A raccoon dog.
I have to confess, I had to Google that one when I first heard the term, and what I found was, well, I found it.
Scientists have been looking long and hard at how the whole COVID-19 thing got started, whether it was intentional, a lab leak from the local virology institute, or something that creeped out of the infamous Chinese wet market in Wuhan. I suppose that’s appropriate, given that over 7 million people died as a result of COVID with millions more made sick, and still millions upon millions more impacted.
One of the theories of interest at the moment concerns an animal called a raccoon dog, which by the way, is neither raccoon nor dog. Apparently they’re included in wet markets in China for their fur. Also apparently, the animal seems to be presenting itself as a vector for the virus.
Raccoon dogs are what happens when the power in God’s workshop goes out during the day of Creation set aside for working on animals.
The raccoon dog is actually a member of the fox family and is indigenous to large parts of Eurasia. So no surprise then that it would be the kind of beast to end up at a market.
This is the kind of thing that makes conspiracy theorists roll their eyes inside their head. It’s too fantastical to be believed, never mind the believability of the stuff that they, themselves, propose.
Many people, when faced with the seemingly incomprehensible, just ignore it out of hand because they have difficulty wrapping their head around it. Fair enough. COVID exhaustion has many of us just wanting to move forward, and I get that and want the same.
Nevertheless, despite Chinese interference (they’re kind of touchy about China being considered the epicentre of the outbreak) it’s vitally important that we discover as much as we can about where COVID came from. Doing so would hopefully prevent us from being sucker-punched by such a thing again, although the odds aren’t in our favour.
Viruses have been around forever. They’ve killed millions of us over the centuries. And they’re not going anywhere. Raccoon dog or no raccoon dog, that’s a human reality that we need to keep a healthy eye on.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 