If you're wondering how you remove the scientific evidence base from a policy discussion, and turn it into narrative, here's a nice template in just four sentences from today's Economist column on wet markets:

https://www.economist.com/international/2020/05/26/will-wet-markets-be-hung-out-to-dry-after-the-pandemic?fsrc=newsletter&utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-05-26&utm_content=article-link-1

There's actually not conclusive evidence it happened here! .... What is undeniable is: this is where this kind of thing happens. (This is undeniable because... ?)

This happens all the time! It's constantly these markets! Except that the evidence is unclear. So we actually only have one example to draw on:

Anyway please read my piece coming out in Lancet Planetary Health on an unknown date because they're not answering my emails! Read it! Link not below because I don't know when it's out!

"We can't talk about blanket bans productively" is step one, but steps two through ten are going to be disentangling ourselves from this bizarre narrow focus on human consumption of wildlife and all the weird confusing racial subtext and narrative-ized science in it

(If you're wondering why I always grimace a bit when people say "Oh have you read Spillover" or Coming Plague or Pandemic Century or etc etc it's because I think all of these one-disease-per-chapter books have done an insane amount of damage in letting this happen)

Frankly: any time you step into the misconceptions that get you to "the problem is human consumption of wildlife in markets", you're always going to end up back at blanket bans when people are angry. The only way out of that policy loop is purposefully deprioritizing the issue

p.s. About: "Wuhan....is exactly the sort of place where a new zoonotic disease might originate"

Saying the *city* instead of the *market*- saying Wuhan, a city with almost the population of NYC and Los Angeles combined, is that "sort of place" - says the quiet part loud