| For Immediate Release Alleged Scientist Defends Wet Markets Amid COVID Crisis (And the Media Says Nothing) April 15, 2020 – In a telephone town hall with constituents this week, Sean Casten – an alleged scientist – expressed his support for Chinese wet markets saying, “We need to be careful about laying the blame on a particular cultural practice in a country that we don’t live in.” In fact, there is substantial evidence that these markets are breeding grounds for deadly viruses. The Huffington Post called the markets, “Ticking time bombs for epidemics like coronavirus.” Joe Walston, head of global conservation at the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society, stated, “You could not design a better way of creating pandemics. It’s really the perfect mechanism, not just for the Wuhan coronavirus but for the next ones that will undoubtedly emerge sooner rather than later.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, has said China and other nations should be pressured to shut down so-called “wet markets” as the new novel coronavirus spreads throughout the world. “[They] should shut down those things right away,” Fauci told ‘Fox & Friends’. “It just boggles my mind that when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface that we don’t just shut it down.” And, the US National Library of Medicine reported that, “In Chinese wet-markets, unique epicenters for transmission of potential viral pathogens, new genes may be acquired or existing genes modified through various mechanisms such as genetic reassortment, recombination and mutation. The wet-markets, at closer proximity to humans, with high viral burden or strains of higher transmission efficiency, facilitate transmission of the viruses to humans.” And those are just a few of the reports. Jeanne Ives, the Republican nominee for Congress in IL-06, responded to Casten’s inexplicable statement saying, “While we don’t know that COVID-19 originated in the wet markets, there is strong evidence that the spread was escalated there. At this point, everything China does should be suspect and investigated. Between direct support and the Federal Reserve leveraging money into the economy, they have created an estimated $6 trillion of indebtedness in the US economy. “And Sean Casten, a United States Congressman, has done nothing but praise and defend them. The people of the Sixth District need leaders who are far more thoughtful and responsible. For him to spread these ideas is ignorant at best, dangerous at worst.” And yet, the media hasn’t issued a report or even questioned him about his defense of wet markets.“I served many of the people in the Sixth District as a state legislator, and I have gotten to know many more on the campaign trail,” Ives continued. “They are reasonable people who do not suffer fools. And I have every confidence that they will hold Sean Casten – and the media who cover for him – accountable in November.” ###For more information or to book Jeanne Ives contact Kathleen Murphy at 630-329-4680 or kathleenemurphy26@gmail.com. |
