Wuhan’s wet markets, COVID-19 ground zero, are open again with blessing of WHO

Australians may be locked up at home but in Wuhan, China, ground zero of the coronavirus crisis, people are once again allowed to go back to the wet markets with the blessing of World Health Organisation.

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You may be locked up at home on the advice of public health authorities, but in Wuhan, China, ground zero of the coronavirus crisis, people are once again allowed to go back to the wet markets.

Shockingly, they’re doing so with the blessing of the World Health Organisation, which has supported their reopening – on the grounds that “they are a source of livelihood and food security to many people”.

Talk about adding insult to injury.

Given that the leading theory about the origin of COVID-19 is that it made the jump to humans at one of the city’s infamous disease-prone and cruelty-ridden markets, it might be worth pointing out to the WHO that these places have been a source of death and loss of livelihood for millions more.

Inside a wet market where exotic animals are butchered.

But no matter.

This is the World Health Organisation we’re talking about, which has for years now never missed an opportunity to parrot the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party.

In fact, as I reported last month, when it comes to wet markets, the WHO never really changed its mind.

Instead, all through the pandemic, their website has hosted advice on how to “safely” visit these open-air slaughterhouses where rare and exotic animals are stacked in the cruellest conditions and butchered for customers who see it as a status symbol to be able to put a pangolin on the dinner table.

This is in keeping with Chinese government policy which has never discouraged wet markets – and which loosened the rules on them after a brief clampdown when they were found to be the source of the deadly SARS epidemic of 2003.

Even if they were not a potential vector for deadly diseases to make the jump to humans, such wet markets should be closed on general principle.

But just as the WHO is now facing global outrage (and a potential loss of US funding) for its behaviour all throughout the coronavirus crisis, so too is China facing risk of global isolation not just for its wet markets, but for its lies which allowed the virus to get out of control and wreak havoc around the world.

Even previous evangelists of globalisation such as France’s Emmanuel Macron are now saying that the world has become too dependent on China for cheap labour and supplies – particularly medical equipment – and that it is time for nations in the West to rely on their own manufacturing capabilities again.

Just as nations around the world are realising that when it comes to supply chains all nations are not created equal, so too are we quickly shedding the liberal delusion that all cultural practices are equal.

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan.

They’re not – and some are downright deadly, not just to those who engage in them, but to all of humanity.

It’s time the so-called World Health Organisation got the message.

James Morrow is opinion editor of The Daily Telegraph.