a “wet market” is just a market that sells perishables/food like fruit, veg, dairy, or fish/meat, as opposed to a “dry market” that sells non-food stuff. The idea that “wet markets” are a uniquely dangerous and exotic vector of disease transmission is inane.

This is the Queen Victoria market in Melbourne. It’s a wet market.

This is the South Melbourne Market, a wet market.

Wet markets are major wholesalers. Your nice clean supermarket apples may well have been in a wet market hours before you bought them. Wet markets are a key part of the Australian food supply chain: here’s a Department of Agriculture report on it! https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/sitecollectiondocuments/ag-food/publications/price-determin/fresh_horticultural_products.pdf

This is not to suggest that no wet market has food safety issues; such issues can arise at any point on the supply chain. However, the suggestion that wet markets per se need to be shut down is based on ignorance and fear.

The phrase “wet markets” is used more in Asian nations because there are more markets full stop, so you need to distinguish them. Wet markets in places like Australia with few dry markets are usually just called “markets”. “Wet markets” is therefore a dogwhistle.

If something that sounds weird and exotic and faraway suddenly gets a lot of focus as the possible original cause of a social crisis that’s been massively worsened by powerful people in your country, use your head, exercise critical thinking for 0.08 seconds, I am begging you

further reading: https://mobile.twitter.com/AsFarce/status/1246452824679931905

World Health Organisation guide to healthy wet markets, which you’ll note does not advise they be shut down: https://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/capacity/healthymarket_guide.pdf

WHO page on animal-human virus transmission, including recommendations to reduce risk of transmission of emerging pathogens from animals to humans in live animal markets or animal product markets (26 March 2020) — again, not “close them down” https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/who-recommendations-to-reduce-risk-of-transmission-of-emerging-pathogens-from-animals-to-humans-in-live-animal-markets

WHO page on food safety — while live food animal sale or slaughter at wet markets has some risks, transporting meat carries significant food safety risks, particularly if refrigerated transport and tight supply chain control are not present: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety

For those of you who are saying that it is always unacceptably risky to transport a live food animal to market rather than killing it at another site and transporting it to market — I urge you to avoid the seafood industry

Finally — please visit your local wet market, if you are lucky enough to have one (possibly more likely than you think!) and it’s still open. It’s where your local supermarket shops, after all.