese for Swine Flu and MERs which most definitely did NOT originate in China. Conservatives are calling it the Chinese virus to encourage racism against Asians. It’s what they do.

[radius777]

67. Not just conservatives, but whites in general,

are typically always sitting back waiting to use anything against non-whites they can.

Chinese wet markets are inhumane, barbaric and unhygenic - but so to are the conditions of farms and slaughterhouses in America and the West, where there have been several outbreaks originating from such animals/conditions. We're just lucky none to this point have been as contagious and serious as covid19.

The message we should take away from this situation, as with climate change, is to respect nature more.

[LisaL]

42. He doesn't exactly look like a spring chicken.

Which means he is at higher risk of dying from it. Just saying...

[Mickju]

47. What an asshole!

I have hated him for a long time. He is worthy of hatred.

[MissMillie]

50. playing the blame game is not a leadership quality

quit your damned whining and get to work.

Or just plain quit so your district can elect a real leader.

Same goes for you too, 45.

[Blues Heron]

51. Says the guy that likes to eat cow testicles

[heckles65]

53. We have a neutral term for the virus...

...use it. A bit of diplomacy costs you nothing. Yes, wet markets provide a health hazard, maybe a huge one. It is something we can pressure China to change. One can assert this at the same time use COVID-19."

They're getting their ass bitten too.

[Thunderbeast]

54. Americans eat pigs, cows, and chickens.

These were vectors for past virus scares.

China and the US share cultural failures of leadership that refused to publicly acknowledge the gravity of the situation; Letting precious time pass when it might have been most effective.

When Chernobyl melted down, the Soviet bureaucracy feared passing the bad news "up the line". The willful political blindness cost many lives.

The same motivations supressed the truth in China and the US and delayed a full-force response.

[Blue_Tires]

60. Racist piece of shit..

The ironic part is had he said the Chi-Com culture of secrecy, cover-up and distortion helped perpetrate the spread he'd be correct.

[milestogo]

61. Americans eat barnyard animals.

[Tikki]

62. Squirrel, armadillo, oppossum, wild boar, alligator and snake are eaten in and around this country..

and other wild animals.

Remember repugs are always upset that regular people want to eat.

Tikki

[onetexan]

63. I'm in TX and i'm disgusted and ashamed by this horrid man's stupidity & blatant racism.

[Vivienne235729]

65. He needs to he this head out of his ass before he speaks. MAYBE, JUST MAYBE

Going the DO-NOTHING route was not effective in containment after all. Maybe?!?!! Or calling it just a democratic hoax?

[MustLoveBeagles]

66. What an asshat