Bonkers hamster killers

[JustUseTheDoorSanta]

Seems extreme: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-60038551.

Kokeshi Xi is determined, in contrast to previous leaders who sought to play at being tolerant of other systems within the one country to try and lure Taiwan back into the fold, to make the world a safe place for authoritarian government and to secure the rise of China. Hence the hardline on Hong Kong (and Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia and other minority areas), the suppression of the protests, the first time in Chinese History that the authorities have actually breached the independence of university campuses, and the sedition law. Even after Tiananmen the authorities stopped their operations at the campus gates, and my friend who lived opposite the university in Seoul said the same thing happened during student riots there. Academics have a role in Confucian society that previously commanded respect from rulers / authorities.

He plans for Hong Kong to become merged into the Pearl River Estuary urban area with Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Macau, it’s status as a world financial centre protected by rule of law and a unique culture especially of liberal politics, is something he is more than prepared to sacrifice to secure his bigger plans for China. And as you say Shanghai is well placed to regain its historical commercial preeminence.

The real worry is what Xi has planned for Taiwan. China “will dismiss all criticisms of Chinese repression in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and anywhere else as hostile propaganda. It will also build up its military capabilities to enable it to impose its rule on Taiwan and secure the maritime spheres it claims, particularly in the South China Sea. Xi’s commitment to take Taiwan cannot be achieved without either deterring the USA from coming to Taiwan’s aid under the American Taiwan Relations Act or defeating the US forces deployed to help Taiwan defend itself. If China prevails over the USA on Taiwan, it will be the ‘Suez moment’ for the USA, an event that will re-shape the world order. Hence, when the time comes for China to attempt to take Taiwan, the UK will have to be prepared to respond to an American request for support.” committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/25143/pdf/

Prisoner Not in Hong Kong anymore but very much in touch with all the refugees from both the politics and the Covid situation. The latter mainly driven here by the separation from family and the constant threat of finding yourself locked in isolation in a room for three weeks with no scientific justification. ..

WTAF????

I don't care which country thinks this is an appropriate reaction, the insanity just seems to be growing.

FML I really think I've seen it all now.....

Prisoner Do you not suspect though that this is just another way for Carrie Lam to build up her credentials with Beijing by targeting the gweilos. Hamsters were a pretty common pet to keep in the expat community but I don’t remember any of the Chinese families we knew having them as pets, fish tanks for the Feng Shui and expensive pedigree dogs for the status but no hamsters .

Even so some of those pedigree dogs were being thrown out of windows in Mong Kok at the start of the SARS outbreak, especially before they worked out that what had spread it through Amoy Gardens was not animals /insects as first suspected.

I do agree that the current Hong Kong Covid strategy is beyond science or even sense but I think that is much more political than any sort of Covid insanity. I lived there through SARS and I could not fault the way in which after the initial dithering Margaret Chan implemented a public health strategy that was guided by and transparent about the science and definitely not politics. Believe me that was much better than being at the mercy of the “Libertarians”and one of the 1.8 m Londoners left to get Covid when they tried the herd immunity strategy before they had to, as a result of delaying a sensible public health strategy, implement a drastic lockdown in March 2020, then again left in the way of Delta before they again had to lockdown in a panic in December 2021 and then again letting it rip through London this Christmas with the inevitable shutdown which has caused even more economic damage than lockdowns did.

Keep to the science and not political ideology and the hamsters would be safe….

Some salient facts.

The cull applies to two shipments of hamsters that arrived from the Netherlands. This is a common element in the politically motivated reporting on Covid cases in Hong Kong and China, to emphasise the risk coming from overseas rather than own up to community transmission.

The cases linked to the hamsters are Delta, not Omichron (or at least that is what the Hong Kong govt are saying) so this is not a knee jerk insane overreaction to Omichron. It’s just part of the general political insanity.

150 people who just happened to visit the shop in question now have to go into quarantine for three weeks, confined to a room unable to open your door for more than a few seconds to get food, as well as any whose hamsters test positive. Yes this is bonkers but no more bonkers than the response to other cases which have seen hundreds of people with only the most tenuous connection to a case, and no actual sharing of air, have to spend three weeks in quarantine.

It must be easy to isolate a hamster and they don't really mix between households.

Disgusted by this.

Bonkers, if the hamsters have been tested and are carrying Covid then they must go, there are plenty of examples of animals carrying human diseases.
There are thousands of cattle and some other animals killed each year in the UK because TB can spread to humans. You would not like it if an infected hamster killed your granny.

Emily. They're also popular with locals, probably more so now than amongst expats who tend to have cats and dogs or maybe guinea pigs if they have space. That said, I was still pretty surprised that they're importing them given how they breed given half the chance!! So yes, while I agree that a lot of these travel restrictions and school closures are designed to bring about an expat purge, I'm not sure this is part of it, it's more about doing anything they can (however outlandish and disproportionate) to bring about the increasingly impossible goal of zero covid in order to get the border with mainland opened. Because the mainland border being closed is crippling HK financially. There's also an element of scapegoating and detraction from another cluster that started because some poor woman contracted covid while in hotel quarantine.

And yes, I agree with you that this level of ridiculousness is not necessarily higher than any of the other measures. I have thus far escaped the quarantine centre but I know it's only a matter of time if this wave takes hold.

