“I think the people of China are more vulnerable because of a couple of decades of exposure to air pollution from coal-fired power plants and the fact many Chinese are notorious heavy smokers of cigarettes.”
some freepers are claiming it’s asian genetics, but that doesn’t really ring true to me ... however, what you say is dead bang on accurate ... i traveled throughout the PRC in the early 80’s on business, and the air quality from both unfiltered coal burning, untuned vehicles, ungodly amounts of cigarette smoking, and massive amounts of fine dust blowing towards the eastern cities in the autumn from the Gobi desert, pretty much induced lung problems in the entire population. it was so bad, that it was against the law to spit on the sidewalks because practically everyone had chronic lung issues, even relatively healthy younger people in the prime of their lives ... it really was tragic, but just part of the price the communist government was willing to pay to quickly industrialize, namely sacrifice their people because basically they didn’t give a damn about them ...
[some freepers are claiming it’s asian genetics, but that doesn’t really ring true to me]
I’m beginning to think that the Chinese leadership’s panic was possibly triggered by the effects of the swine fever on swine herds. Something like have of 1/2 of the Chinese swine population has either died or had to be culled. Maybe they thought this coronavirus would have a similar impact on humans.
What they probably missed was that pigs bred for meat are monocultures - they are (incestuously) bred for a high meat to bone ratio, feed to meat ratio, etc, etc. Disease resistance for a good number of plants and animals bred for human consumption is very low. Whereas humans aren’t monocultures. It’s generally natural selection that decides what humans get to pass on their genes. And a good chunk of that natural selection consists of resistance to diseases that Mother Nature throws up randomly.