UKH

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53218704?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc....

"Flu virus with 'pandemic potential' found in China"

Oh joy. Just what we need.

Why do these always originate in China? Are their farming practices particularly bad? 

It's like buses.
You wait ages for one and then two turn up at the same time.

I don't know about always originating in China, but there does seem to be an association with poor farming practices e.g. variant CJD.

[Edit] I vaguely remembered reading something about all this, so I did a search and found this:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/new-virus-china-covid...

Very interesting, looks at the role of agribusiness in producing a system prone to producing infections.

Not the whole story, but keep in mind that about a fifth of the population of the world is in China, so they're likely to come up a lot!

According to wikipedia there are competing theories but its commonly thought that the 2009 swine flu outbreak originated in factory farms in Mexico.

Oink!

china has the monopoly on these things because it covers so much ground. 1/5 the population with such massive industries catering to the other 4/5 in a swirl of activity across just about every environment at stunningly interconnected speed. one sick pig in Guizhou can be infecting an entire market in Dalian the next day. then with so many international hubs the chance of getting it out and directly into a foreign city of 10 million is enormous.

whatever the optimum virulent environment is, China will have a lot happening in and the connectivity to push variation about. that sick pig may reached slaughter harmlessly in the dry north west, but trucked to the humid coast things go literally viral.

on a scale of insanity tho, its all just training for the real chaos that comes after the US election, whatever the result. good way to see how systems hold up.

There are countless viruses that could be the next big pandemic with just a little mutation here or there, I wouldn't worry too much about this article. If you start worrying about the next prion/virus/resistant bacteria that will wipe us all out, you will spend the rest of your life worrying constantly.

Let me put it this way; Do you worry that every steep slope you walk past after it's just rained could collapse on top of you in a mud-slide that would kill you? Or how about that one moment of inattention from a truck driver heading towards you will snuff you out like a candle? There are a lot of things that can kill you but it's important to keep things in proportion and consider whether you really need to worry about something - I mean, is there anything you are going to do differently as a result?

I thought buses normally came in 3's (oh poo ) 

Whatever we get this year, it's only a training session for global warming, something for which a couple of months indoors isn't going to fix.

I don't see anything really changing, traffic is near enough back to normal, people are clamouring to fly somewhere, it's almost like we're not bothered.