In 1958, during China's attempt at agricultural self sufficiency (tagged by their leader, Mao, as "the great leap forward"),

A campaign against pests, tagged "the four pests campaign" was initiated

You see, during that agricultural revolution, the people suffered from pest

invasions on their crops from rats, sparrows, flies and mosquitos.

And so Chairman Mao decided those 4 pests should be totally eliminated from China.

The leader, prodded by the people, decided that pests eating their grains and crops were a threat to them.

the mosquitos responsible for malaria, the rats that spread the plague, the pervasive airborne flies, and the sparrows (specifically the
Eurasian tree sparrow) which ate grain seed & fruit

They didn't bother to research the functions of these pests. They didn't study the real

contribution the pests made to the ecosystem, and by extension to the survival of the Chinese people themselves

And so people began gleefully killing all the rats, sparrows, flies and mosquitoes

During this campaign (with millions of sparrows dead) it was then discovered that

sparrows were responsible, not only for pecking a considerable amount of grain, but also for insect control on the farms by eating them

By killing the sparrows, insects multiplied on the farms and crop yields actually reduced far beyond the damage caused by sparrows

rice became scarce in spite of the high level of cultivation of the crop.

It is estimated that over 40m Chinese people died of hunger during the famine caused by the 4 pests campaign (which was later ended abruptly)

What is the relevance of this story?

Your guess is as good as mine.

In trying to cure ringworm, let us not replace it with blindness.

End SARS. But more importantly do it along with police reform.

If the police decide to be malicious, the current deaths from brutality may be child's play

A word, they say, ...