Health

have been eating exotic animals and folk medicine has been using other parts of their bodies for centuries, if not millennia. The virus was just ready to make a move, which is why it did so in two widely separated places, Middle East and China with SARS and MERS, about 17 years ago.

The only thing that might have mitigated this outbreak would have been following up that prototype SARS vaccine with large scale testing so that it was ready to go into production as quickly as possible. Since SARS-Co2 is 80% similar, that vaccine might have been enough to decrease the severity of the illnesses we're seeing now.

At least Asia is building upward instead of sprawling outward, suburbia eating up arable land in the process.