UK does the same for bird flu.

I get what people are saying about other culls, but whether its logical or not, all cultures draw a line between farmed animals and pet animals, and they are afforded different treatment based on that - there are plenty of meat eaters working at no-kill dog shelters, for example. Has the UK or Denmark ever demanded that people hand over family pets for testing, and put them down if they test positive, despite having not proven a link that that animal can transmit that disease to humans?

@PrisonerofZeroCovid

Yes, the UK with bird flu. People's pet ducks etc. There was an article in the New Year about how upset someone was and they said they would not have birds again due to the upset.

OK, but a duck is an animal that is bred for food. It's not a pet animal in the collective mind. I'm talking animals that are exclusively pets in that culture- not eaten.

Missing the point of the thread but why the f are they shipping hamsters in from the Netherlands? They are piss easy to breed!

musical frog really don't know. This is a revelation that has surprised a lot of Hong Kongers!

@PrisonerofZeroCovid

OK, but a duck is an animal that is bred for food. It's not a pet animal in the collective mind. I'm talking animals that are exclusively pets in that culture- not eaten.

If bird flu was found in someone's budgie they would do the same.

I don’t regard the death of a hamster being an emotional tragedy, they generally are not long lived, although I do remember having to replace one quickly that had expired unexpectedly.

I think the fact that they don't have long life spans makes it even worse.

If bird flu was found in someone's budgie they would do the same.

Yes, that's a fair point.

Has anyone mentioned the llama that the UK government killed recently?

I'm probably missing the point, but havent we always known there was animal to human transmission since covid allegedly came from a bat originally??

I don't think UK should kill rafts of uninfected cows and badgers for TB, but test and vaccinate. I also have an issue with people in Hong Kong losing the lives they once knew. Neither of those are linked with this topic to me, though I see the connection of why both are relevant to others.

I suppose I have the biggest issue with the timing; most humans don't still test positive after 29 days and would have to have been quite unwell to do so. Any hamster would have to have been quite unwell to still be infectious. Because l can't see a logical reason why the hamsters would all still be infectious, that makes it really bizarre. They are pets, it's not usual to kill a healthy pet!

Niddan As I understand it the progression of viruses like SARS, MERS and Covid from its original animal host to becoming a transmissible human to human virus is the result of mutation as well as straightforward transmission. It requires an intermediate host as well, so as a result of what has been uncovered in relation to previous Coronaviruses the bat is the original suspect but an animal more likely to be found in wet markets such as the Pangolin is the suspect for being the intermediate host in whom a form more transmissible to humans mutated. If there was a lot of animal to human transmission then the pattern of the pandemic would have been different.

There have been very few cases of human to human transmission of bird flu for instance but the concern is that the more times it is transmitted from animal to human, the more chances it will mutate to a more transmissible form, hence the worldwide restrictions. But clearly there have been a lot more animal to human transmissions of bird flu, hence imposing such economically damaging measures, more than one anyway!

It took them ten years to work out that the first human to human transmission of SARS came in Guangdong and originated in bats, but then mutated to a form that had more common RNA with the human form in Civets so we probably have another 8 years of lab leak conspiracy theories to put up with……..

@JustUseTheDoorSanta

I don't think UK should kill rafts of uninfected cows and badgers for TB, but test and vaccinate. I also have an issue with people in Hong Kong losing the lives they once knew. Neither of those are linked with this topic to me, though I see the connection of why both are relevant to others.

I suppose I have the biggest issue with the timing; most humans don't still test positive after 29 days and would have to have been quite unwell to do so. Any hamster would have to have been quite unwell to still be infectious. Because l can't see a logical reason why the hamsters would all still be infectious, that makes it really bizarre. They are pets, it's not usual to kill a healthy pet!

I am not sure the human infectious period would directly translate to the hamster infectious period.

If bird flu was found in someone's budgie they would do the same.

Doesn't bird flu typically have a fatality rate of over 30%?

I am sorry OP but I think you are not getting the Hong Kong governments epidemiological justification, such as it is. The positive tests of 2 possibly 3 human cases and 11 hamster cases were on 7 Jan so within the two week quarantine period set by them ( at times in an arbitrary way that has shifted to three weeks). All visitors to the pet shop since 7 Jan are being put into quarantine. They are working on the assumption on the flimsy evidence that there will be potential cases in both humans and hamsters that have yet to test positive, and they are culling the hamsters to prevent that possibility.

It holds up about as much as quarantining everyone who visited a health centre in a two week period because one nurse who wasn’t on duty for much of the time tested positive.

However it isn’t about the epidemiology, it’s about Carrie Lam displaying her credentials to Beijing. Given Chinese policies on the execution of prisoners, and the farming of their organs, for relatively minor crimes like being a drug mule, and the mass incarceration and persecution of more than a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang including forced mass sterilisations, 2000 hamsters is probably not going to even earn her any brownie points….

I don't have an ideological problem with killing animals that may pass diseases to humans, depending on the circumstances, if there is no alternative.

I do have a "what the fuck is HK doing?" problem with Hong Kong's actions, because we are now into 2022 and yet the island's authorities seem to be using the same playbook they were using in spring 2020--permasealed borders and playing whack-a-mole with the virus.